Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science (153))

Since the Niels Bohr centenary of 1985 there has been an astonishing international surge of scholarly analyses of Bohr's philosophy. Now for the first time in __Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy__ Jan Faye and Henry Folse have brought together sixteen of today's leading authors who have helped mould this new round of discussions on Bohr's philosophy. In fifteen entirely new, previously unpublished essays we discover a surprising variety of the different facets of Bohr as the natural philosopher whose `framework of complementarity' shaped the final phase of the quantum revolution and influenced two generations of the century's leading physicists. There is much on which the authors included here agree; but there are also polar disagreements, which assure us that the philosophical questions revolving around Bohr's `new viewpoint' will continue to be a subject of scholarly interest and discussion for years to come. This collection will interest all serious students of history and philosophy of science, and foundations of physics. Front Matter....Pages i-xxvii Bohr’s Response to EPR....Pages 1-31 Niels Bohr’s Words and the Atlantis of Kantianism....Pages 33-55 A Bohmian Response to Bohr’s Complementarity....Pages 57-75 Niels Bohr and Realism....Pages 77-96 Non-Locality or Non-Separability?....Pages 97-118 Bohr’s Framework of Complementarity and the Realism Debate....Pages 119-139 Description and Deconstruction....Pages 141-153 Bohr and the Crisis of Empirical Intelligibility: An Essay on the Depth of Bohr’s Thought and Our Philosophical Ignorance....Pages 155-199 What Makes a Classical Concept Classical?....Pages 201-229 Niels Bohr’s Argument for the Irreducibility of Biology to Physics....Pages 231-255 Niels Bohr’s Conceptual Legacy in Contemporary Particle Physics....Pages 257-268 A Critique of Bohr’s Local Realism....Pages 269-277 Bohr and the Realism Debates....Pages 279-302 The Bohr-Einstein Dispute....Pages 303-324 Hidden Historicity: The Challenge of Bohr’s Philosophical Thought....Pages 325-343 Quantum Theory and the Place of Mind in Nature....Pages 345-352 Back Matter....Pages 353-388

Since the Niels Bohr centenary of 1985 there has been an astonishing international surge of scholarly analyses of Bohr's philosophy. Now for the first time in Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy Jan Faye and Henry Folse have brought together sixteen of today's leading authors who have helped mould this new round of discussions on Bohr's philosophy. In fifteen entirely new, previously unpublished essays we discover a surprising variety of the different facets of Bohr as the natural philosopher whose 'framework of complementarity' shaped the final phase of the quantum revolution and influenced two generations of the century's leading physicists. There is much on which the authors included here agree; but there are also polar disagreements, which assure us that the philosophical questions revolving around Bohr's 'new viewpoint' will continue to be a subject of scholarly interest and discussion for years to come.
This collection will interest all serious students of history and philosophy of science, and foundations of physics.