Notes

  1. . See Niels Bohr, “The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory,” Nature 121 (1928): 580–90, reprinted in his Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934).
  2. . Aage Peterson, “The Philosophy of Niels Bohr,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 19 (September 1963): 12–14. For other references to the influence of Bohr's idea of complementarity on fields outside quantum physics, see P. K. Feyerabend, “Problems in Microphysics,” in Frontiers of Science and Philosophy, ed. R. G. Colodny (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962), p. 191, nn. 7–9. I know of no evidence in Bohr's writings or elsewhere to support Dillenberger's statement that “the principle of complementarity… was actually taken over by Bohr from philosophy and theology” Uohn Dillenberger, Protestant Theology and Natural Science [New York: Doubleday & Co., 1960], p. 275).
  3. . See, e.g., John Baillie et al., Science and Faith Today (Guildford, Surrey: Lutterworth Press, 1953); C. A. Coulson, Science and Christian Belief (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955); Peter Alexander, “Complementary Descriptions,” Mind 65 (1956): 145–65; and D. M. MacKay, “Complementary Descriptions,” Mind 66 (1957): 390–94.
  4. . See, e.g., Mario Bunge, “Strife about Complementarity,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 6 (1955): 1–12, 141–54; Adolf Grünbaum, “Complementarity in Quantum Physics and Its Philosophical Generalizations,” Journal of Philosophy 54 (1957): 713–27; and the symposium between D. M. MacKay and P. K. Feyerabend, “Complementarity,” Aristotelian Society: Supplementary Volume 32 (1958): 75–122.
  5. . Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959). p. 456.
  6. . Alexander, p. 165.
  7. . J. R. Oppenheimer, Science and the Common Understanding (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954), p. 9. In general, see chap. 5 of this book (which originated as Reith Lectures over the BBC).
  8. . William G. Pollard, Chance and Providence (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), pp. 151–52; Dillenberger, p. 287; and William H. Austin, “Complementarity and Theological Paradox,” Zygon 2 (1967): 365–81.
  9. . James L.Park. Complementarity without Paradox: A Physicist's Reply to Professor Austin,Zygon  2 (1967): 387.
  10. . E.g., William G. Pollard, “Indeterminacy, Mystery, arid a Modern Epistemology,” Zygon 1 (1966): 181–85; Charles E. Townes, “The Convergence of Science and Religion,” Zygon 1 (1966): 301–11; Ian G. Barbour, Issues in Scienceand Religion (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice‐Hall, Inc., 1966), pp. 290–94. (Barbour showed more enthusiasm for a complementarist analysis in his earlier essay, “The Methods of Science and Religion,” in Science Ponders Religion, ed. Harlow Shapley [New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1960], p. 214); I. T. Ramsey, “Religion and Science: A Philosopher's Approach,” in New Essays on Religious Language, ed. Dallas M. High (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 52; and Ian G. Barbour, ed., Science and Religion (London: SCM Press, 1968), pp. 27, 72, 75.
  11. . Arthur Koestler, The Yogi and the Commissar (New York: Collier Books, 1961), p. 214.
  12. . Alexander, p. 164. For a recent development of such a position, see Donald D. Evans, “Differences between Scientific and Religious Assertions,” in Barbour, ed., Science and Religion, pp. 101–33.
  13. . Arthur F. Smethurst, Modern Science and Christian Beliqs (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1955), pp. 88, 109.
  14. . Hugo Bedau and Paul Oppenheim, “Complementarity in Quantum Mechanics: A Logical Analysis,” Synthese 13 (1961): 201–32. Detailed citation of sources omitted in the summary above will be found in this article. For an extensive review and criticism of Bohr's position, see Feyerabend (n. 2 above).
