Fortune Quote #3444

...in physics the only observations we must consider are position
observations, if only the positions of instrument pointers. It is a great
merit of the de Broglie-Bohm picture to force us to consider this fact. If
you make axioms, rather than definitions and theorems, about
the "measurement" of anything else, then you commit redundancy and risk
inconsistency. -- J. S. Bell

Fortune Quote #3443

It would seem that the theory [quantum mechanics] is exclusively concerned
about "results of measurement", and has nothing to say about anything
else. What exactly qualifies some physical systems to play the role
of "measurer"? Was the wavefunction of the world waiting to jump for
thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature
appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer, for some better
qualified system ... with a Ph.D.? -- J. S. Bell

Fortune Quote #3442

The first processes, therefore, in the effectual studies of the sciences,
must be ones of simplification and reduction of the results of previous
investigations to a form in which the mind can grasp them. -- J. C.
Maxwell

Fortune Quote #3441

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the highest
complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if
it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which
they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly
taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the
fabric of their lives. -- Tolstoy

Fortune Quote #3440

I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to
facts. -- Mark Twain

Fortune Quote #3439

A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake at the
moment. -- Willis Player

Fortune Quote #3438

I protest against the use of infinite magnitude as something accomplished,
which is never permissible in mathematics. Infinity is merely a figure of
speech, the true meaning being a limit. -- Carl Friedrich Gauss

Fortune Quote #3437

"Your act was unwise," I exclaimed "as you see by the outcome." He
solemnly eyed me. "When choosing the couse of my action," said he, "I had
not the outcome to guide me." -- Ambrose Bierce

Fortune Quote #3436

Ignorance is preferable to error and he is less remote from the truth who
believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong. -- Thomas
Jefferson

Fortune Quote #3435

Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity. -- William of
Ockham, c 1330