Actually in the Audience Never Mistake the Play for Reality Again

The peachy extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, every bit a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary estimation of observation was based.

Niels Henrik David Bohr (vii October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922 for his contributions which were essential to modern understandings of diminutive structure and quantum mechanics.

Quotes [edit]

The word "reality" is also a word, a word which nosotros must larn to use correctly.

We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether information technology is crazy plenty to have a take a chance of being right.

Physics is to exist regarded not and then much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the evolution of methods of ordering and surveying human being experience.

It is incorrect to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we tin can say near nature...

Information technology is a great pity that homo beings cannot find all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness.

Some subjects are and then serious that 1 can only joke about them.

• Those who are not shocked when they outset come across quantum theory cannot maybe have understood it.
  • In a 1952 conversation with Heisenberg and Pauli in Copenhagen; quoted in Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Beyond. (New York: Harper & Row, 1971) p. 206.

• We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language tin exist used but as in poetry. The poet, besides, is non nigh so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.
  • In his first meeting with Werner Heisenberg in early summer 1920, in response to questions on the nature of language, every bit reported in Discussions about Linguistic communication (1933); quoted in Defence force Implications of International Indeterminacy (1972) by Robert J. Pranger, p. 11, and Theorizing Modernism : Essays in Critical Theory (1993) by Steve Giles, p. 28

• The grand discoveries which scientific experiment yielded at and about the turn of the century, in which investigators in many countries took an eminent function and which were destined all unexpectedly to give us a fresh insight into the structure of atoms, were due in the first instance, as all are aware, to the piece of work of the nifty investigators of the English school, Sir Joseph Thomson and Sir Ernest Rutherford, who accept inscribed their names on the tablets of the history of scientific enquiry as distinguished witnesses to the truth that imagination and acumen are capable of penetrating the crowded mass of registered experience and of revealing Nature's simplicity to our gaze.
  • Niels Bohr's spoken communication at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm (Dec 10, 1922)

• The bully extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our uncomplicated mechanical conceptions and, as a issue, has shaken the foundation on which the customary estimation of observation was based.
  • Niels Bohr, "Atomic Physics and the Clarification of Nature" (1934)

• Isolated material particles are abstractions, their backdrop beingness definable and observable simply through their interaction with other systems.
  • "Atomic Physics and the Description of Nature" (1934)

• What is it that nosotros humans depend on? We depend on our words... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a mode that our messages practice not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous grapheme ... We are suspended in language in such a way that nosotros cannot say what is upwardly and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which nosotros must learn to use correctly.
  • Quoted in Philosophy of Science Vol. 37 (1934), p. 157, and in The Truth of Science : Physical Theories and Reality (1997) by Roger Gerhard Newton, p. 176

• For a parallel to the lesson of diminutive theory regarding the express applicability of such customary idealizations, we must in fact plow to quite other branches of science, such equally psychology, or fifty-fifty to that kind of epistemological issues with which already thinkers like Buddha and Lao Tzu have been confronted, when trying to harmonize our position as spectators and actors in the nifty drama of existence.
  • Speech on quantum theory at Celebrazione del Secondo Centenario della Nascita di Luigi Galvani, Bologna, Italy (October 1937)

• Contraria Sunt Complementa
  • Opposites are complementary.
    • Motto he chose for his coat of arms, when granted the Danish Order of the Elephant in 1947.

• Nonetheless far the phenomena transcend the scope of classical physical explanation, the account of all evidence must be expressed in classical terms. The argument is that just by the word "experiment" we refer to a situation where we can tell others what we have washed and what we take learned and that, therefore, the account of the experimental arrangement and of the results of the observations must exist expressed in unambiguous language with suitable application of the terminology of classical physics.
  • Niels Bohr, "Discussions with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics," in Paul Arthur Schilpp, Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist (1949) pp. 199-241.