  15. . MacKay (n. 3 above) and in his “Complementarity in Scientific and Theological Thinking,” this issue, has argued in effect that (i) complementarity is a “logical” relation, (ii) it antedates Bohr's adoption of the term, (iii) its logic deviates from that to be found in Bohr's use, and therefore (iv) we need not trouble ourselves overmuch with whether we can make sense of claiming that religion and science are complementary in a fashion analogous to that in which Bohr says that quantum mechanical phenomena are complementary. So far as the term “complement” and its cognates, including “complementarity,” have any serious cognitive content prior to the 1920s. it is to be found in their employment in logic (any term, T, is the complement of any other term, T, if and only if the conjunction of T and T exhausts the universe of discourse), in geometry (any angles, α, β, γ,…, are complementary if and only if their sum is 90°”), and chromatics (any color, C, is complementary to another color, C, if and only if they are 180° apart on a color wheel, i.e., yield neutral when combined). If we attempt to state the logic of the term “complementary” based upon these sources, it would appear that the term designates a dyadic relation (even in geometry, we speak of the complementary angle to a given angle) and that in some sense or other the pair of complementary entities are exhaustive of a certain domain. However, we cannot always say that complementary entities are exclusive of each other because complementary angles may be identical (i.e., both 45°). Oddly, it is only the exclusiveness of complementary entities which MacKay carries over from pre‐Bohr usage into his own definition of the concept. In Bedau and Oppenheim, all three properties are used to explicate Bohr's concept of complementarity; but they are shown not to suffice to define that concept. Since Bohr's use is continuous with the chief “logical” features of the term “complementary” antedating the 1920s, any attempt to deviate from Bohr's concept of complementarity by appeal to pre‐Bohr usage is doomed to failure. I suspect MacKay's notion of complementarity is intended to be faithful neither to Bohr's concept of complementarity nor to the pre‐Bohr concept (which is itself not a sound basis for consistent generalization, as I have shown above), but is intended to be an entirely new concept with a new “logic” all its own. If so, I think it is misguided on two grounds. One, and surely the chief ground, has been set out in the criticisms of Alexander (n. 3 above) and in Alexander's unpublished essay originally presented at the conference on “Science and Religion: The Complementary Hypothesis,” Birmingham, England, April 1969. The other, which can be seen from a study of the literature cited above in nn. 2–13, is that the alleged complementarity of science and religion has been thought by almost all writers to be a case of the application (either by analogy or by specification) of a concept essentially like the one Bohr had introduced into quantum mechanics; no writer 1 have read (not even MacKay himself) uses the term as though it were an entirely new concept having only (misleading) orthographic affinities to “complementarity” as found in Bohr or to “complementary” as found in classical logic, geometry, and chromatics. Whether, therefore, (i) is true it is difficult to say; in any case, the truth of (ii) does not tend to establish anything interestingly relevant because (iii) is false; and the argument to establish (iv) is thus for several reasons unsound.
  16. . Niels Bohr, Atomic Physzcs and Human Knowledge (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1958), p. 40.
  17. . Ibid., pp. 76–79, 91–93; also the literature cited in n. 2 above.
  18. . Nathan Brody and Paul Oppenheim, “Application of Bohr's Principle of Complementarity to the Mind‐Body Problem,” Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 97–1 13. The reader is referred to this article for detailed citation of sources relevant to the argument as summarized in the text above.
  19. . Most of the following differences were already noted by Brody and Oppenheim.
  20. . E.g., Hans Reichenbach, Philosophical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1944), p. 77; and Ernest H. Hutten, The Language of Modern Physics (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1956), p. 191.
  21. . For an extensive review, see Herbert Feigl, The “Mental” and the “Physical” (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967).
  22. . Alexander.
  23. . See I. T. Ramsey and N. Smart, “Paradoxes in Religion,” Aristotelian Society: Supplementary Volume 33 (1959): 195–232. None of the paradoxes they discuss are those between science and religion, and neither writer shows any interest in a complementarist resolution of those they do identify (though see Ramsey [n. 10 above], pp. 199–200, and the critique in William H. Austin, “Models, Mystery, and Paradox in Ian Ramsey,” Journal, for the Scientific Study of Religion 7 [1967]: 51–55).
  24. . Quine has recently offered a new classification of paradoxes into those which are “veridical,” those which are “falsidical,” and those which are “antinomies” (W. V. O. Quine, The Ways of Paradox [New York: Random House, 19661, pp. 3–20). The paradoxes complementarity is needed to resolve are probably of the first sort, as Brody and Oppenheim have already noted.
  25. . Coulson (n. 3 above), pp. 66 ff.
  26. . For a recent discussion of the concept of attitude in religion, see J. Paul Williams, “The Nature of Religion,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 2 (1962): 7–8.
  27. . NathanBrody. Scientific and Religious Experiences Distinguished by Their ‘Affect,’Psychological Reports  16 (1965): 737.
  28. . Ibid., p. 740.