Niels Bohr's Complementarity

This book explores Niels Bohr s idea of complementarity with a focus on the relation between the roles of what he metaphorically calls spectators and actors. It seeks to spell out the structural and historical complexity of the idea of complementarity in terms of three different (static-contrastive, dynamic, and static-symmetrical) modes of the spectator-actor relation, showing, in particular, that the middle -period development of Bohr s thought starting from his 1935 debate with EPR is characterized by an extension of the dynamic conception of complementarity from non-physical contexts to the very field of quantum theory. Further, linked with this analysis, the present work situates Bohr s complementarity in contemporary philosophical context by examining its intersections with post-Heideggerian hermeneutics as well as Derridean deconstruction. Specifically, it points to both the close affinities and the differences between Bohr s idea of the actor-spectator relation and the hermeneutic notion of the relation between belonging and distanciation (or alienation ) in Gadamer's and Ricoeur's philosophical thought.