26 October 2019

Niels Bohr - Collected Quotes

"We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, 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." (Niels Bohr, 1920) 

"[...] an independent reality in the ordinary' physical sense can be ascribed neither to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation." (Niels Bohr, "Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature", 1934)

"The great extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based." (Niels Bohr, "Atomic Physics and the Description of Nature", 1934)

"[...] in quantum mechanics, we are not dealing with an arbitrary renunciation of a more detailed analysis of atomic phenomena, but with a recognition that such an analysis is to principle excluded." (Niels Bohr, "Atomic Theory and Human Knowledge", 1958)

"It is, indeed, perhaps the greatest prospect of humanistic studies to contribute through an increasing knowledge of the history of cultural development to that gradual removal of prejudices which is the common aim of all science." (Niels Bohr, "Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge", 1958)

"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 human experience. In this respect our task must be to account 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." (Niels Bohr, "The Unity of Human Knowledge", 1960)

"Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question." (Niels Bohr)

"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress." (Niels Bohr)

"It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature." (Niels Bohr)

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." (Niels Bohr)

"Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly have understood it." (Niels Bohr)

"We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words." (Niels Bohr)

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