Eugene Wigner Quotes

It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.

The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.

The unreasonable efficiency of mathematics in science is a gift we neither understand nor deserve.

When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.

There are two kinds of people in the world: Johnny Von Neumann and the rest of us.

Solipsism may be logically consistent with present Quantum Mechanics, Monism in the sense of Materialism is not.

The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation of it.

The world is very complicated and it is clearly impossible for the human mind to understand it completely. Man has therefore devised an artifice which permits the complicated nature of the world to be blamed on something which is called accidental and thus permits him to abstract a domain in which simple laws can be found.

The simplicities of natural laws arise through the complexities of the language we use for their expression.

The great mathematician fully, almost ruthlessly, exploits the domain of permissible reasoning and skirts the impermissible. That his recklessness does not lead him into a morass of contradictions is a miracle in itself: certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin's process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.

[T]he laws of quantum mechanics itself cannot be formulated ... without recourse to the concept of consciousness.

The full meaning of life, the collective meaning of all human desires, is fundamentally a mystery beyond our grasp. As a young man, I chafed at this state of affairs. But by now I have made peace with it. I even feel a certain honor to be associated with such a mystery.

OK, so the computer has understood, but what about me ?

Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.

The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.

It's nice the know the computer understands the situation, but I would like to understand it too.