"It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature."
— Niels Bohr
It Is Wrong To Think That
It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature.
About this quote
Niels Bohr expressed this epistemological position in conversations recorded by his assistant Aage Petersen, published in "The Philosophy of Niels Bohr" in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (September 1963). The statement is central to Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics — often called the Copenhagen Interpretation — which holds that quantum theory describes not an independently existing reality but the outcomes of experimental interactions between observers and the physical world.
Source
Quoted in The Philosophy of Niels Bohr by Aage Petersen, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1963)
