Talk:Physics

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[edit] Cat + toast powered monorail

i highly doubt that robert j oppenheimer quote. -Cody

Googling suggests John Frazee in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, so I changed it to that. Maybe someone who reads that august journal can confirm. Dunno if that's the first occurrance of cat+toast jokes, maybe someone can shed some light on that too. -- Kevin Ryde 22:38, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Shut up and calculate!"

There are at least two ways of taking this.

The simple way is that the philosophy of science is not important. But not thinking deeply might have might have lead away from things like quantum computing and maybe even super conductors just as much as taking things like the Copenhagen Interpretation too seriously would have!

A more philosophical interpretation of this saying is that a Bertrand Russel logical approach is needed, not a Ludwig Wittgenstein ordinary language approach. That is, ordinary languages such as English are not capable of expressing deep philosophical aspects of quantum mechanics. To get from ordinary language to qm, one has to go through logic and higher mathematics. So one can reach a philosophical understanding while calculating but not while talking.