Wave–particle duality is the concept in quantum mechanics that every particle or quantum entity may be described as either a particle or a wave. It expresses the inability of the classical concepts "particle" or "wave" to fully describe the behaviour of quantum-scale objects. As Albert Einstein wrote: Through the work of Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Louis de Broglie, Arthur Compton, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger and many others, current scientific theory holds that all particles exhibit a wave nature and vice versa. This phenomenon has been verified not only for elementary particles, but also for compound particles like atoms and even molecules. For macroscopic particles, because of their extremely short wavelengths, wave properties usually cannot be detected. Although the use of the wave–particle duality has worked well in physics, the meaning or interpretation has not been satisfactorily resolved; see interpretations of quantum mechanics. Bohr regarded the "duality paradox" as a fundamental or metaphysical fact of nature. A given kind of quantum object will exhibit sometimes wave, sometimes particle, character, in respectively different physical settings. He saw such duality as one aspect of the concept of complementarity. Bohr regarded renunciation of the cause-effect relation, or complementarity, of the space-time picture, as essential to the quantum mechanical account. Werner Heisenberg considered the question further. He saw the duality as present for all quantic entities, but not quite in the usual quantum mechanical account considered by Bohr. He saw it in what is called second quantization, which generates an entirely new concept of fields that exist in ordinary space-time, causality still being visualizable. Classical field values (e.g. the electric and magnetic field strengths of Maxwell) are replaced by an entirely new kind of field value, as considered in quantum field theory. Turning the reasoning around, ordinary quantum mechanics can be deduced as a specialized consequence of quantum field theory. History Classical particle and wave theories of light Democritus (5th century BC) argued that all things in the universe, including light, are composed of indivisible sub-components. Euclid (4th–3rd century BC) gives treatises on light propagation, states the principle of shortest trajectory of light, including multiple reflections on mirrors, including spherical, while Plutarch (1st–2nd century AD) describes multiple reflections on spherical mirrors discussing the creation of larger or smaller images, real or imaginary, including the case of chirality of the images. At the beginning of the 11th century, the Arabic scientist Ibn al-Haytham wrote the first