Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
—Alexander Pope, 1730
It did not last: the Devil howling ‘Ho!
Let Einstein be!’ restored the status quo.
—J. C. Squire, 1926
Because of the quantum nature of the problem, one cannot say that the present stage of
knowledge is exactly equal to zero.
—Harry J. Lipkin, 1956
2
Schrödinger called his cat and said,
‘You can be both alive and dead,
For a linear combination of states
Postulates two simultaneous fates’.
3
—M. Kocher, 1978
Today we no longer ask what really goes on in an atom, we ask what is likely to be to be
observed – and with what likelihood.
—Otto Robert Frisch, 1979
A professor of theoretical physics always has to be told what to look for. He just uses his
knowledge to explain the observations of the experimenters.
—Richard Feynman, 1988
I am convinced that [God] does not play dice.
—Albert Einstein, 1926
Bohr could only counter with ‘Nor it is our business to prescribe God how He should run
the world’.
—Werner Heisenberg, 1969
Bohr was inconsistent, unclear, willfully obscure - and right. Einstein was consistent, clear,
down-to-earth - and wrong.
—John Bell, 2010
4
Even if we understand all the laws of physics, then exploring their consequences in the
everyday world, where complex structures can exist, is a far more daunting task, and that’s
an inexhaustible one I’m sure.
—Martin John Rees, 1988
2
From his article Theoretical Zipperdynamics, signed by pen name Harry J. Zipkin, and published
in the famous Journal of Irreproducible Results. (Lipkin was one of its founders.).
3
To the so-called Schrödinger Cat paradox of quantum mechanics.
4
J. Bell’s opinion about the famous Einstein-Bohr debate (see the previous two quotes) is
important, because he is widely credited for the last significant theoretical contribution to this topic
(now called the local reality problem), made in the 1960s – even if some physicists still deem the
problem not fully solved.
On Sciences and Technologies
43
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
—Alexander Pope, 1730
It did not last: the Devil howling ‘Ho!
Let Einstein be!’ restored the status quo.
—J. C. Squire, 1926
Because of the quantum nature of the problem, one cannot say that the present stage of
knowledge is exactly equal to zero.
—Harry J. Lipkin, 1956
2
Schrödinger called his cat and said,
‘You can be both alive and dead,
For a linear combination of states
Postulates two simultaneous fates’.
3
—M. Kocher, 1978
Today we no longer ask what really goes on in an atom, we ask what is likely to be to be
observed – and with what likelihood.
—Otto Robert Frisch, 1979
A professor of theoretical physics always has to be told what to look for. He just uses his
knowledge to explain the observations of the experimenters.
—Richard Feynman, 1988
I am convinced that [God] does not play dice.
—Albert Einstein, 1926
Bohr could only counter with ‘Nor it is our business to prescribe God how He should run
the world’.
—Werner Heisenberg, 1969
Bohr was inconsistent, unclear, willfully obscure - and right. Einstein was consistent, clear,
down-to-earth - and wrong.
—John Bell, 2010
4
Even if we understand all the laws of physics, then exploring their consequences in the
everyday world, where complex structures can exist, is a far more daunting task, and that’s
an inexhaustible one I’m sure.
—Martin John Rees, 1988
2
From his article Theoretical Zipperdynamics, signed by pen name Harry J. Zipkin, and published
in the famous Journal of Irreproducible Results. (Lipkin was one of its founders.).
3
To the so-called Schrödinger Cat paradox of quantum mechanics.
4
J. Bell’s opinion about the famous Einstein-Bohr debate (see the previous two quotes) is
important, because he is widely credited for the last significant theoretical contribution to this topic
(now called the local reality problem), made in the 1960s – even if some physicists still deem the
problem not fully solved.
On Sciences and Technologies
43