Extending the philosophical significance of the idea of complementarity
pp. 99-113
in: Harald Atmanspacher, Hans Primas (eds), Recasting reality, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
We discuss a specific way in which the notion of complementarity can be based on the dynamics of the system considered. This approach rests on an epistemic representation of system states, reflecting our knowledge about a system in terms of coarse grainings (partitions) of its phase space. Within such an epistemic quantization of classical systems, compatible, comparable, commensurable, and complementary descriptions can be precisely characterized and distinguished from each other. Some tentative examples are indicated that, we suppose, would have been of interest to Pauli.