Professor Sungchul Ji explains the finer points of complementarism to students in his Byrne Seminar.

This article is part of an occasional FOCUS series on the Byrne Family First-Year Seminar Program. The one-credit courses offer students a chance to explore science, art, politics, and other topics as they learn firsthand from professors who are deeply – and often passionately – immersed in research. In its second year, the seminars program is a central part of the transformation of  undergraduate education in New Brunswick.

For the first-year students in Professor Sungchul Ji’s Byrne Seminar, expanding their minds is a top priority.
Ji teaches “Complementarism: A Biology-Derived Philosophy of the 21^st Century,” a topic that is multifaceted, but quite intriguing.

The term complementarism was coined independently by both Abraham Pais and Ji in 1991. Ji’s extension of complementarism is based on physicist Niels Bohr’s principle of complementarity, which posits that objects can have irreconcilable properties depending on how they are studied. For example, light can manifest as both a wave and particle, the phenomenon known as the wave-particle duality.

While the principle of complementarity was originally applied to physics, according to Ji, it can be “generalized and applied to other fields; biology, psychology, art, religion, and philosophy.”

Ji’s pursuit of science started in South Korea at Seoul National University. He then immigrated to the United States in 1962 and earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and math at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, as well as a doctorate in physical organic chemistry at the State University of Albany.

It was while doing postdoctoral work at the University of Wisconsin that Ji stumbled upon complementarism firsthand.  “I encountered a situation in biology where I needed two concepts to explain life, but I could not combine these two concepts into one. That immediately reminded me of the [wave-particle duality] … and I came to the conclusion that information and energy may be a complementary pair,” Ji said.

Complementarism may be a complex concept to grasp, but Ji’s students offer explanations for those who may not have a background in the sciences or philosophy.

According to first-year Reginald Viezel, “Complementarism is the idea that there exists certain things – easily seen with light in physics – that are made up of two related but inherently opposite properties, and that exist together on some higher level.”  Jonathan Shayo summarizes complementarism simply as “two opposites, when together, create something that transcends both of them.”

In a classroom presentation, Greg Bass extended the theory of complementarism to the economy, suggesting the terms “supply” and “demand” are transcended by “health of the company.”  Discussion ensued over other possible transcending terms – a debate the class hopes to resolve by the end of the semester.

For Angela Wan, the students’ short presentations bring the lecture topics to life. “I enjoy having other students present their short-talks, [they] make the class more interesting and fun,” said Wan.

Ji has been teaching at Rutgers since 1982. Currently he also teaches “Theoretical Aspects of Pharmacology” as well as “Computational and Theoretical Cell Biology Research.”

While this is his first Byrne Seminar, Ji has taught general honors seminars at Rutgers previously. He thought that complementarism would be worthwhile to teach to students who are interested in more than just their major’s curriculum.

This holds true for Wan, a biology major. She was intrigued by the seminar’s unique combination of topics. “Usually people don’t relate philosophy with the sciences,” Wan said.

For Shayo, it was the challenging nature of the subject matter that interested him. “I enjoy how the class stretches the mind and makes you think outside of sciences,” he said

Viezel chose the seminar because of Ji’s direct contribution to complementarism. “The teacher is not just repeating information; he developed the theory himself. What I found most interesting was the teacher’s own insights into the subject,” he said. Viezel also values the small class size. “They allow students to get to know a teacher on a personal level, which is quite impossible in a large lecture class like the majority of freshmen have,” he added.

Also missing from large lecture classes is a sense of student respect; often students leave the room while the professor is still speaking. In Ji’s seminar, however, even after the class period draws to a close, the students patiently listen as he completes his thoughts.

Ji is delighted to find his students are a curious and capable group. “I didn’t know what to expect [since they’re first-year students],” said Ji. “I’m very impressed with their alertness, level of knowledge, and the maturity of their thinking.”

Justine Grosso is a third year School of Arts and Sciences student majoring in communications  She would have liked to have taken a first-year Byrne seminar but transferred to Rutgers her sophomore year.