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John Stewart Bell
21 quotes
“Theoretical physicists live in a classical world, looking out into a quantum-mechanical world. The latter we describe only subjectively, in terms of procedures and results in our classical domain.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction to the hidden-variable question" (1971), included in Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (1987), p. 29
“The concept of 'measurement' becomes so fuzzy on reflection that it is quite surprising to have it appearing in physical theory at the most fundamental level... does not any analysis of measurement require concepts more fundamental than measurement? And should not the fundamental theory be about these more fundamental concepts?”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quantum Mechanics for Cosmologists" (1981); published in Quantum Gravity (1981) edited by Christopher Isham, Roger Penrose and Dennis William Sciama, p. 611 - 637
“A final moral concerns terminology. Why did such serious people take so seriously axioms which now seem so arbitrary? I suspect that they were misled by the pernicious misuse of the word ‘measurement’ in contemporary theory. This word very strongly suggests the ascertaining of some preexisting property of some thing, any instrument involved playing a purely passive role. Quantum experiments are just not like that, as we learned especially from Bohr. The results have to be regarded as the joint product of ‘system’ and ‘apparatus,’ the complete experimental set-up.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the impossible pilot wave" (1982), included in Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (1987), p. 166
“I am a Quantum Engineer, but on Sundays I Have Principles.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Opening sentence of his "underground colloquium" in March 1983, as quoted by Nicolas Gisin in an edition by
“It can be argued that in trying to see behind the formal predictions of quantum theory we are just making trouble for ourselves. Was not precisely this the lesson that had to be learned before quantum mechanics could be constructed, that it is futile to try to see behind the observed phenomena?”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Experiments", included in Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (1987), p. 82
“The theorem tells you that maybe there must be something happening faster than light, although it pains me even to say that much. The theorem certainly implies that Einstein's concept of space and time, neatly divided up into separate regions by light velocity, is not tenable. But then, to say that there's something going faster than light is to say more than I know.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in interview, Omni, May 1988, p. 90
“Bohr was inconsistent, unclear, willfully obscure and right. Einstein was consistent, clear, down-to-earth and wrong.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Graham Farmelo, "Random Acts of Science", The New York Times (June 11, 2010)
“1 + P(b, c) ≥ |P(a, b) － P(a, c)|”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Surely, after 62 years, we should have an exact formulation of some serious part of quantum mechanics? By 'exact' I do not of course mean 'exactly true'. I mean only that the theory should be fully formulated in mathematical terms, with nothing left to the discretion of the theoretical physicist . . . until workable approximations are needed in applications. By 'serious' I mean that some substantial fragment of physics should be covered. Nonrelativistic 'particle' quantum mechanics, perhaps with the inclusion of the electromagnetic field and a cut-off interaction, is serious enough.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I agree with them about that: ORDINARY QUANTUM MECHANICS (as far as I know) IS JUST FINE FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES. Even when I begin by insisting on this myself, and in capital letters, it is likely to be insisted on repeatedly in the course of the discussion. So it is convenient to have an abbreviation for the last phrase: FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES = FAPP.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The concepts 'system', 'apparatus', 'environment', immediately imply an artificial division of the world, and an intention to neglect, or take only schematic account of, the interaction across the split. The notions of 'microscopic' and 'macroscopic' defy precise definition. So also do the notions of 'reversible' and 'irreversible'.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Einstein said that it is theory which decides what is . I think he was right—'observation' is a complicated and theory-laden business. Then that notion should not appear in the formulation of fundamental theory. Information? Whose information? Information about what? On this list of bad words from good books, the worst of all is 'measurement'. It must have a section to itself.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The first charge against 'measurement, in the fundamental axioms of quantum mechanics, is that it anchors there the shifty split of the world into 'system' and 'apparatus'. A second charge is that the word comes loaded with meaning from everyday life, meaning which is entirely inappropriate in the quantum context.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea that elimination of coherence, in one way or another, implies the replacement of 'and' by 'or', is a very common one among solvers of the 'measurement problem'. It has always puzzled me.