And anyone who thinks they can talk about quantum theory without feeling dizzy hasn't yet understood the first thing about it.
Interpretation
Understanding quantum theory requires deep comprehension, and it can be overwhelming for many.
Niels Bohr's quote highlights the complexity and often bewildering nature of quantum theory. It suggests that truly grasping the intricacies of the subject can lead to a feeling of dizziness, indicating both the intellectual challenge it presents and the profound nature of the phenomena it describes.
In practice
In a lecture on advanced physics, one might use this quote to illustrate the challenges of comprehending quantum mechanics.
When asked ... [about] an underlying quantum world, Bohr would answer, 'There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. 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.'
An independant reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation.
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.
Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.
When searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators.
Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.
The ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.
Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.
And there is a lot of idiosyncrasy. But there are also regularities and phenomena. And what the data is going to be able to do - if there's enough of it - is uncover, in the mess and the noise of the world, some lines of music that actually have harmony. It's there, somewhere.
The universe is very big - there's about 100,000 million galaxies in the universe, so that means an awful lot of stars. And some of them, I'm pretty certain, will have planets where there was life, is life, or maybe will be life. I don't believe we're alone.
I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, 'with four parameters I can fit an elephant and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.'
Some evolutionists will protest that we are caricaturing their view of adaptation. After all, do they not admit genetic drift, allometry, and a variety of reasons for nonadaptive evolution?
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