Complementarity, Causality, and Explanation

Losee (philosophy, Lafayette College) looks at how quantum mechanics challenged assumptions about the epistemic status of causality. He focuses on the work of Niels Bohr and his notion of complementarity, evaluating its extension into biology, psychology, and even theology. It is a concise, but technical book, written for those familiar with scientific conventions/notation and logical proof. He opens by reviewing the intellectual history in the West of the causality-explanation connection, from Aristotle through John Stuart Mill. He also reviews different theories of physical systems and the regularities between their differing states in the 19th century. Most of the rest of the chapters are concerned with introducing quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpretation, and the experiments and other challenges that cause a rift between causality and explanation. He focuses on Christian theology in the final chapter and concludes that complementarity does not hold water outside or inside quantum mechanics. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)