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The orthodox approaches, whether the authors think they have made derivations or assumptions, are just fine FAPP — when used with the good taste and discretion picked up from exposure to good examples.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While the founding fathers agonized over the question 'particle' or 'wave', de Broglie in 1925 proposed the obvious answer 'particle' and 'wave'. Is it not clear from the smallness of the scintillation on the screen that we have to do with a particle? And is it not clear, from the diffraction and interference patterns, that the motion of the particle is directed by a wave? De Broglie showed in detail how the motion of a particle, passing through just one of two holes in screen, could be influenced by waves propagating through both holes. And so influenced that the particle does not go where the waves cancel out, but is attracted to where they cooperate. This idea seems to me so natural and simple, to resolve the wave-particle dilemma in such a clear and ordinary way, that it is a great mystery to me that it was so generally ignored.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Six Possible Worlds of Quantum Mechanics" (1986), included in Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (1987), p. 191
“The discomfort that I feel is associated with the fact that the observed perfect s seem to demand something like the ‘genetic’ hypothesis [identical twins, carrying with them identical genes]. For me, it is so reasonable to assume that the photons in those experiments carry with them programs, which have been correlated in advance, telling them how to behave. This is so rational that I think that when Einstein saw that, and the others refused to see it, he was the rational man. The other people, although history has justified them, were burying their heads in the sand. I feel that Einstein’s intellectual superiority over Bohr, in this instance, was enormous; a vast gulf between the man who saw clearly what was needed, and the obscurantist. So for me, it is a pity that Einstein’s idea doesn’t work. The reasonable thing just doesn’t work.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Jeremy Bernstein, Quantum Profiles (1991), "John Stewart Bell: Quantum Engineer
“To know the quantum mechanical state of a system implies, in general, only statistical restrictions on the results of measurements. It seems interesting to ask if this statistical element be thought of as arising, as in classical statistical mechanics, because the states in question are averages over better defined states for which individually the results would be quite determined. These hypothetical 'dispersion free' states would be specified not only by the quantum mechanical state vector but also by additional 'hidden variables' - 'hidden' because if states with prescribed values of these variables could actually be prepared, quantum mechanics would be observably inadequate.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“More generally, the hidden variable account of a given system becomes entirely different when we remember that it has undoubtedly interacted with numerous other systems in the past and that the total wave function will certainly not be factorable. The same effect complicates the hidden variable account of the theory of measurement, when it is desired to include part of the 'apparatus' in the system. Bohm of course was well aware of these features of his scheme, and has given them much attention. However, it must be stressed that, to the present writer's knowledge, there is no proof that any hidden variable account of quantum mechanics must have this extraordinary character. It would therefore be interesting, perhaps, to pursue some further 'impossibility proofs,' replacing the arbitrary axioms objected to above by some condition of locality, or of separability of distant systems.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a theory in which parameters are added to quantum mechanics to determine the results of individual measurements, without changing the statistical predictions, there must be a mechanism whereby the setting of one measuring device can influence the reading of another instrument, however remote. Moreover, the signal involved must propagate instantaneously, so that such a theory could not be Lorentz invariant. Of course, the situation is different if the quantum mechanical predictions are of limited validity. Conceivably they might apply only to experiments in which the settings of the instruments are made sufficiently in advance to allow them to reach some mutual rapport by exchange of signals with velocity less than or equal to that of light. In that connection, experiments of the type proposed by Bohm and Aharonov, in which the settings are changed during the flight of the particles, are crucial.”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I expect that mathematicians have classified such s. Certainly they have been much used by physicists. But is there not something to be said for the approach of Euclid? Even now that we know that is (in some sense) not quite true? Is it not good to know what follows from what, even if it is not necessarily FAPP? Suppose for example that quantum mechanics were found to resist precise formulation. Suppose that when formulation beyond FAPP was attempted, we find an unmovable finger obstinately pointing outside the subject, to the mind of the observer, to the Hindu scriptures, to God, or even only Gravitation? Would that not be very, very interesting?”
John Stewart Bell (1928–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source