Space (1912)
Context: How if Space is really full of things we cannot see and as yet do not know? How if all animals and some savages have a cell in their brain or a nerve which responds to the invisible world? How if all Space be full of these landmarks, not material in our sense, but quite real? A dog barks at nothing, a wild beast makes an aimless circuit. Why? Perhaps because Space is made up of corridors and alleys, ways to travel and things to shun? For all we know, to a greater intelligence than ours the top of Mont Blanc may be as crowded as Piccadilly Circus.
“The main difficulty in popularizing quantum physics is that we do not really know how to make images of it in our world. In this sense it is really counterintuitive.”
La principale difficulté pour vulgariser la physique quantique, c'est qu'on ne sait pas très bien comment en fabriquer des images dans notre monde. C'est en ce sens qu'elle est vraiment contre-intuitive.
Interview http://www.canalacademie.com/Alain-Aspect.html on the occasion of the CNRS Gold Medal Award Ceremony in December 2005.
Original
La principale difficulté pour vulgariser la physique quantique, c'est qu'on ne sait pas très bien comment en fabriquer des images dans notre monde. C'est en ce sens qu'elle est vraiment contre-intuitive.
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Alain Aspect 6
French physicist 1947Related quotes
Daniel Bedingham, Detlef Dürr, GianCarlo Ghirardi, Sheldon Goldstein, Roderich Tumulka, Nino Zanghì, "Matter Density and Relativistic Models of Wave Function Collapse", J Stat Phys (2014) 154:623–631
"Testing Quantum Mechanics" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0003491689902765, Annals of Physics (1989)
In Interview with Professor Carlo Beenakker http://www.natuurkunde.nl/artikelen/view.do?supportId=822985. Interviewers: Ramy El-Dardiry and Roderick Knuiman (February 1, 2006).
Interview with Paul Joyce, New York, (September 1986) quoted in Hockney on Photography, ed. Wendy Brown (1988)
1980s
Foreword (March 2007) to Quantum Aspects of Life (2008), by Derek Abbott.
Context: Does life in some way make use of the potentiality for vast quantum superpositions, as would be required for serious quantum computation? How important are the quantum aspects of DNA molecules? Are cellular microtubules performing some essential quantum roles? Are the subtleties of quantum field theory important to biology? Shall we gain needed insights from the study of quantum toy models? Do we really need to move forward to radical new theories of physical reality, as I myself believe, before the more subtle issues of biology — most importantly conscious mentality — can be understood in physical terms? How relevant, indeed, is our present lack of understanding of physics at the quantum/classical boundary? Or is consciousness really “no big deal,” as has sometimes been expressed?
It would be too optimistic to expect to find definitive answers to all these questions, at our present state of knowledge, but there is much scope for healthy debate...