Source
Faye & Jaksland (2021), LIT-1672, §§3–4; read in NOTE-1220.
What was actually shown
- Phenomenon. Bohr: “I advocated the application of the word phenomenon exclusively to refer to the observation obtained under specific circumstances, including an account of the whole experimental arrangement” (1949, 237–238), and “the impossibility of any sharp separation between the behaviour of atomic objects and the interaction with the measuring instruments which serve to define the conditions under which the phenomena appear” (1949, 210). The phenomenon is distinguished from the conditions under which it appears; it does not contain them as an ontological whole.
- Relata. “For Bohr both atomic objects and instruments are real, and as such they figure as relata in a sentence like ’… is recorded to have position p in relation to …’.” The realist readings make Bohr an entity realist (Folse 1986), which “defeats rather than supports” Barad’s holism; Faye’s antirealist Bohr also keeps the objects.
- Holism. Bohr’s is “a type of relational holism, but an epistemic rather than ontological variant” (Teller, Faye, Dorato).
- Dualisms. Objective reporting requires speaking as if object and subject were sharply separate; an experiment is where “we can tell others what we have done and what we have learned” (1949, 209); classical terminology “is given”. “If anything, these dualisms are at the foundation of Bohr’s interpretation.”
The reading could have come out otherwise: some reading of Bohr in the literature could have matched Barad’s. None does; Favrholdt’s comes closest.
What this does not say
- That agential realism is wrong. An interpretation may draw on Bohr without claiming his views, as QBism does (§6).
- That Bohr’s view is right.
- That the dualisms are sound. The claim is that Bohr presupposes them.