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Quantum Mechanics

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From the documentary "Atomic Physics and Reality": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFvJOZ51tmc

Narrator: “When Niels Bohr was awarded the Order Of The Elephant, he chose the Chinese yin-yang symbol for his coat-of-arms. And its motto reads, ‘Opposites Are Complementary.’

John Wheeler: “A few hours before Bohr died, he remarked, ‘They’ – and he was speaking of certain philosophers – ‘do not understand that we can learn something important from Nature, and something of very great importance’; and he went on to say, ‘They did not appreciate this description,’ and he meant ‘the complementary description’ of Nature, where we have a part, through the very asking of our questions, in bringing about that which happens. This ‘complementary description’ is the only possible description of Nature.”

Niels Bohr: “For a parallel to lessons of atomic physics ... we must look to thinkers like Buddha and Lao-Tsu who tried to harmonize our position as both spectators and actors in the great drama of existence.’”

Werner Heisenberg: “The great scientific contribution in theoretical physics that has come from Japan since the last war may be an indication of a certain relationship between philosophical ideas in the tradition of the Far East and the philosophical substance of quantum theory.”

Julius Robert Oppenheimer: “The general notions about human understanding ... which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not, in the nature of things, wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and central place. What we shall find is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom.”