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Old 05-November-2007, 08:17 PM
Len Moran Len Moran is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken G View Post
I can't speak for Bohr's meaning there, but it could be that the point of complementarity is like the complementarity of momentum and position in the uncertainty principle-- that knowledge of one precludes knowledge of the other, yet both are present and can be known independently.

I would like to clarify this for myself since it links to my current reading on the subject of weak objectivity at the quantum level within d'Espagnat's book. As I understand it, atomic particles, unlike macro objects, are not said to possess attributes independently of the experimental set up, so I was wondering in what context you say momentum and position are "present". It does seem to me that there is no momentum or position of a particle outside of the experimental setup (it is weakly objective in nature), unlike, for example, a traveling ball where we can say the measured momentum is a strongly objective quantity - we do not have to measure it in order to ascribe a momentum to it.

In terms of quantum mechanics, I would say the complementarity aspect does not give two strongly objective views, each view is weakly objective, consisting holistically of the object and the experimental set up which always carries the notion of an observer. And whatever attributes we assign in this measurement process, those same attributes do not exist independently of this setup. So I think that in terms of quantum mechanics, complementarity quite importantly refers to a notion of underlying reality that can never be accessed objectively.

In this sense then, I'm not sure about the use of complementarity within the OP quote in relation to its use with quantum mechanics. The holistic view and the reductionist view of a creature are both correct, but they are both (I would say) strongly objective in nature, molecules can be thought of as possessing attributes independent of any verification, and the "life force" of a creature can be thought of as being present without any notion of any experimental setup to verify the creature is alive. So it seems to me that to use complementarity in the way the OP quote does is to use it in the sense of having different complementary perspectives of a known object.

Hence the use of the term complementarity differs I think quite importantly between quantum mechanics and biology for the reasons suggested, but having said that, I have read that Bohr never gave any explicit definition of what he meant by complementarity, and the OP quote does refer specifically to Bohr as well as quantum mechanics, but I would say that the nature of quantum mechanics is such that the description I have outlined of weak objectivity follows naturally from experiment.
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