Yeah, sure, spunketts: The components of a machine can be all noted, along with their configuration. But to know all that provides no basis of explanation for the machine when it is actually working. And that, I imagine, is Bohr's point.
You wrote:
A simple thought experiment, where the components are assembled mentally into the same configuration, results in an object that can only be found to be identical to the original. Thus it is the same life as the original. Bohr should have noted that his dissection was reversible.All I can say by way of reply to this is, the second law of thermodynamics rules out "reversibility" in such a case. You can do it as a thought experiment; but you can't do it "in the real world."
Bohr is an enormously subtle (some would say frustrating) thinker. I find him enormously challenging, and consider his scientific epistemology -- summed up under the principle of complementarity -- revolutionary, not to mention just what the human mind needs right now to "break the gridlock" of doctrinal thinking, scientific, philosophical, and theological.
Thanks so much for writing, spunketts!
The second law doesn't apply until I stop eating. I still have some pizza from last Weds., a few cans of Coke and a bottle of maple syrup left. As long as I can complete the assembly before that's all gone, will have the cat back together and greetin' me at the door in the AM.
"But to know all that provides no basis of explanation for the machine when it is actually working. And that, I imagine, is Bohr's point."
The physical properties that result in the interactions of the assembly never change thoughout the assembly, nor do they change at any point during it. I don't see that he has a point.
The components of a machine can be all noted, along with their configuration. But to know all that provides no basis of explanation for the machine when it is actually working. And that, I imagine, is Bohr's point.
a neoPlatonist should not presume to speak for, say, machinists or mechanics. rest assured, those of us who know machines are quite able to derive the function of an assembled machine by examination of its components - provided they function on mechanical principles with which we have some familiarity. we do things like that all the time.
It seems to me that Bohr was stating that there was in his time no means of examining each atom of an organism simultaneously without killing the organism, stopping the process under observation, and thus rendering the attempted examination moot. He was correct: there was no means in his time to do the deed in a utile manner. Nor is there on eyet today. However, given the rather dramatic improvement in non-invasive scanning and monitoring technology in the last seventy years, I would not bet against the eventual development of just such a technique.