"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." - Einstein
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." - Einstein
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed." - Einstein
"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile." - Einstein
“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of even forming such opinions." - Einstein (shown here with his wife)
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." - Einstein
"The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained to liberation from the self" - Einstein
"Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed." - Einstein
Bohr's self-created coat-of-arms, which contains the inscription "Opposites are Complementary."
"The task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees." - Erwin Schrodinger
(Schrodinger was a big fan of the Upanishads)
"Man's general way of thinking of the totality, i.e. his general world view, is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself. If he thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken and without border (for every border is a division or break) then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole." - David Bohm
 Picture
"We have reversed the usual classical notion that the independent "elementary parts" of the world are the fundamental reality, and that the various systems are merely particular contingent forms and arrangements of these parts. Rather, we say that inseparable quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental reality, and that relatively independent behaving parts are merely particular and contingent forms within this whole."
- David Bohm
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”  ― David Bohm
“Space is not empty. It is full, a plenum as opposed to a vacuum, and is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves. The universe is not separate from this cosmic sea of energy.”   ― David Bohm
"In the enfolded [or implicate] order, space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order. These ordinary notions in fact appear in what is called the "explicate" or "unfolded" order, which is a special and distinguished form contained within the general totality of all the implicate orders."  -  David Bohm
Uncertainty is a law of the universe.
Heisenberg and his mentor Bohr uncertain
about what to have for breakfast.
Max Born, who demonstrated that the quantum world was probabilistic, rather than deterministic.
The Born rule (also called the Born law, Born's rule, or Born's law) is a law of quantum mechanics which gives the probability that a measurement on a quantum system will yield a given result. It is named after its originator, the physicist Max Born. The Born rule is one of the key principles of quantum mechanics.
"The layman always means, when he says "reality" that he is speaking of something self-evidently known; whereas to me it seems the most important and exceedingly difficult task of our time is to work on the construction of a new idea of reality." - Wolfgang Pauli
"The best that most of us can hope to achieve in physics is simply to misunderstand at a deeper level." - Wolfgang Pauli
“Collapse is the crystallizing of the possibilities of the quantum realm into the concrete actualities of the spacetime realm. So, collapse is not something that happens anywhere in spacetime. It is the creation of spacetime itself.”—Physicist Ruth E. Kastner

(regarding the "collapsing of the wave function," which provides reality to quantum possibilities)






"Is the very mechanism for the universe to come into being meaningless or unworkable or both unless the universe is guaranteed to produce life, consciousness and observership somewhere and for some little time in its history-to-be? The quantum principle shows that there is a sense in which what the observer will do in the future defines what happens in the past—even in a past so remote that life did not then exist, and shows even more, that 'observership' is a prerequisite for any useful version of 'reality'."  - John Archibald Wheeler

(See "delayed choice" experiments in quantum theory)



The question is: 'What is the question?'
 - John Archibald Wheeler
Bruce Rosenblum
"When Einstein tried to raise these [philosophical] issues that evening we didn’t know what he was talking about. We had never heard of the philosophical issues raised by EPR. Einstein was disappointed with us. ...That evening with Einstein surely motivates my now coming back to those questions.

The more you understand quantum mechanics, the less reasonable it seems. ...It’s beyond merely counterintuitive. It’s baffling. Unbelievable, really. It presents us with unsolved enigmas.

Either we don’t have an objectively real actual world (i.e., there are no properties independent of their observation) or there is no separability (i.e., there is a universal connectivity), or both."
"Isaac?  Yeah, babe, I got some bad news.  Those theories of yours?  Finished!  You're toast, buddy!  Nyaah-ha-ha-ha-ha!


"The concept of 'measurement' becomes so fuzzy on reflection that it is quite surprising to have it appearing in physical theory at the most fundamental level... does not any analysis of measurement require concepts more fundamental than measurement? And should not the fundamental theory be about these more fundamental concepts? "
(Regarding John Stewart Bell's paper on entanglement)
"It was John Bell who investigated quantum theory in the greatest depth and established what the theory can tell us about the fundamental nature of the physical world. Moreover, by stimulating experimental tests of the deepest and most profound aspects of quantum theory, Bell's work led to the possibility of exploring seemingly philosophical questions, such as the nature of reality, directly through experiments.
And this was just Bell's "hobby".
  • Andrew Whitaker, "John Bell and the most profound discovery of science", Physics World (December 1998)
Picture Nick Herbert



"The quantum world is not made up of objects.

The entire visible universe, what Bishop Berkley called "the mighty frame of the world," rests ultimately on a strange quantum kind of being no more substantial than a promise.

The simplicity of Bell's proof opens it to everyone, not just physicists and mathematicians.

So minuscule is the scale of quantum events compared to the actions of everyday life that it's a wonder humans ever found out about the quantum world at all. "  - Nick Herbert
How much do we know about the world?  How much does our knowledge and view of the world change over time?  This map is from 1939.  Although this was well after Einstein and the Quantum Guys had started to turn the ship in a new direction, we see that both quantum and relativity on this map occupy nearly microscopic entries at the top under "Modern Physics":  almost an afterthought.
In 2016, Dominic Walliman's excellent map looks quite different.  In addition, there is a new humility shown by the wonderfully named "Chasm of Ignorance."  Around 1900, many scientists thought that pretty much everything was tied up, knowledge-wise, with just a few details to iron out.  A century of explosive, paradigm-changing discoveries since then has brought a new respect for the unknown.  The only flaw of the map might be that the Chasm of Ignorance may need to be a lot, lot wider.  :)


And next?...
This is why Einstein said that "Imagination is more important than knowledge"