Jim Baggott > Quotes

“Just remember that money cannot buy you happiness (although it might make misery more tolerable).”
― Jim Baggott, A Beginner's Guide to Reality: Exploring Our Everyday Adventures in Wonderland

“we have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
― Jim Baggott, The Quantum Story: A history in 40 moments

“in experimental quantum mechanics we have run right up against what was previously perceived to be a purely philosophical barrier. The experiments are telling us that we can know nothing of reality-in-itself. We have to accept that the properties we ascribe to quantum particles like photons, such as energy, frequency, spin, polarization, position (‘here’ or ‘there’), are properties that have no meaning except in relation to a measuring device that allows them to be projected into our empirical reality of experience. We can no longer assume that the properties we measure necessarily reflect or represent the properties of the particles as they really are.”
― Jim Baggott, Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth

“Cred că mesajul poveştii ştiinţifice a creaţiei este că ne aflăm aici graţie unor împrejurări istorice extraordinare şi a unui imens noroc. Puteţi face speculaţii pe seama golurilor din cunoaştere, dacă ţineţi neapărat, dar e mai probabil să nu existe nici un scop în structura şi natura lumii fizice: suntem produsul ei secundar accidental, nu raţiunea ei de a fi.
Scopul şi semnificaţia sunt invenţii umane, şi trebuie să le căutăm înăuntru, nu înafară, folosind creierul nostru social. Nu suntem privilegiaţi în sensul că totul a fost creat de dragul nostru, dar faptul că ne aflăm aici acum e un privilegiu extraordinar. Sarcina noastră este, şi a fost dintotdeauna, să ne dăm seama ce avem de făcut cu noi înşine.”
― Jim Baggott, Origins: The Scientific Story of Creation

“It seems that no matter how hard we try, or how unreasonable the resulting definition of reality, we just cannot avoid having to invoke the collapse of the wavefunction.”
― Jim Baggott, Quantum Space: Loop Quantum Gravity and the Search for the Structure of Space, Time, and the Universe

“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. Albert Einstein”
― Jim Baggott, Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth

“For more than four hundred years we nurtured the belief (should that, perhaps, be faith?) that evidence-based investigation meeting scientific standards of rigor would reveal the true mechanism of nature. and yet when the mechanisms of nature were revealed to be quantum mechanisms, the worlds of science and philosophy were set on a collision course. instead of truth and comprehension, we got deeply unsettling questions about what we can ever hope to know about the world.”
― Jim Baggott

“Finally, and most importantly, we must be concerned about the implications of multiverse theories for the future development of science itself. The multiverse theorists know that they are on weak ground regarding the Testability Principle, and rather than admit that their theories are not science, they argue instead that the rules of science must be adapted to accommodate this kind of metaphysical speculation. They want to change the very definition of science. This is a very slippery slope.”
― Jim Baggott, Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth

“Science is the pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.’8”
― Jim Baggott, Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth

“But it would be naïve to think that this extraordinary success has drawn us ever closer to comprehending a reality of things-in-themselves”
― Jim Baggott, Mass: The quest to understand matter from Greek atoms to quantum fields

“Moving together in time also made them feel members of a harmonious”
― Jim Baggott, FREE Icon Books eBook Sampler