A Supposedly Fun Thing Ill Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments Epub

The groovy extension of our experience in recent years has brought calorie-free to the insufficiency of our elementary mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary estimation of observation was based.

Niels Henrik David Bohr (vii Oct 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 atomic construction and quantum mechanics.

Quotes [edit]

The word "reality" is also a give-and-take, a discussion which we must learn to use correctly.

We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides the states is whether information technology is crazy enough to have a chance of existence correct.

Physics is to be regarded not so much equally the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience.

It is wrong to recall that the task of physics is to detect out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature...

It is a great compassion that human beings cannot discover all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness.

Some subjects are so serious that one can simply joke well-nigh them.

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

• We must be articulate that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, likewise, is not nearly then 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, as reported in Discussions about Linguistic communication (1933); quoted in Defense Implications of International Indeterminacy (1972) by Robert J. Pranger, p. eleven, 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 role and which were destined all unexpectedly to give us a fresh insight into the structure of atoms, were due in the beginning instance, as all are aware, to the work of the great investigators of the English language school, Sir Joseph Thomson and Sir Ernest Rutherford, who have inscribed their names on the tablets of the history of scientific research equally distinguished witnesses to the truth that imagination and acumen are capable of penetrating the crowded mass of registered experience and of revealing Nature'south simplicity to our gaze.
  • Niels Bohr'due south speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm (December 10, 1922)

• The keen extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple 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 Description of Nature" (1934)

• Isolated cloth particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and appreciable only 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 telescopic of our description, only in such a manner that our letters practice not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous grapheme ... Nosotros are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is upwardly and what is down. The give-and-take "reality" is too a word, a word which we must learn to apply correctly.
  • Quoted in Philosophy of Science Vol. 37 (1934), p. 157, and in The Truth of Science : Physical Theories and Reality (1997) past Roger Gerhard Newton, p. 176

• For a parallel to the lesson of atomic theory regarding the limited applicability of such customary idealizations, we must in fact turn to quite other branches of science, such every bit psychology, or even to that kind of epistemological problems with which already thinkers like Buddha and Lao Tzu have been confronted, when trying to harmonize our position every bit spectators and actors in the not bad drama of being.
  • 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.

• However far the phenomena transcend the telescopic of classical physical explanation, the account of all testify must be expressed in classical terms. The argument is that simply by the word "experiment" we refer to a situation where we can tell others what nosotros have washed and what we have learned and that, therefore, the account of the experimental organization and of the results of the observations must be expressed in unambiguous linguistic communication 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 adept is a person who has establish out by his own painful feel all the mistakes that one can brand in a very narrow field.
  • As quoted by Edward Teller, in Dr. Edward Teller'south Magnificent Obsession by Robert Coughlan, in LIFE mag (6 September 1954), p. 62
  • Variant: An skilful is a man who has made all the mistakes which can exist made in a very narrow field.
    • As quoted by Edward Teller (ten October 1972), and A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) by Alan L. Mackay, p. 35

• We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides u.s.a. is whether information technology is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.
  • Said to Wolfgang Pauli afterwards his presentation of Heisenberg's and Pauli'south nonlinear field theory of elementary particles, at Columbia University (1958), as reported by 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 Honor of Professor Ta-Y'all Wu," edited by Jong-Ping Hsu & Leonardo Hsu, Singapore; River Edge, NJ: World Scientific, 1998, pp. 73-xc, hither: p. 84).
  • Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be truthful.
    • As quoted in Starting time Philosophy: The Theory of Everything (2007) past Spencer Scoular, p. 89
  • At that place are many slight variants on this remark:
    • We 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 it is crazy enough to be have a chance of being correct.
    • We in the dorsum are convinced your theory is crazy. Simply what divides us is whether it is crazy enough.
    • Your theory is crazy, the question is whether it's crazy enough to be true.
    • Yes, I think that your theory is crazy. Sadly, it'southward not crazy enough to be believed.

