Bohr–Einstein debates

“To recap, I had four numbers to add together. If the total came to under 2, then Einstein’s version of quantum reality was correct and the world is deterministic, rather than probabilistic, with quantum entities existing prior to being observed. But if the total came to over 2, then Niels Bohr was right and there is no objective reality out there in the absence of measurement and the subatomic world is ruled by chance and probability. [...] So, sorry Einstein, victory goes to Bohr instead.”

“Bohr was inconsistent, unclear, willfully obscure and right. Einstein was consistent, clear, down-to-earth and wrong.”

“Their dispute went to the fundamental heart of the design of the cosmos. Was there an objective reality that existed whether or not we could ever observe it? Were there laws that restored strict causality to phenomena that seemed inherently random? Was everything in the universe predetermined?”

“Einstein's thinking is always on the ontological level traditional in physics; trying to describe the realities of Nature. Bohr's thinking is always on the epistemological level, describing not reality but only our information about reality.”

“We, of course, were sure that on that particular debate Bohr was right and Einstein was wrong.”

“The refutation of Einstein’s criticism does not add any new element to the conception of complementarity, but it is of great importance in laying bare a very deep-lying opposition between Bohr’s general philosophical attitude and the still widespread habits of thought belonging to a glorious but irrevocably bygone age in the evolution of science.”