Excellent Quotes: The Character of Physical Law

Okay, here’s another quotable quote. This time from dearly-departed scientist and speechifier Richard Feynman. He addresses not just the central paradox of quantum mechanics but its scientific import:

(I know you know, but the quantum paradox is that light is both a particle and a wave; you can therefore study a single photon of light and know its position or its momentum but never both. This has been classically addressed--pardon the pun--via an experiment modeled on work by Thomas Young, where “bullets” of light are fired through two slits cut into a solid surface onto a wall beyond. If you look at each particle of light as it travels through the slits you find two stripes of bullets behind on the wall as you might expect; but if you “close your eyes” you find that the bullets have formed a wave-like pattern on the wall beyond the shield--sort of the way water pushed through the slits would spread into peaks and troughs. Freaky.)

“I will take just this one experiment, which has been designed to contain all of the mystery of quantum mechanics, to put you up against the paradoxes and mysteries and peculiarities of nature one hundred percent. Any other situation in quantum mechanics, it turns out, can always be explained by saying, ‘You remember the case of the experiment with the two holes? It is the same thing.’”
--Feynman, Richard. The Character of Physical Law. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965. P. 130.

PS - Dude, I love quantum mechanics. Woefully, I don’t understand jack about it. Sigh. Oh, and the up-and-coming Joshua Morrison’s “Coming Home” is really very nice; now playing on iTunes.