• Physics is to be regarded non so much as the report of something a priori given, just rather as the evolution of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective sentence and therefore objective in the sense that it can exist unambiguously communicated in ordinary human linguistic communication.
  • "The Unity of Human Knowledge" (October 1960)

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

• How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now nosotros take some hope of making progress.
  • As quoted in Niels Bohr : The Man, His Science, & the World They Inverse (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 obviously cool.
  • Every bit quoted by his son Hans Bohr in "My Father", published in Niels Bohr: His Life and Work (1967), p. 328
  • Unsourced variant: The contrary of a correct statement is a simulated argument. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
  • Equally quoted in Max Delbrück, Listen from Matter: An Essay on Evolutionary Epistemology, (1986) p. 167. It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is besides a deep truth

• Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affidavit, but as a question.
  • Equally quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) by Alan Fifty. Mackay, p. 35

• It is a keen compassion that human beings cannot find all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness.
  • Equally quoted in Chandra: A Biography of S. Chandrasekhar‎ (1991) past Kameshwar C. Wali, p. 147

• Anyone who is not shocked by breakthrough theory has non understood it.
  • Equally 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 breakthrough mechanics cannot possibly take understood it.
    Those who are not shocked when they first come beyond quantum theory cannot perhaps accept understood it.
    Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood a single word.
    If you recollect you tin can talk nearly breakthrough theory without feeling dizzy, you haven't understood the offset thing virtually it.

• Some subjects are so serious that 1 can merely joke about them.
  • As quoted in The Genius of Scientific discipline: A Portrait Gallery (2000) past Abraham Pais, p. 24
  • Some things are so serious that one tin can only joke about them.
    • Variant without whatever citation as to author in Denial is not a river in Egypt (1998) by Sandi Bachom, p. 85.

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

• It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite.
  • As quoted in The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 24

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

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

• I get into the Upanishads to ask questions.
  • As quoted in God Is Non One : The 8 Rival Religions That Run the World and Why Their Differences Matter (2010), past Stephen Prothero, Ch, iv : Hinduism : The Way of Devotion, p. 144

• No, no, you are not thinking, yous are only beingness logical.
  • In response to those who made purely formal or mathematical arguments, as quoted in What Little I Retrieve (1979) by Otto Robert Frisch, p. 95

• I am absolutely prepared to talk well-nigh the spiritual life of an electronic computer: to state that information technology is reflecting or is in a bad mood... The question whether the machine really feels or ponders, or whether it 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 10, 1977, which appears in Wheeler's "Law Without Law," pg 207.

[edit]

The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes ways simply that at that place are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality.

Nowadays, the private seems to be 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 get more fluid. But even when an individual tries to attain the greatest possible degree of independence, he will still exist swayed by the existing spiritual structures — consciously or unconsciously.

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

• I feel very much like Dirac: the idea of a personal God is foreign to me. Only we ought to remember that organized religion uses linguistic communication in quite a different way from science. The language of religion is more than closely related to the linguistic communication of poetry than to the language of science. True, nosotros are inclined to retrieve that science deals with data about objective facts, and poetry with subjective feelings. Hence we conclude that if religion does indeed deal with objective truths, it ought to prefer the same criteria of truth as science. But I myself find the partitioning of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too capricious. The fact that religions through the ages take spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes ways only that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. Merely that does not mean that information technology is non a 18-carat reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won't become us very far.

