Abstract:

Both F. A. Hayek and K. Popper are important and famous liberals in the twentieth century. Though their viewpoints about scientific rationality and its relation to freedom are quite different from each other, their complementary interpretations of quantum mechanics illustrate a kind of conforma-bility between the inner spirit of science and liberalism. Starting with a complementary view, N. Bohr makes a comprehensive and precise explanation of the new epistemological situation caused by quantum mechanics. The extension of the complementary viewpoint to other cognitive areas is completely different from the spread of causal determinism that is based on Newtonian mechanics.

Key words: complementarity, causality, rationality, freedom