‘You are not thinking. You are merely being logical’
If you want to know about mystery, ask a quantum physicist
The famous Solvay conference of 1927. Bohr is middle row, far right. Others present include Erwin Schrodinger, Wolfgang Pauli, Arthur Compton, Wernher Heisenberg, Lawrence Bragg (who won the Nobel Prize aged just 25), Paul Dirac, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Max Planck, Marie Curie, Hendrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein, C T R Wilson and Owen Richardson (who was born just down the road from where I grew up). Each won the Nobel Prize for physics. They still dominate the undergraduate physics syllabus today. I stayed at that hotel as part of a writing prize and have seen the book signed by this astonishing assembly.
Here’s the world according to the very quotable Neils Bohr, one of the founders of quantum mechanics.
‘Prediction is very difficult, especially concerning the future.’
‘How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress. ‘
‘The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth. ‘
‘You are not thinking. You are merely being logical. ‘
