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To: RightWhale; Alamo-Girl
No longer content with being and doing, RW is considering also aming and ising. After retirement, of course.

LOL, RW!

Hey, aren't you the guy who wants to repeal the law of the excluded middle? Well, here's your big chance!

If we do in fact live in a non-local universe (and it seems likely to me), then Bohr's law of complementarity would appear to hold. Thus, in order to have the complete description of a system, you have to deal with apparently irreconcilable "opposites," such as position/momentum, particle/wave, quanta/fields, etc., Bohr's "complementaries." Neither complementary gives you the complete description of the system (i.e., of the unobservable whole of which these are observable "parts"). You have to observe and understand both for that. So you do not have an "either/or choice" here. You have a "both."

But if complementarity is the law of the non-local universe, then why stop at the microworld? One can find all kinds of interesting (possible) complementaries. For instance, mass/energy, space/time, etc., etc. Or even Planck's "action principle"/Bauer's "life principle." Or my favorite, which I've been mulling over recently: Bohr's own "quantum epistemology"/ontology (the complementarity of knowledge/being)....

RW, I'm going on vacation tomorrow, and won't be returning til Labor Day. I will be off-line (gasp!!!! horror of horrors!) all that time. (Unless the weather on Cape Cod turns bad, in which case I might come home a bit earlier than planned.) So, just in case I don't have an opportunity to speak with you again before I leave, thank you for the stimulating discussion. I hope we can pick up where we left off when I get back.

578 posted on 08/22/2003 12:38:50 PM PDT by betty boop (Bohr is brutally realistic in epistemological terms. -- Kafatos & Nadeau)
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To: betty boop
Have a good trip and watch out for that windmill in the bay.
580 posted on 08/22/2003 12:41:02 PM PDT by RightWhale (Repeal the Law of the Excluded Middle)
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To: betty boop
Complementarity only applies to non-commuting variables. It's a technical result of limited scope. Pushing complementarity outside of matrix mechanics is analogous to extrapolating relativity theory to cultural relativism.

Quantum mechanics (and physics in general) isn't usually a good source for cultural analogies.
581 posted on 08/22/2003 1:02:12 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: betty boop
What an excellent challenge! Have a great vacation, betty boop! We'll be here waiting for you.
582 posted on 08/22/2003 1:07:44 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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