On the Cultural Relationship Between Niels Bohr and Harald Høffding

Abstract

It is this paper's aim to shed some light on the debate about the cultural debt of Niels Bohr towards his mentor and teacher of philosophy, Harald Hoffding. The debate began at the end of seventies between two Danish scholars, Jane Faye and David Favrholdt, and in a broader sense it stands for way to show how philosophical influences may shape the scientist's outlook on the world and consequently the approach to his fields of studies. In my view, Edgar Rubin, the famous psychologist and Bohr's friend, is the key person to reconsider the Bohr-Hoffding's relationship. I shall adopt Gerald Holton's thematic analysis for enucleating the possible thematic concept that supports the claim of a common line of thought emerging from Hoffding, Rubin and Bohr's conceptions with respect to their own field of study. Such a line of thought, i.e. the concept of unity, moulded Bohr's view on the world and exerted its heuristic power in the formulation of the first atomic theory.