Janusian Process and Scientific Creativity—The Case of Niels Bohr

IN PREVIOUS WRITING I HAVE PRESENTED DATA regarding the creative thinking of Albert Einstein, a man regarded as the leading physicist of this century (Rothenberg, 1979a), (1979b). Close to Einstein in stature—even, according to some, Einstein's equal—was the Danish physicist, Niels Bohr. Einstein's work helped dispel mysteries about the universe, and Bohr's work helped dispel mysteries about the elemental form of nature, the atom. Through his discoveries of the structure of the atom, the structure of the nucleus, his contributions to quantum theory, and his formulation of the principle of complementarity, and through his broad influence as the Director of the Bohr Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, he was largely responsible for ushering in the current "age of the atom." Like Einstein, Bohr was a theoretician and given to highly creative scientific thought. In the present paper, I shall provide and discuss data regarding Bohr's creative development of the important and influential principle of complementarity, the principle providing the conceptual foundation for quantum physics. For Bohr himself this principle also was a foundation for all of human knowledge. I shall show that a critical step in the development of this principle involved janusian thinking or the janusian process, a type of creative cognition I have previously described (Rothenberg, 1971), (1976), (1978–9). First, I shall describe the process of janusian thinking and then the principle of complementarity,