[MD] 'Uncertainty

[MarshaV]

>From 'Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul
of Science' by David Lindley:

 

"   . "When it comes to atoms," Bohr concluded enigmatically, "language can
be used only as in poetry.  The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with
describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental
connections."

   This, to Heisenberg, was strange and revelatory.  Only a generation
earlier, Boltzmann and his allies had argued strenuously for the atom as a
concrete .thing., not a theoretical abstraction, still less a poetical
allusion.  Was Bohr now saying that physicists couldn't hope to describe
atoms concretely, that they must make do with analogies and metaphors?  That
the intrinsic reality of an atom was inaccessible to them?  That perhaps it
was meaningless even to talk about the intrinsic reality of an atom?"

 

 

The other day I heard a physicist, talking about the equations to calculate
spin, say "This isn't just mathematics, this is real".    Huh?     

 

 

 

 

 

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"There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them."

     (Werner Karl Heisenberg)