Old Wine Enriched in New Bottles: Kantian Flavors in Bohr's Viewpoint of Complementarity

In this chapter, it is discussed in what sense and to which extent Niels Bohr's philosophical interpretation of early Quantum Mechanics can be assessed as answering to some of the core features of Kant's Natural Philosophy, especially the Kantian idea of Schemata and the Kantian account of the relation and unity between kinematics and dynamics. In the later half of the chapter, the discussion focus on Bohr's two notions of “idealization” and “abstraction” in an attempt to explain his understanding of the essential link between theoretical concepts and the design and conduct of experiments. Finally, after giving a brief sketch of Ernst Cassirer's interpretation of early Quantum Mechanics, the author explains in what sense the combination of Bohr's and Cassirer's respective interpretations lead to a more elaborate Natural Philosophy than the interpretations of Bohr and Cassirer taken in isolation.