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TRANSCENDENTAL AND PHYSICS OF THE MICROWORLD∗

I. Introduction Physicists and philosophers have been impressed by certain analogies between modern physical theories, especially the most fundamental one i.e. quantum mechanics, and old philosophical conceptions. In this essay, I would like to outline, following a rather free , an analogy between transcendental philosophy and the physics of the microworld. Certain parallels on the subject were conducted by two well known German physicists (who were also philosophers), Heisenberg and his disciple Weizsäcker, assuming that modern physics, just as , looks for certain general statements concerning the “conditions of all the possible .” In undertaking this topic, I shall first try to present certain basic ideas of transcendental philosophy in so far as necessary for further considerations.

II. Idea of Transcendentalism I understand transcendental philosophy as a creation whose main rudiments had been developed by Kant and Fichte. Further on, certain important aspects of that philosophy were developed in their own ways in the classical epoch by Schelling and Hegel, and later by Marx and some neo-Kantianists, and in a more modern epoch, mostly Husserl’s and Heidegger’s transcendental phenomenology as well as that of their disciples, and also those currents which were under this influence, especially (the so-called post-phenomenological hermeneutics) and , and within Marxism such researchers as Gramsci and Lukács. Adherents of transcendental philosophy claim that this philosophy started in principle the new theoretical perspective of philosophizing, to be more concrete, interpretations of the proper problem of philosophy which

∗ Translation of “Filozofia transcendentalna a dialektyka mikroświata.” In: T. Maruszewski (ed.) (1986), Filozofia-Poznanie-Psychologia [Philosophy, , Psychology]. (Poznańskie Studia z Filozofii Nauki, 10), Poznań-Warszawa: PWN, pp. 219- 239. 324 Part Five: and is – according to them – the problem of knowledge (or as Kant said, the problem of reason). Kant calls transcendental any cognition which deals in general not with objects but rather the manner in which objects are recognized by us, so far as this manner is to be a priori possible. Kant contrasts his “transcendental” perspective with the “empirical” perspective, which is typical of the exact sciences including mathematics, and with the “metaphysical” perspective, which is characteristic of the hitherto existing (i.e. pre-Kantian) philosophy. One of the central, if not fundamental, ideas of transcendental philosophy, which may be termed, following M.J. Siemek, the idea of transcendentalism, is a view that the separation (division) into the objective and subjective sphere of that of object and that of subject, into the sphere of and thinking, of things and , as distinct essentials, so to say, it is an initial fact of only empirical consciousness or metaphysical consciousness (which corresponds to it). However, this fact should be overcome by a more fundamental consciousness, which may be called transcendental consciousness (cf. Siemek 1977). According to this view, a separate interpretation of thinking and being, assuming the duality of the one being which “recognizes” and the one which “is recognized,” which is typical of the pretranscendental philosophy, especially the modern one from Descartes to Hume, leads to dualism in philosophy, to breaking it into the theory of cognition and . The former considered “purely” cognitive problems; it asked about cognition of “things,” i.e. its subject matter was located on the “purely” epistemic level. By contrast, the latter considered “purely” ontological problems (it asked about “things themselves” whereby the subject matter concerned the “purely” ontic level, in the sense given to this term by transcendental phenomenology). The idea of transcendentalism removes this division as an initial division, introducing into philosophy a new and, as it were, higher level of considerations which Siemek terms epistemological and which he contrasts with the epistemic and ontic level of the pre-Kantian philosophy. According to this idea, thinking about reality, at this deeper epistemological level, cannot be separated from thinking about thinking itself. On the other hand, all considerations on cognition, conducted at the transcendental level, must lead to the analysis of conditions necessary for the possibility of cognition, which entangles them inevitably in the ontological problems. The subject matter of “transcendental” reflection is not so much knowledge itself, as in the traditional theory of knowledge, but the conditions of the possibility of all subjective-knowledge-about-an object. Thus, a transcendental question is a question not about cognition but about the knowability, about the conditions and the necessary structure of the relation itself (i.e. the relation between a “subject” and an “object,” and between “cognition” and “reality”) (Siemek 1977, p. 64). Between