PD Smith

Crazy science

03 August 2006 | Bohr, Doomsday Men, Pauli, Science | Post a comment

For the last week I’ve been going through the edit­ed ver­sion of Dooms­day Men. It’s nev­er easy see­ing your favourite lines struck through, but you reas­sure your­self with the thought that a bet­ter book will emerge at the end.

This is one lit­tle anec­dote that will prob­a­bly be con­signed to the cut­ting room floor:

Physi­cist Niels Bohr once greet­ed one of Wolf­gang Pauli’s lat­est the­o­ries with the com­ment: “We are all agreed that your the­o­ry is crazy. The ques­tion, which divides us, is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being cor­rect. My own feel­ing is that it is not crazy enough.”

But don’t wor­ry — there are plen­ty more where that came from…

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