Article ID: CBB000701043

Bohr, Heisenberg and the Divergent Views of Complementarity (2007)

unapi

The fractious discussions between Bohr and Heisenberg in Copenhagen in 1927 have been the subject of much historical scholarship. However, little attention has been given to Heisenberg's understanding of the notion of complementary space--time and causal descriptions, which was presented for the first time in Bohr's lecture at the 1927 Como conference. In this paper, I argue that Heisenberg's own interpretation of this notion differed substantially from Bohr's. Whereas Bohr had intended this form of complementarity to entail a choice between a space--time description of the electron in an atom, and defining the energy of a stationary state, Heisenberg interpreted the `causal' description in terms of ?-function in configuration space. In disentangling the two views of complementarity, this paper sheds new light on the hidden philosophical disagreements between the proponents of these two founders of the so-called `Copenhagen interpretation' of quantum mechanics.

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Authors & Contributors
Camilleri, Kristian
Janssen, Michel
Duncan, Anthony
Stuewer, Roger H.
Rigden, John S.
Plotnitsky, Arkady
Concepts
Physics
Quantum mechanics
Complementarity
Theoretical physics
Philosophy of science
Wave-particle duality
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century
Places
Copenhagen (Denmark)
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