Complementarity & Aristotle—Comment by Hideki Yukawa

CONTRARIA SUNT COMPLEMENTA
"Opposites are complementary."—Niels Bohr
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老子
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class="first">Complementarity & Aristotle—Comment by Hideki Yukawa

Post by 老子 » Fri Nov 06, 2020 9:20 am

[NOTE: This post was moved from the CHINESE DIALECTICS forum to QUANTUM MECHANICS—Administrator]

Hideki Yukawa was the first Japanese person to win a Nobel Prize (Physics 1949 "for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces.")
Léon Rosenfeld was a Belgian physicist and close associate of Niels Bohr. In his essay on "Niels Bohr's Contribution to Epistemology", he describes a conversation he had with Yukawa about the challenges of understanding Bohr's theories:
When I was staying at Yukawa's institute in Kyoto 2 years ago [1961], I had occasion to discuss Bohr's ideas with the great Japanese physicist, whose conception of the meson with its complimentary aspects of elementary particle and field of nuclear force is one of the most striking illustrations of the fruitions of the new way of looking at things that we owe to Niels Bohr.
I asked Yukawa whether the Japanese physicists had experienced the same difficulty as their Western colleagues in assimilating the idea of complementarity and in adapting themselves to it.
He answered, "No, Bohr's argumentation has always appeared quite evident to us," and, as I expressed surprise, he added, with his aristocratic smile, "You see, we in Japan have not been corrupted by Aristotle."
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Interestingly, Rosenfeld added that "If Yukawa had also mentioned Plato, his epigram would have given a complete characterization, which it would be difficult to make more pregnant, of this significance of Bohr's contribution to philosophical thought. Untrammeled by formal schooling, guided only by the sure intuition of the investigator of nature, Bohr rediscovered the dialectical process of cognition which had so long been obscured by the unilateral development of epistemology on the basis of Aristotelian logic and Platonic idealism. ... even though scientists of the 19th century who were most inclined to idealism ... were impervious to the Hegelian form of dialectics..."
From The Selected Papers of Leon Rosenfeld, Chapter 11 "Niels Bohr's Contribution to Epistemology" (1963) p. 522

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Hideki Yukawa 湯川 秀樹 (1907 – 1981)

NOTE: Why post about a Japanese physicist in a Chinese Dialectics forum? Because, as Yukawa's remark suggests, he was influenced by the Chinese philosophy of Daoism 道教 & Confucianism 儒家.
Last edited by 老子 on Sat Nov 07, 2020 2:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

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>Re: Complementarity & Aristotle—Comment by Hideki Yukawa

Post by 老子 » Sat Nov 07, 2020 2:40 am

Apparently I've been moved from Chinese Dialectics to Quantum Physics, which is fine, I guess...
Anyway, sorry to reply to my own post, but the following paragraph in Rosenfeld's essay on "Niels Bohr's Contribution to Epistemology", which I did not include previously, also seems important, so I am adding it here:
Untrammelled by formal schooling, guided only by the sure intuition of the investigator of nature, Bohr rediscovered the dialectical process of cognition which had so long been obscured by the unilateral development of epistemology on the basis of Aristotelian logic and Platonic idealism. Indeed, when Newton formulated the new natural philosophy (as he called it) which was to give modern science its aim and its method, he was so scared at the prospect of the impious materialism to which exclusive reliance on human reason would lead that he injected into his philosophy a generous dose of mystical antidote of Platonic inspiration; and this uneasy alliance of rationalism and mysticism has since then been paralyzing scientific philosophy. Even those scientists of the nineteenth century who were most inclined to idealism were impervious to the Hegelian form of dialectics; as for the Marxist dialectics, which might have given the materialists among them a clue, it was effectively hidden from their view by an impenetrable social barrier.
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Here is the whole page for reference (full-size link below):
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rosenfeld-p-522.gif

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