• An expert is a person who has institute out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that 1 tin make in a very narrow field.
  • As quoted by Edward Teller, in Dr. Edward Teller'due south Magnificent Obsession past Robert Coughlan, in LIFE mag (vi September 1954), p. 62
  • Variant: An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which tin can exist made in a very narrow field.
    • Equally quoted by Edward Teller (x October 1972), and A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) past Alan 50. Mackay, p. 35

• We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of beingness correct.
  • Said to Wolfgang Pauli after his presentation of Heisenberg's and Pauli's nonlinear field theory of elementary particles, at Columbia Academy (1958), as reported past F. J. Dyson in his newspaper "Innovation in Physics" (Scientific American, 199, No. three, September 1958, pp. 74-82; reprinted in "JingShin Theoretical Physics Symposium in Accolade of Professor Ta-You Wu," edited by Jong-Ping Hsu & Leonardo Hsu, Singapore; River Border, NJ: Globe Scientific, 1998, pp. 73-90, here: p. 84).
  • Your theory is crazy, merely information technology's non crazy enough to be truthful.
    • As quoted in Beginning Philosophy: The Theory of Everything (2007) past Spencer Scoular, p. 89
  • There are many slight variants on this remark:
    • Nosotros are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough.
    • We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question is whether information technology is crazy plenty to be accept a risk of being correct.
    • We in the back are convinced your theory is crazy. Simply what divides united states of america is whether it is crazy enough.
    • Your theory is crazy, the question is whether it's crazy enough to be true.
    • Yes, I recall that your theory is crazy. Sadly, it'southward not crazy plenty to exist believed.

• Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying man feel. In this respect our task must be to business relationship for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.
  • "The Unity of Homo Knowledge" (Oct 1960)

• Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to brand things better than they are.
  • Every bit quoted in The World of the Atom (1966) by Henry Abraham Boorse and Lloyd Motz, p. 741

• How wonderful that we take met with a paradox. Now we accept some hope of making progress.
  • As quoted in Niels Bohr : The Man, His Scientific discipline, & the World They Changed (1966) by Ruth Moore, p. 196

• Two sorts of truth: profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are apparently absurd.
  • As quoted by his son Hans Bohr in "My Father", published in Niels Bohr: His Life and Work (1967), p. 328
  • Unsourced variant: The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. Just the opposite of a profound truth may well exist another profound truth.
  • As quoted in Max Delbrück, Heed from Matter: An Essay on Evolutionary Epistemology, (1986) p. 167. It is the hallmark of whatever deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth

• Every judgement I utter must be understood not every bit an affirmation, but every bit a question.
  • Equally quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) by Alan L. Mackay, p. 35

• Information technology is a peachy pity that human beings cannot detect all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness.
  • As quoted in Chandra: A Biography of Due south. Chandrasekhar‎ (1991) past Kameshwar C. Wali, p. 147

• Anyone who is not shocked by breakthrough theory has not understood information technology.
  • As quoted in Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007) by Karen Michelle Barad, p. 254, with a footnote citing The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr (1998).
  • Variants: Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly accept understood it.
    Those who are not shocked when they get-go come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.
    Anyone who is not shocked by breakthrough theory has not understood a unmarried word.
    If you think you tin talk about breakthrough theory without feeling dizzy, you haven't understood the commencement thing nearly it.

• Some subjects are then serious that one can but joke nearly them.
  • Equally quoted in The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 24
  • Some things are so serious that one can but joke near them.
    • Variant without whatsoever citation as to author in Denial is not a river in Egypt (1998) by Sandi Bachom, p. 85.

• Truth and clarity are complementary.
  • Equally quoted in Breakthrough Theory and the Flight from Realism : Philosophical Responses to Breakthrough Mechanics (2000) by Christopher Norris, p. 234

• It is non enough to be wrong, one must likewise be polite.
  • As quoted in The Genius of Scientific discipline: A Portrait Gallery (2000) past Abraham Pais, p. 24

• Never express yourself more clearly than you lot are able to think.
  • Equally quoted in Values of the Wise : Humanity'south Highest Aspirations (2004) past Jason Merchey, p. 63

• Oh, what idiots we all take been. This is just every bit it must be.
  • In response to Frisch & Meitner'south explanation of nuclear fission, as quoted in The Physicists - A generation that changed the world (1981) by C.P.Snow, p. 96

• I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.
  • Every bit quoted in God Is Not One : The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World and Why Their Differences Affair (2010), by Stephen Prothero, Ch, four : Hinduism : The Way of Devotion, p. 144

• No, no, you are non thinking, you are only being logical.
  • In response to those who made purely formal or mathematical arguments, as quoted in What Piddling I Remember (1979) by Otto Robert Frisch, p. 95

• I am admittedly prepared to talk about the spiritual life of an electronic estimator: to state that information technology is reflecting or is in a bad mood... The question whether the car actually feels or ponders, or whether information technology merely looks every bit though it did, is of course absolutely meaningingless.
  • As quoted in a letter written from J. Kalckar to John A. Wheeler dated June x, 1977, which appears in Wheeler'due south "Law Without Law," pg 207.

