From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Nov 26 1999 - 13:26:47 MST
At 07:51 PM 25/11/99 -0500, Robert M. Owen wrote:
>I don't really regard the heliocentricity of our Solar System as a "great"
>"truth"
Fair enough - but it was long regarded as one by certain powerful
authorities and paradigm-enforcers.
What constitutes a great truth is certainly constrained by local opinion,
so moving to a different locality can change it. But I do not think that
sort of epistemological relativity can ever make it helpful to regard A and
not-A as simultaneously true.
On the other hand, we often find that what we'd supposed to be a neat case
of A is actually a blend of X, D and 42, so what we'd have supposed to be a
simple existential opposition with not-A is far more complicated. But that
would make Bohr's dictum something like `The contrary of a given attempt to
resolve a great puzzle also sometimes has great effectiveness or apparent
validity', which I'd readily ascribe to.
That might sound as if I counsel trading-in a pretty maxim for a clumsy
paraphrase, but I don't think so. The difference has something to do with
treating the central issue not as one of `a truth' but rather as `a puzzle'.
>On the other hand, "wave-particle duality" (Scroedinger & Heisenberg)
>and "The Principle of Complementarity" (Bohr) help make life interesting,
>don't you think?
I don't, actually, but of course I lack the mathematical expertise to make
a grounded judgement. Certainly there are many theorists who regard this
wishy-washy Yin/Yang model as a historical obstacle to clearer
understanding of QT.
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:51 MST