Feb
15th
Tue
15th
Robert Hazen on science
“I admit, the quantum world is strange, it’s different from anything we experience in the world of baseballs and automobiles. For many people that’s a difficult concept to accept, why should the sub-atomic world behave in such a counter intuitive way, with uncertainties and probabilities, and wave particle dualities?
Well, the role of science is to formulate evermore exact descriptions of the physical world and its events. Some situations, like the orbit of a planet are amenable to exact mathematical descriptions. Other situations, like the flipping of a coin are better described in terms of probability.
The real advantage of science is that it constrains us to describe the world as it IS, not as we wish it to be. So if our everyday metaphors fail in description of the quantum world, perhaps science can enrich our lives with new metaphors.”
“I admit, the quantum world is strange, it’s different from anything we experience in the world of baseballs and automobiles. For many people that’s a difficult concept to accept, why should the sub-atomic world behave in such a counter intuitive way, with uncertainties and probabilities, and wave particle dualities?
Well, the role of science is to formulate evermore exact descriptions of the physical world and its events. Some situations, like the orbit of a planet are amenable to exact mathematical descriptions. Other situations, like the flipping of a coin are better described in terms of probability.
The real advantage of science is that it constrains us to describe the world as it IS, not as we wish it to be. So if our everyday metaphors fail in description of the quantum world, perhaps science can enrich our lives with new metaphors.”
— Prof. Robert Hazen, George Mason University