• I consider those developments in physics during the last decades which accept shown how problematical such concepts equally "objective" and "subjective" are, a neat liberation of thought. The whole thing started with the theory of relativity. In the past, the argument that 2 events are simultaneous was considered an objective assertion, ane that could exist communicated quite simply and that was open to verification by any observer. Today we know that 'simultaneity' contains a subjective chemical element, inasmuch as ii events that appear simultaneous to an observer at rest are not necessarily simultaneous to an observer in movement. All the same, the relativistic description is also objective inasmuch equally every observer tin deduce by calculation what the other observer will perceive or has perceived. For all that, we have come up a long way from the classical ideal of objective descriptions.
  In quantum mechanics the departure from this platonic has been fifty-fifty more radical. We can still apply the objectifying linguistic communication of classical physics to make statements most observable facts. For example, we can say that a photographic plate has been blackened, or that cloud droplets have formed. But we can say zilch virtually the atoms themselves. And what predictions we base on such findings depend on the fashion nosotros pose our experimental question, and here the observer has freedom of choice. Naturally, it however makes no deviation whether the observer is a man, an creature, or a slice of appliance, but 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 take objective and subjective features. The objective globe of nineteenth-century science was, as we know today, an ideal, limiting case, but not the whole reality. Absolutely, fifty-fifty in our time to come encounters with reality nosotros shall have to distinguish between the objective and the subjective side, to make a division between the two. But the location of the separation may depend on the style things are looked at; to a certain extent information technology can exist chosen at will. Hence I can quite understand why we cannot speak nearly the content of religion in an objectifying linguistic communication. The fact that different religions effort to limited this content in quite distinct spiritual forms is no existent objection. Perhaps we ought to look upon these dissimilar forms equally complementary descriptions which, though they exclude 1 some other, are needed to convey the rich possibilities flowing from man's human relationship with the central order.

• In mathematics nosotros can take our inner distance from the content of our statements. In the final analysis mathematics is a mental game that we tin play or not play as nosotros choose. Faith, on the other hand, deals with ourselves, with our life and death; its promises are meant to govern our deportment and thus, at least indirectly, our very existence. We cannot only look at them impassively from the outside. Moreover, our attitude to religious questions cannot exist separated from our attitude to society. Fifty-fifty if religion arose as the spiritual structure of a detail human guild, it is arguable whether information technology has remained the strongest social molding strength through history, or whether society, once formed, develops new spiritual structures and adapts them to its particular level of knowledge. Present, the individual seems to be able to cull the spiritual framework of his thoughts and actions quite freely, and this freedom reflects the fact that the boundaries between the diverse cultures and societies are showtime to become more fluid. But 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. For he, too, must be able to speak of life and death and the human status to other members of the society in which he's called to live; he must educate his children according to the norms of that society, fit into its life. Epistemological sophistries cannot possibly help him attain these ends. Hither, too, the human relationship between critical idea about the spiritual content of a given religion and activity based on the deliberate acceptance of that content is complementary. And such acceptance, if consciously arrived at, fills the private 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 nether an all-embracing roof tin grant. In that sense, religion helps to make social life more than harmonious; its most important task is to remind us, in the language of pictures and parables, of the wider framework inside which our life is set.

Disputed [edit]

Stop telling God what to do with his dice.

• Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has non understood information technology.
  • Heisenberg recounts a personal conversation he had with Pauli and Bohr in 1952 in which Bohr says, "Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot peradventure have understood it." Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Beyond. (New York: Harper & Row, 1971) p. 206.
  • Bohr said this sentence in a conversation with Werner Heisenberg, every bit quoted in: "Der Teil und das Ganze. Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik" . R. Piper & Co., München, 1969, S. 280. Die ZEIT 22. Aug. 1969 [i].
  • 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 Fashion Through: Communicating Science in a Prosaic Age (1990) noted that he specifically looked for pithy quotes about breakthrough mechanics along these lines when reviewing the iii volumes of The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, but couldn't detect whatever:

    Once I tried to teach some breakthrough mechanics to a grade of law students, philosophers, and art historians. As an advertisement for the form I put together the most sensational quotations I could collect from the most administrative practitioners of the subject. Heisenberg was a goldmine: "The concept of the objective reality of the elementary particles has thus evaporated..."; "the idea of an objective existent world whose smallest parts be objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist, independently of whether or not we observe them ... is incommunicable ..." Feynman did his office too: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." Only I failed to plough up annihilation comparable in the writings of Bohr. Others attributed spectacular remarks to him, merely he seemed to take pains to avoid any hint of the dramatic in his own writings. Yous don't pack them into your classroom with "The indivisibility of breakthrough phenomena finds its consequent expression in the circumstance that every definable subdivision would crave a change of the experimental organisation with the advent of new individual phenomena," or "the wider frame of complementarity directly expresses our position as regards the business relationship of central backdrop of matter presupposed in classical physical description but outside its telescopic."

