"Perhaps the most distinguished of 'why botherers has been Dirac (1963 Sci. American 208 May 45). He divided the difficulties of quantum mechanics into two classes, those of the first class and those of the second. The second-class difficulties were essentially the infinities of relativistic quantum field theory. Dirac was very disturbed by these, and was not impressed by the 'renormalisation' procedures by which they are circumvented. Dirac tried hard to eliminate these second-class difficulties, and urged others to do likewise. The first-class difficulties concerned the role of the 'observer', 'measurement', and so on. Dirac thought that these problems were not ripe for solution, and should be left for later. He expected developments in the theory which would make these problems look quite different. It would be a waste of effort to worry overmuch about them now, especially since we get along very well in practice without solving them."
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University of Cambridge facultyAgnosticsEngineers from EnglandMathematicians from EnglandPhysicists from England
Original Language: English
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John S. Bell, "Against 'mesurement'", Physics World (August 1990)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Dirac
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