It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.
Eugene WignerRead
It takes so long to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Training a physicist is a lengthy process, which often leaves them too old to tackle the problems they were trained to solve.
Eugene Wigner's quote highlights the extensive duration required to train physicists in complex physical theories and problems. By the time they have acquired the necessary expertise, they may no longer possess the youthful vigor or opportunity to engage in groundbreaking work, illustrating a challenge within the field of scientific education and innovation.
Themes
TrainingPhysicistProblemsAgeScience
In practice
Example use cases
In a scientific conference discussing the challenges of long-term research training.
More from Eugene Wigner
All quotes βThe full meaning of life, the collective meaning of all human desires, is fundamentally a mystery beyond our grasp. As a young man, I chafed at this state of affairs. But by now I have made peace with it. I even feel a certain honor to be associated with such a mystery.
Eugene WignerRead
The great mathematician fully, almost ruthlessly, exploits the domain of permissible reasoning and skirts the impermissible. That his recklessness does not lead him into a morass of contradictions is a miracle in itself: certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin's process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.
Eugene WignerRead
The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.
Eugene WignerRead
The simplicities of natural laws arise through the complexities of the language we use for their expression.
Eugene WignerRead
The unreasonable efficiency of mathematics in science is a gift we neither understand nor deserve.
Eugene WignerRead
Similar quotes
Part of what it is to be scientifically-literate, it's not simply, 'Do you know what DNA is? Or what the Big Bang is?' That's an aspect of science literacy. The biggest part of it is do you know how to think about information that's presented in front of you.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
You look at science fiction and look how often it talks about being alien, being alienated about the other. Look at the number of blue people - 'Avatar,' I'm looking at you. And it is now easier to find people of color in science-fiction literature and media, but the issues of representation are still really, really troubling.
Nalo HopkinsonRead
There could be more to the universe than the three dimensions we are familiar with. They are hidden from us in some way, perhaps because they're tiny or warped. But even if they're invisible, they could affect what we actually observe in the universe.
Lisa RandallRead
Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century's developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.
Richard LindzenRead
The dimmed outlines of phenomenal things all merge into one another unless we put on the focusing-glass of theory, and screw it up sometimes to one pitch of definition and sometimes to another, so as to see down into different depths through the great millstone of the world.
James Clerk MaxwellRead
Every living being is also a fossil. Within it, all the way down to the microscopic structure of its proteins, it bears the traces if not the stigmata of its ancestry.
Jacques MonodRead