[edit]

The fact that religions through the ages take spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. Simply that does non hateful that it is not a genuine reality.

Nowadays, the individual seems to exist able to choose the spiritual framework of his thoughts and actions quite freely, and this liberty reflects the fact that the boundaries between the various cultures and societies are beginning to become more fluid. Simply even when an individual tries to achieve the greatest possible caste of independence, he volition still be swayed by the existing spiritual structures — consciously or unconsciously.

Statements of Bohr afterwards the Solvay Conference of 1927, as quoted in Physics and Beyond (1971) by Werner Heisenberg

• I experience very much similar Dirac: the idea of a personal God is foreign to me. Just we ought to remember that faith uses linguistic communication in quite a different way from science. The language of faith is more closely related to the language of verse than to the language of science. True, nosotros are inclined to remember that science deals with data well-nigh objective facts, and poesy with subjective feelings. Hence we conclude that if religion does indeed deal with objective truths, it ought to adopt the aforementioned criteria of truth as science. But I myself find the division of the earth into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes ways but that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won't go u.s.a. very far.

• I consider those developments in physics during the terminal decades which take shown how problematical such concepts as "objective" and "subjective" are, a great liberation of thought. The whole affair started with the theory of relativity. In the past, the statement that two events are simultaneous was considered an objective assertion, one that could exist communicated quite simply and that was open to verification past any observer. Today we know that 'simultaneity' contains a subjective element, inasmuch every bit two events that appear simultaneous to an observer at rest are not necessarily simultaneous to an observer in motion. However, the relativistic clarification is also objective inasmuch as every observer tin can deduce by adding what the other observer will perceive or has perceived. For all that, we take come up a long fashion from the classical ideal of objective descriptions.
  In quantum mechanics the deviation from this ideal has been fifty-fifty more radical. We can yet use the objectifying linguistic communication of classical physics to make statements well-nigh observable facts. For case, nosotros tin can say that a photographic plate has been blackened, or that cloud droplets have formed. Simply we can say nothing about the atoms themselves. And what predictions nosotros base on such findings depend on the way we pose our experimental question, and hither the observer has freedom of choice. Naturally, it however makes no difference whether the observer is a man, an animal, or a piece of apparatus, just it is no longer possible to make predictions without reference to the observer or the means of observation. To that extent, every physical process may be said to have objective and subjective features. The objective globe of nineteenth-century science was, as we know today, an ideal, limiting case, merely not the whole reality. Absolutely, even in our future encounters with reality we shall have to distinguish between the objective and the subjective side, to make a division between the two. Simply the location of the separation may depend on the fashion things are looked at; to a sure extent information technology can be chosen at will. Hence I can quite understand why we cannot speak about the content of organized religion in an objectifying linguistic communication. The fact that different religions endeavour to limited this content in quite distinct spiritual forms is no real objection. Peradventure we ought to look upon these different forms as complementary descriptions which, though they exclude one another, are needed to convey the rich possibilities flowing from human being's relationship with the central social club.

