Hello and welcome to 'The Missing Complement'.
This is my first attempt at blogging so this in part will be an experiment to see if a not so young dog can learn a new trick. I expect things will improve as I become accustomed to the medium.
I am curious by nature, and often find myself wanting to share or consolidate many of the interesting bits and pieces of information I come across by following that curiosity. I also find myself from time to time wanting to write down some thoughts related to one topic or another. It could be a new interesting scientific finding, a philosophical insight, or just something someone posted on Facebook that I would like to delve into.
I am a statistician of sorts, and a Tai Chi instructor for many years. My interests span from eastern philosophy to the various sciences (physics, biology, neuroscience, complexity theory, psychology, etc...).
The name 'The Missing Complement' is a nod to Neils Bohr (the father of the atom) and his philosophy of complementarity, as well as to the similar eastern philosophical concepts described by the complementary support of yin and yang in Taoism, and the Buddhist concept of interdependent arising.
Bohr's principle of complementarity arose in response to the wave/particle duality paradox associated with quantum mechanics. The principle claims that objects of knowledge contain complementary properties. Knowledge of a property depends upon the reference frame of the observer, and knowledge of one property excludes the simultaneous knowledge of the other.
Similarly, in the first chapter of the Taoist classic 'The Tao Te Ching' it is suggested that the 'way' that can spoken is not the 'true way'. This in part seems to be getting at the idea that objective cognitive knowledge and subjective experience are complementary.
While quantum mechanics has never failed an experimental test, and makes extremely accurate predictions there is no universally accepted interpretation of wave particle duality. Words are also relative in the sense that each word is defined and gains meaning only in the context of other words, all interpreted within the reference frame of our cumulative subjective experience. With this in mind it should be apparent that conceptual certainty is always context dependent. If we are certain of any concept without awareness of our ideological biases we will be blind to the 'missing complement'.
Perhaps we can only move closer to 'truth' by accepting the limits of both our experience and our knowledge, while at the same time humbly working to expand each aspect in support of the other.
It is in the spirit of this principle that I am creating this blog.
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