Complementarity as infringement

Concepts in physical theories can and have operated as mechanisms of psychological abuse. This project illustrates how with a case study: the 1927 showdown between Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg over the latter's uncertainty principle. We argue that Bohr's philosophy of complementarity functioned as a mechanism of infringement, a subversion of the healthy social and intellectual norms governing his mentor-mentee relationship with Heisenberg. Abusers in these sorts of relationships often appeal to the very norms they violate to justify their actions, steering their victims into radical self-doubt. For example, they might use an appeal to cultivating a mentee's independence to pressure them to accept private funding and not tell anyone—which cultivates co-dependence via establishing a shared secret. For his part, Bohr exemplified and then subverted a healthy theory-building norm: that a toy model need not be fully coherent to motivate one's settled account. While Heisenberg legitimately used a partially coherent toy model (his gamma-ray microscope) to motivate a particle ontology, Bohr argued that Heisenberg could not trust this motivation due to complementarity—a philosophy which requires rejecting any definitive, visualizable ontology for quantum systems. Our project locates this subversion of healthy theoretical practice in the larger pattern of abusive behaviour in Bohr and Heisenberg's relationship, and it reflects on the implications of this history for teaching complementarity today.