• In mathematics we tin accept our inner distance from the content of our statements. In the terminal analysis mathematics is a mental game that nosotros tin can play or not play as we choose. Religion, on the other mitt, deals with ourselves, with our life and decease; its promises are meant to govern our actions and thus, at least indirectly, our very existence. We cannot just look at them impassively from the exterior. Moreover, our attitude to religious questions cannot be separated from our attitude to social club. Fifty-fifty if religion arose every bit the spiritual structure of a particular man society, information technology is arguable whether it has remained the strongest social molding force through history, or whether society, once formed, develops new spiritual structures and adapts them to its particular level of cognition. Nowadays, the individual seems to be able to choose the spiritual framework of his thoughts and deportment quite freely, and this freedom reflects the fact that the boundaries betwixt the various cultures and societies are beginning to become more fluid. But even when an private tries to attain the greatest possible degree of independence, he will even so be swayed past the existing spiritual structures — consciously or unconsciously. For he, too, must be able to speak of life and death and the human being condition to other members of the society in which he's chosen to live; he must brainwash his children according to the norms of that order, fit into its life. Epistemological sophistries cannot possibly assistance him reach these ends. Here, besides, the relationship betwixt critical thought near the spiritual content of a given religion and activeness based on the deliberate acceptance of that content is complementary. And such acceptance, if consciously arrived at, fills the individual with strength of purpose, helps him to overcome doubts and, if he has to suffer, provides him with the kind of solace that only a sense of being sheltered under an all-embracing roof tin grant. In that sense, religion helps to make social life more than harmonious; its well-nigh important task is to remind us, in the linguistic communication of pictures and parables, of the wider framework inside which our life is set.

Disputed [edit]

Terminate telling God what to practise with his dice.

• Anyone who is not shocked by breakthrough theory has not understood information technology.
  • Heisenberg recounts a personal chat he had with Pauli and Bohr in 1952 in which Bohr says, "Those who are non shocked when they first come up beyond quantum theory cannot mayhap have understood information technology." Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Across. (New York: Harper & Row, 1971) p. 206.
  • Bohr said this sentence in a conversation with Werner Heisenberg, as quoted in: "Der Teil und das Ganze. Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik" . R. Piper & Co., München, 1969, Due south. 280. DIE ZEIT 22. Aug. 1969 [1].
  • As quoted in Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007) by Karen Michelle Barad, p. 254, with the quote attributed to The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, but with no page number or volume number given.

  • David Mermin, on pages 186–187 of his book Boojums All the Way Through: Communicating Science in a Prosaic Historic period (1990) noted that he specifically looked for pithy quotes about quantum mechanics forth these lines when reviewing the three volumes of The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, but couldn't find any:

    Once I tried to teach some breakthrough mechanics to a class of law students, philosophers, and art historians. Equally an advertizement for the course I put together the most sensational quotations I could collect from the most authoritative practitioners of the subject. Heisenberg was a goldmine: "The concept of the objective reality of the simple particles has thus evaporated..."; "the idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or copse exist, independently of whether or non we observe them ... is impossible ..." Feynman did his office likewise: "I recollect I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." But I failed to turn up anything comparable in the writings of Bohr. Others attributed spectacular remarks to him, only he seemed to take pains to avoid whatever hint of the dramatic in his own writings. You don't pack them into your classroom with "The indivisibility of quantum phenomena finds its consequent expression in the circumstance that every definable subdivision would require a alter of the experimental organisation with the appearance of new private phenomena," or "the wider frame of complementarity directly expresses our position as regards the account of fundamental backdrop of thing presupposed in classical concrete description only outside its scope."

    I was therefore on the lookout for nuggets when I sat down to review these three volumes – a reissue of Bohr's collected essays on the revolutionary epistemological character of the quantum theory and on the implications of that revolution for other scientific and non-scientific areas of endeavor (the originals outset appeared in 1934, 1958, and 1963.) But the most radical statement I could find in all three books was this: "...physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather equally the evolution of methods for ordering and surveying human feel." No nuggets for the nonscientist.

  • Variants: Those who are not shocked when they starting time come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly take understood it.
    Those who are non shocked when they first come beyond quantum theory cannot maybe accept understood it.
    Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood a single word.
    If you think you can talk nearly quantum theory without feeling dizzy, you haven't understood the first affair near information technology.

• Prediction is very difficult, particularly about the hereafter.
  • As quoted in Didactics and Learning Elementary Social Studies (1970) by Arthur 1000. Ellis, p. 431
  • The above quote is as well attributed to various humourists and the Danish poet Piet Hein: "det er svært at spå – især om fremtiden"
  • Information technology is as well attributed to Danish cartoonist Storm P (Robert Storm Petersen).
  • Variant: It'southward hard to make predictions, peculiarly about the future.

