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The Complementarity Principle and Syädvāda
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vocabulary available for communication of experience in those wider fields, and above all to the varying interpretations, in philosophical literature, of the concept of causality, the aim of such comparisons has sometimes been misunderstood. However, the gradual development of an appropriate terminology for the description of the simpler situation in physical science indicates that we are not dealing with more or less vague analogies, but with clear examples of logical relations which, in different contexts, are met with in wider fields.
Bohr's first and continuing preoccupation with philosophical problems related to the use of language for unambiguously describing our experiences. A fundamental difficulty in this regard arises from the inescapable fact that man is both actor and spectator in the universe. Thus, when I am "seeing” a thing, I am also “acting”: my choice to see the particular thing is an "act" on my part. We often use the same word to describe both a state of our consciousness and the associated accompanying behavior of the body. How to avoid the ambiguity? Bohr drew attention to the beautiful analogy between the concept of multiform functions and the concept of a Riemann surface: the different values of a multiform function are distributed on different planes of a Riemann surface. Similarly, we may say that the different meanings of the same word belong to different "planes of objectivity.”
Bohr used to tell how the ancient Indian thinkers had emphasized the futility of our ever understanding the “meaning of existence.” And he would add that the one certain thing is that a statement like "existence is meaningless” is itself devoid of any meaning.
As lucidly pointed out by Heisenberg, the concepts of ordinary or natural language have undergone changes due to developments of modern science. Further changes are to be anticipated as a result of continuing advancements. The ambiguities and contradictions faced in science have been attributed to the use of the terminology of natural language. Contradictions are inherent in natural language, as well as in precise scientific language. The role of the complementarity approach and of Syādvāda logic is to give a less ambiguous meaning to the terminology of natural language and to provide greater insight into the relationship between human mind and reality.
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