Neils Bohr
Language and reality
Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.
Sometimes, I feel I should hand this weekly email over to the quantum physicist Niels Bohr, to explain the relationship between language and reality.
It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature."
We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly.
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.
The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won't get us very far.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite.
Quotations are taken from the Wikiquote page on Niels Bohr. Some of them may be inaccurate.