A philosopher once said ‘It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results’. Well, they do not. You set up the circumstances, with the same conditions every time, and you cannot predict behind which hole you will see the electron. Yet science goes on in spite of it - although the same conditions do not always produce the same results. That makes us unhappy, that we cannot predict exactly what will happen. Incidentally, you could think up a circumstance in which it is very dangerous and serious, and man must know, and still you cannot predict. For instance we could cook up - we’d better not, but we could - a scheme by which we set up a photo cell, and one electron to go through, and if we see it behind hole No: 1 we set off the atomic bomb and start World War III, whereas if we see it behind hole No. 2 we make peace feelers and delay the war a little longer. Then the future of man would be dependent on something which no amount of science can predict. The future is unpredictable.
Richard Feynman
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário