Complementarity & Reality

[Philosophy Now]

Alistair MacFarlane has complementary ways of looking at things.

http://philosophynow.org/issues/80/Comp ... nd_Reality

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A letter published in PN:

Dear Editor: The article ‘Complementarity & Reality’ by Sir Alistair MacFarlane in Issue 80 coincided with my reading Quantum by Manjit Kumar, in which I first read about the Complementarity Principle fathered by Niels Bohr. Bohr a rrived at the principle by studying the works of Kierkegaard, Hoffding and James – philosophers who wrote about the complementarity in human thought and its applications. I was so taken by the concept that I had to read anything I could on the subject, including ‘The Roots of Complementarity’ by Gerald Holton. One thing that article didn’t identify as a root of complementarity is the human mind; but the human mind is the chief source, since it is itself constructed in a complementary manner, through two complementary hemispheres. If we didn’t have this brain complementarity we couldn’t function.

MacFarlane writes that the complementarity principle “has not yet played a major role in philosophy.” But philosophy has many complementary attributes. To start, its accumulated knowledge, when engaged, unearths complementaries such as dualities, paradoxes and contradictions, which in turn uncover other complementarities such as dialectical thinking. Kant couldn’t have reached his momentous insights without drawing on complementary sources, for example, Berkeley and Rousseau, nor without complementarity philosophizing. And philosophy gets its unavoidably complementarity nature from its origin and conversing partner, the human brain.

Philosophy may not outwardly display its complementarity skills, but through history it has searched out and brokered tangible complementarity usages, culminating in practical and successful complementary means of governance and of dealing with the human condition. One reason we philosophize is to reach satisfactory but complementary conclusions.

Philosophy without complementarity would be akin to a lover without passion.

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Alistair MacFarlane writes about the two components of the complementarity, facticity and function. He also writes that the complementarity principle “has not yet played a major role in philosophy.” He says that because philosophers tend not to focus so much on the combination of the complementarity but rather on its two contingencies separately. That's probably because the complementarity constitutes a systems and is too metaphysical for most philosophers. Philosophers have not been known for studying or understanding systems and the combination of things.