Quote:
Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
.....Of course not, but I am told it works even if you don't believe in it.
..........— Niels Bohr (1885-1962), Danish physicist. Bohr's answer when asked whether he really believed a horseshoe hanging over his door would bring him luck. Quoted in Abraham Pais, Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1986). (Pais served as an assistant to Niels Bohr in Denmark.)
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Ha! I _just_ finished reading "Quantum" by Manjit Kumar. It's about the debate between Einstein and Bohr over the philosophical underpinnings of quantum mechanics. Einstein was a realist, and believed that particles had properties that existed whether you measured them or not. Bohr (and most of his proteges) believed that "there is no quantum reality beyond what is revealed by an act of measurement or observation" (from Kumar's book). The book is more straightforward than that quote.