    I was therefore on the sentry for nuggets when I sat downwardly 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 effort (the originals first appeared in 1934, 1958, and 1963.) But the nigh radical statement I could find in all iii books was this: "...physics is to exist regarded non so much every bit the written report of something a priori given, but rather every bit the development of methods for ordering and surveying human feel." No nuggets for the nonscientist.

  • Variants: Those who are not shocked when they offset come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly have understood it.
    Those who are non shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.
    Anyone who is not shocked past quantum theory has not understood a single discussion.
    If yous think you lot can talk about quantum theory without feeling lightheaded, y'all haven't understood the showtime thing almost it.

• Prediction is very hard, peculiarly about the future.
  • Every bit quoted in Teaching and Learning Elementary Social Studies (1970) by Arthur K. 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"
  • It is too attributed to Danish cartoonist Tempest P (Robert Storm Petersen).
  • Variant: It's hard to make predictions, peculiarly near the futurity.

• Stop telling God what to practise with his dice.
  • A response to Einstein's exclamation that "God doesn't play die"; a like statement is attributed to Enrico Fermi
  • Variant: Einstein, don't tell God what to do.
  • Variant: Don't tell God what to do with his dice.
  • Variant: You ought not to speak for what Providence tin or can not do. – Every bit described in The Physicists: A generation that changed the world (1981) by C. P. Snowfall, p. 84

• Of course not ... but I am told it works fifty-fifty if you don't believe in it.
  • Reply to a visitor to his home in Tisvilde who asked him if he actually believed a horseshoe higher up his door brought him luck, equally quoted in Inward Leap : Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World (1986) by Abraham Pais, p. 210
  • In most published accounts of this anecdote such was Bohr's reply to his friend, merely in one early on account, in The Interaction Between Science and Philosophy (1974) by Samuel Sambursky, p. 357, Bohr was at a friend's business firm and asked "Practise yous really believe in this?" to which his friend replied "Oh, I don't believe in it. Simply I am told it works even if y'all don't believe in it."
  • Variant: No, merely I'g told it works even if you lot don't believe in it.

Quotes about Bohr [edit]

Alphabetized by author

• Bohr seemed to think that he had solved this question. I could non notice his solution in his writings. But at that place was no doubtfulness that he was convinced that he had solved the trouble and, in so doing, had not but contributed to diminutive physics, simply 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 ancient Far Eastern philosophers, virtually maxim that he had solved the problems that had defeated them. Information technology's an extraordinary thing for me—the character of Bohr—absolutely puzzling. I similar to speak of two Bohrs: one is a very pragmatic swain who insists that the appliance is classical, and the other is a very arrogant, pontificating man who makes enormous claims for what he has done.
  • John S. Bell, quoted in Jeremy Bernstein, Quantum Profiles (1991), John Stewart Bell: Quantum Engineer

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

• If quantum theory has whatsoever philosophical importance at all, it lies in the fact that it demonstrates for a single, sharply defined scientific discipline 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 Born in Natural Philosophy of Cause and Take chances (1949) ch. 10, p. 127

• Not often in life has a human being acquired me such joy past his mere presence as you did.
  • Albert Einstein in a letter to Bohr (1920)

