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CHAPTER 7
THE COMPLEMENTARITY PRINCIPLE
AND SYĀDVĀDA
D.S. Kothari
The principle of complementarity, which we owe principally to Niels Bohr, is perhaps the most significant and revolutionary concept of modern physics. The complementarity approach can enable people to see that seemingly irreconcilable points of view need not be contradictory. These, on deeper understanding, may be found to be complementary and mutually illuminating—the two opposing contradictory aspects being parts of a "totality", seen from different perspectives. It allows the possibility of accommodating widely divergent human experiences into an underlying harmony, and bringing to light new social and ethical vistas for exploration and for alleviation of human suffering. Bohr fervently hoped that one day complementarity would be an integral part of everyone's education and would provide guidance in the problems and challenges of life.
Hideki Yukawa was once asked whether young physicists in Japan, like most young physicists in the West, found it difficult to comprehend the idea of complementarity. He replied that Bohr's complementarity always appeared to them as quite evident: “You see, we in Japan have not been corrupted by Aristotle.”
The core of the profound ethical and spiritual insights propounded in the Upanişads, Buddhism, and Jainism rests essentially on the complementarity approach to the problems of life and existence, though the formulations vary. Sri Aurobindo, perhaps the greatest
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