Trying to capture the physicists' precise mathematical description of the quantum world with our crude words and mental images is like playing Chopin with a boxing glove on one hand and a catcher's mitt on the other.
Interpretation
Using simple language to describe complex scientific concepts can be difficult and imprecise.
George Johnson uses an analogy to depict the challenge of articulating the complexities of quantum physics through ordinary language. Just like playing a nuanced piece of music with cumbersome equipment hampers performance, translating intricate scientific principles into everyday words and imagery often leads to misunderstandings and oversimplifications.
In practice
In a lecture on quantum mechanics, a professor might use this quote to emphasize the challenges of explaining advanced concepts.
Whenever you read a book or have a conversation, the experience causes physical changes in your brain. It's a little frightening to think that every time you walk away from an encounter, your brain has been altered, sometimes permanently.
We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line. There is science in what we do, yes, but also habit, intuition, and sometimes plain old guessing. The gap between what we know and what we aim for persists. And this gap complicates everything we do.
Most discoveries even today are a combination of serendipity and of searching.
A page from a journal of modern experimental physics will be as mysterious to the uninitiated as a Tibetan mandala. Both are records of enquiries into the nature of the universe.
The phenomena of nature, especially those that fall under the inspection of the astronomer, are to be viewed, not only with the usual attention to facts as they occur, but with the eye of reason and experience.
All crises begin with the blurring of a paradigm and the consequent loosening of the rules for normal research. .. Or finally, the case that will most concern us here, a crisis may end with the emergence of a new candidate for paradigm and with the ensuing battle over its acceptance.
Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.
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