• It is practically incommunicable to describe Niels Bohr to a person who has never worked with him. Probably his about feature property was the slowness of his thinking and comprehension. When, in the late twenties and early thirties, the writer of this book was one of the "Bohr boys" working in his Institute in Copenhagen on a Carlsberg (the best beer in the world!) fellowship, he had many a chance to discover it. In the evening, when a handful of Bohr'south students were "working" in the Paa Blegdamsvejen Found, discussing the latest problems of the quantum theory, or playing Ping-pong on the library table with coffee cups placed on it to brand the game more difficult, Bohr would appear, lament that he was very tired, and would like to "do something." To "practice something" inevitably meant to go to the movies, and the but 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 asking united states, to the great badgerer of the residual 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 blood brother-in-law?" The same slowness of reaction was apparent at scientific meetings. Many a fourth dimension, a visiting young physicist (near physicists visiting Copenhagen were young) would deliver a brilliant talk nearly his contempo calculations on some intricate problem of the quantum theory. Everybody in the audition would understand the argument quite clearly, but Bohr wouldn't. And then everybody would kickoff to explicate to Bohr the uncomplicated point he had missed, and in the resulting turmoil everybody would stop agreement anything. Finally, after a considerable flow of time, Bohr would begin to empathize, and it would turn out that what he understood almost the problem presented by the company was quite different from what the visitor meant, and was correct, while the visitor's 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 nighttime and ended virtually in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighbouring park I repeated to myself again and again the question: Tin can nature maybe be then absurd as it seemed to united states of america in these atomic experiments?
  • Werner Heisenberg in Physics and Philosophy (1958)

• The showtime matter Bohr said to me was that it would just then be profitable to piece of work with him if I understood that he was a dilettante. The only way I knew to react to this unexpected statement was with a polite smile of atheism. Just plainly Bohr was serious. He explained how he had to approach every new question from a starting point of total ignorance. It is perhaps better to say that Bohr'southward strength lay in his formidable intuition and insight rather than erudition.
  • Abraham Pais, in testimony in Niels Bohr : His Life and Piece of work as Seen by His Friends and Colleagues (1967) edited by Stefan Rozental, p. 218; subsequently in his ain piece of work, Niels Bohr's Times : In Physics, Philosophy, and Polity (1991)

• When asked whether the algorism of quantum mechanics could be considered as somehow mirroring an underlying quantum world, Bohr would answer, "In that location is no quantum world. At that place is just an abstract quantum physical description. It is incorrect to recall that the job of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say nearly nature." Bohr felt that every step in the development of physics has strengthened the view that the trouble of establishing an unambiguous description of nature has only i solution. He regarded all attempts to supersede our elementary concepts or to introduce a new logic to account for the peculiarities of breakthrough phenomena as not merely unnecessary but likewise incompatible with our most primal atmospheric condition, since we 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) by Abraham Pais, p. 24, and Niels Bohr: Reflections on Subject field and Object (2001) by Paul. McEvoy, p. 291
  • Quotes virtually quote:
    • To my bully pleasure, Victor Weisskopf was sitting in his usual place in the front end row, smile approvingly up at me. (It'south surprising how much such encouragement from such a source can improve the quality of a talk.) His smiles connected right up to the moment when I read the Petersen quotation. No sooner had I finished reading it than Viki was on his feet. "That's outrageous," he proclaimed. "Bohr couldn't perchance take said annihilation like that!" Somewhat taken ashamed past this sudden flip from approbation to condemnation, I feebly protested that I wasn't attributing information technology to Bohr, merely to Aage Petersen's memory of Bohr. That did not extinguish the flames. "Shame on Aage Petersen," declared Viki, "for putting those ridiculous words into Bohr's mouth!"
      • N. David Mermin, "What'due south Wrong With This Quantum World?" Physics Today Vol. 52, No. two (February 2004), p. x.

• [Bohr was] a marvelous physicist, ane of the greatest of all time, just he was a miserable philosopher, and one couldn't talk to him. He was talking all the time, allowing practically but one or two words to you lot and then at in one case cut in.
  • Karl Popper, quoted in John Horgan, The End of Scientific discipline (1996), Ch. 2 : The End of Philosophy

• "Y'all tin can talk about people like Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Confucius, but the thing that convinced me that such people existed were the conversations with Bohr," Dr. Wheeler said.
  • John A. Wheeler as quoted by Dennis Overbye in "John A. Wheeler, Physicist Who Coined the Term 'Blackness Hole,' Is Dead at 96". NY Times. (14 April 2008)

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

External links [edit]

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

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