"Moreover, even when the chance of a particular event turns out to be extremely small, it is important to resist the idea that that event could not have occurred. Imagine that you own a ticket in a lottery with an extremely large number of tickets—a million, say—and that the lottery is decided by a fundamentally random process, one that has no underlying causal basis by which the outcome will be determined. (You might suppose that each ticket is associated with a specific atomic nucleus of some radioactive element, and that the prize will go to the person whose nucleus decays first.)"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Robert J. Fogelin, Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic (2010), Eighth Edition Chap. 20. Scientific Reasoning, p. 501
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Atomic_nucleus
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Atomic nucleus
4 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Atomic nucleus →
Related Quotes
"Although complex, the theory behind the practice of magnetic resonance spectroscopy is based on the fact that, when s…"
"The great explorer of complex rhythms and meters combined with a totally liberated spirit of dissonance, Edgar Varese…"
"But it is possible that certain species of primates are apt to go to pieces under conditions which lead them to effec…"
"Perhaps the best-known giant resonance in nuclei is the giant dipole resonance (GDR). The GDR is described in classic…"
"Nuclei interact with the external environment through a number of different fields—electromagnetic, weak and hadronic…"
"The spectrum of gamma-radiation emitted by a highly excited nucleus can be calculated in two ways. In the first metho…"
"A powerful method to study the properties of a system is to subject it to a weak external perturbation and to examine…"
"Maurice Goldhaber has emphasized that the situation with respect to possible nuclear resonances in (γ,n) or (γ,fissio…"
"The interpretation of these tracks as due to protons, or other heavier nuclei, is ruled out on the basis of range and…"
"In his theory of beta reactivity Fermi introduced a new type of interactions among elementary particles, which today …"