• Stop telling God what to do with his dice.
  • A response to Einstein's assertion that "God doesn't play die"; a similar argument is attributed to Enrico Fermi
  • Variant: Einstein, don't tell God what to do.
  • Variant: Don't tell God what to practice with his dice.
  • Variant: You lot ought not to speak for what Providence can or can not do. – As described in The Physicists: A generation that changed the globe (1981) by C. P. Snow, p. 84

• Of course non ... but I am told information technology works even if you don't believe in it.
  • Answer to a visitor to his home in Tisvilde who asked him if he actually believed a horseshoe in a higher place his door brought him luck, every bit quoted in In Bound : Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World (1986) by Abraham Pais, p. 210
  • In nigh published accounts of this anecdote such was Bohr's reply to his friend, merely in one early account, in The Interaction Between Science and Philosophy (1974) past Samuel Sambursky, p. 357, Bohr was at a friend's business firm and asked "Do you really believe in this?" to which his friend replied "Oh, I don't believe in it. But I am told it works fifty-fifty if yous don't believe in it."
  • Variant: No, but I'm told it works fifty-fifty if you don't believe in information technology.

Quotes about Bohr [edit]

Alphabetized past author

• Bohr seemed to think that he had solved this question. I could not notice his solution in his writings. But there was no doubt that he was convinced that he had solved the problem and, in so doing, had not only contributed to atomic physics, but to epistemology, to philosophy, to humanity in general. And there are astonishing passages in his writings in which he is sort of patronizing to the aboriginal Far Eastern philosophers, most saying that he had solved the problems that had defeated them. It's an extraordinary thing for me—the character of Bohr—absolutely puzzling. I like to speak of two Bohrs: 1 is a very businesslike boyfriend who insists that the apparatus is classical, and the other is a very arrogant, pontificating man who makes enormous claims for what he has done.
  • John Southward. Bell, quoted in Jeremy Bernstein, Quantum Profiles (1991), John Stewart Bong: Quantum Engineer

• One of the favorite maxims of my begetter was the distinction between the two sorts of truths, profound truths recognized past the fact that the contrary is likewise a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd.
  • Hans Henrik Bohr, writing about his father in "My father" in Niels Bohr - His Life and Work As Seen By His Friends and Colleagues (1967), South. Rozental, ed.

• If breakthrough theory has any philosophical importance at all, it lies in the fact that it demonstrates for a single, sharply defined science the necessity of dual aspects and complementary considerations. Niels Bohr has discussed this question with respect to many applications in physiology, psychology, and philosophy in general.
  • Max Built-in in Natural Philosophy of Cause and Run a risk (1949) ch. 10, p. 127

• Not often in life has a homo existence caused me such joy past his mere presence every bit yous did.
  • Albert Einstein in a letter of the alphabet to Bohr (1920)

• It is practically impossible to describe Niels Bohr to a person who has never worked with him. Probably his nearly characteristic property was the slowness of his thinking and comprehension. When, in the tardily twenties and early on thirties, the author of this book was one of the "Bohr boys" working in his Institute in Copenhagen on a Carlsberg (the best beer in the globe!) fellowship, he had many a take chances to notice it. In the evening, when a handful of Bohr's students were "working" in the Paa Blegdamsvejen Institute, discussing the latest problems of the quantum theory, or playing Ping-pong on the library tabular array with java cups placed on information technology to make the game more hard, Bohr would appear, complaining that he was very tired, and would like to "do something." To "exercise something" inevitably meant to go to the movies, and the simply movies Bohr liked were those called The Gun Fight at the Lazy Gee Ranch or The Lone Ranger and a Sioux Daughter. But it was hard to become with Bohr to the movies. He could not follow the plot, and was constantly request us, to the keen annoyance of the rest of the audience, questions similar this: "Is that the sister of that cowboy who shot the Indian who tried to steal a herd of cattle belonging to her brother-in-police force?" The same slowness of reaction was apparent at scientific meetings. Many a time, a visiting young physicist (nearly physicists visiting Copenhagen were young) would deliver a bright talk about his recent calculations on some intricate problem of the quantum theory. Everybody in the audience would understand the argument quite conspicuously, but Bohr wouldn't. And so everybody would start to explain to Bohr the simple signal he had missed, and in the resulting turmoil everybody would terminate understanding annihilation. Finally, later a considerable catamenia of fourth dimension, Bohr would brainstorm to understand, and it would turn out that what he understood about the problem presented by the visitor was quite different from what the company meant, and was correct, while the company'southward interpretation was wrong.
  • George Gamow on Niels Bohr in "The Great Physicists from Galileo to Einstein" (1961) pg. 237

