AIR
Can Niels Bohr’s principle of complementarity about the properties of a system that are complementary and mutually exclusive at the same time be a scientific reference to a hymn written almost two thousand years earlier? The Nameless Goddess in the Coptic poem Thunder Perfect Mind puts it this way:
You who hate me, do you love me
You who tell the truth about me, lie about me
I am the one who is honored, and who is praised,
and who is despised scornfully
I am the one whom they call Life,
and you have called Death
The wave-particle duality speaks of the property of matter, which is both a wave and a particle at the same time, but depending on the situation, it becomes one, sometimes the other. The divine being in the manuscript describes it in these words:
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.
For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and boldness.
I am unashamed, I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.