"I told Wheeler that I had had a number of conversations with Bell about quantum theory. "He’s a wonderful fellow," Wheeler noted. "Did he say to you," Wheeler asked, laughing, "‘I’d rather be clear and wrong, than foggy and right’?" I told Wheeler that Bell had not used exactly those words, but that it certainly sounded like him. I also told Wheeler that from the time that Bell began to study the quantum theory, he had conceptual problems with it, and that I had asked Bell if, at that time, he thought that the theory might simply be wrong—to which Bell had answered, "I hesitated to think it might be wrong, but I knew that it was rotten." At this, Wheeler burst into a marvelous peal of laughter. The idea of the young Bell rebelling against the "rottenness" of the quantum theory struck Wheeler as incredibly funny."
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CosmologistsPeople from BelfastAcademics from Northern IrelandStanford University facultyPhysicists from Northern Ireland
Original Language: English
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Jeremy Bernstein, "John Wheeler: Retarded Learner", in Quantum Profiles (1991)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Stewart_Bell
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John Stewart Bell
John Stewart Bell (June 28 1928 – October 10 1990) was an Irish physicist who worked in the field of particle physics at CERN, and who developed one of the most important theorems of quantum physics, Bell's Theorem.
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