• I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at dark and ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the give-and-take I went solitary for a walk in the neighbouring park I repeated to myself again and once more the question: Tin can nature possibly be so absurd equally it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?
  • Werner Heisenberg in Physics and Philosophy (1958)

• The first thing Bohr said to me was that it would only then exist assisting to work with him if I understood that he was a dilettante. The but fashion I knew to react to this unexpected statement was with a polite smile of disbelief. But obviously Bohr was serious. He explained how he had to arroyo every new question from a starting signal of total ignorance. It is perhaps better to say that Bohr'south force lay in his formidable intuition and insight rather than erudition.
  • Abraham Pais, in testimony in Niels Bohr : His Life and Work as Seen by His Friends and Colleagues (1967) edited past Stefan Rozental, p. 218; later on in his own work, Niels Bohr'south Times : In Physics, Philosophy, and Polity (1991)

• When asked whether the algorism of quantum mechanics could be considered equally somehow mirroring an underlying quantum world, Bohr would answer, "At that place is no quantum earth. At that place is just an abstract quantum concrete description. It is wrong to retrieve that the chore of physics is to observe out how nature is. Physics concerns what nosotros can say about nature." Bohr felt that every footstep in the development of physics has strengthened the view that the problem of establishing an unambiguous description of nature has only one solution. He regarded all attempts to replace our elementary concepts or to introduce a new logic to account for the peculiarities of quantum phenomena as not merely unnecessary but also incompatible with our most fundamental conditions, since nosotros are suspended in a unique language.
  • Aage Petersen, "The philosophy of Niels Bohr" by in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Vol. 19, No. 7 (September 1963); The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (2000) past Abraham Pais, p. 24, and Niels Bohr: Reflections on Subject and Object (2001) by Paul. McEvoy, p. 291
  • Quotes about quote:
    • To my cracking pleasure, Victor Weisskopf was sitting in his usual place in the front row, smiling approvingly upwards at me. (Information technology's surprising how much such encouragement from such a source can improve the quality of a talk.) His smiles continued right upwardly to the moment when I read the Petersen quotation. No sooner had I finished reading it than Viki was on his anxiety. "That's outrageous," he proclaimed. "Bohr couldn't perchance have said anything similar that!" Somewhat taken aback by this sudden flip from approbation to condemnation, I feebly protested that I wasn't attributing it to Bohr, simply to Aage Petersen's memory of Bohr. That did non extinguish the flames. "Shame on Aage Petersen," declared Viki, "for putting those ridiculous words into Bohr'southward oral cavity!"
      • N. David Mermin, "What'southward Wrong With This Breakthrough Globe?" Physics Today Vol. 52, No. 2 (February 2004), p. 10.

• [Bohr was] a marvelous physicist, one of the greatest of all time, only he was a miserable philosopher, and one couldn't talk to him. He was talking all the time, allowing practically only one or two words to you lot and then at one time cutting in.
  • Karl Popper, quoted in John Horgan, The Finish of Science (1996), Ch. 2 : The Stop of Philosophy

• "You can talk nearly people like Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Confucius, merely the thing that convinced me that such people existed were the conversations with Bohr," Dr. Wheeler said.
  • John A. Wheeler as quoted past Dennis Overbye in "John A. Wheeler, Physicist Who Coined the Term 'Black Pigsty,' Is Dead at 96". NY Times. (14 April 2008)

• Niels Bohr distinguished two kinds of truths. An ordinary truth is a statement whose opposite is a falsehood. A profound truth is a statement whose opposite is also a profound truth.
  • Frank Wilczek, The Lightness of Beingness (2008)

External links [edit]

• Niels Bohr Archive
• Nobel Foundation: Niels Bohr
• About Niels Bohr
• Niels Bohr Quotes Video

baylessdoemput.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr

Share this post