William James, Niels Bohr, and Complementarity: I—Concepts

Abstract

The concept of complementarity was introduced by William James in 1891, and by physicist Niels Bohr in 1927, the latter probably without knowledge of the former. The phenomena were experienced as “gaps” in thought, and by the experiential observation that thought is divisible into transitive and substantive parts, providing evidence of complementarity. The most obvious phenomenon of psychology, that of thought, therefore requires quantum-theoretical exploration. Bohr was fascinated by the principle of complementarity and of the possibility of a new epistemology based upon it.