sol72us
01-01-2002, 01:58 PM
"..there is this possibility: after i tell you something
you just can't believe it. you can't accept it. you
don't like it. a little screen comes down and you don't
listen anymore. i'm going to describe to you how nature
is - and if you don't like it, that's going to get in
the way of your understanding it. it's a problem that
physicists have learned to deal with: they've learned
to realize that whether they like a theory or they don't
like a theory is not the essential question. rather,
it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that
agree with experiment. it is not a question of whether
a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to
understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of
view of common sense. the theory of qed describes
nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense.
and it agrees fully with experiment. so i hope you can
accept nature as she is - absurd."
from
qed
the strange theory of light and matter
by richard p. feynman
princeton university press, 1985
inspired by
noel wood as richard in
"the remarkable richard feynman...
and his half-assedly thought-out
pictorial semi-vision thing"
you just can't believe it. you can't accept it. you
don't like it. a little screen comes down and you don't
listen anymore. i'm going to describe to you how nature
is - and if you don't like it, that's going to get in
the way of your understanding it. it's a problem that
physicists have learned to deal with: they've learned
to realize that whether they like a theory or they don't
like a theory is not the essential question. rather,
it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that
agree with experiment. it is not a question of whether
a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to
understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of
view of common sense. the theory of qed describes
nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense.
and it agrees fully with experiment. so i hope you can
accept nature as she is - absurd."
from
qed
the strange theory of light and matter
by richard p. feynman
princeton university press, 1985
inspired by
noel wood as richard in
"the remarkable richard feynman...
and his half-assedly thought-out
pictorial semi-vision thing"