right-handedness of God and other quantum magic.
She belonged to an honourable tradition of women theoretical physicists, though she claimed she had not made a single discovery, not even an insignificant one. Her task was to reflect and teach. Discoveries, she said, were now the ratrace end of science and, besides, they were for the young. There had been a scientific revolution this century and hardly anyone, even among the scientists themselves, was thinking it through. During the cold evenings of a disappointing spring she sat with him by the fire and told him how quantum mechanics would feminise physics, all science, make it softer, less arrogantly detached, more receptive to participating in the world it wanted to describe. She had pet topics, set pieces which she developed each time round. On the luxury and challenge of solitude, the ignorance of so-called artists, how informed wonder would have to become integral to the intellectual equipment of scientists. Science was Thelma’s child (Charles was another) for whom she held out great and passionate hopes and in whom she wished to instil gentler manners and a sweeter disposition. This child was on the point of growing up and learning to claim less for itself. The period of its frenetic, childish egotism – four hundred years! – was drawing to a close.
She took him step by step, using metaphors in place of mathematics, through the fundamental paradoxes, the kinds of things, she said, her first-year students were expected to know: how it could be demonstrated in the laboratory that something could be a wave and a particle at the same time; how particles appeared to be ‘aware’ of each other and seemed – in theory at least – to communicate this awarenessinstantaneously over immense distances; how space and time were not separable categories but aspects of one another, and likewise matter and energy, matter and the space it occupied, motion and time; how matter itself did not consist of tiny hard bits and was more like patterned movement; how the more you knew about something in detail, the less you knew about it in general. A lifetime’s teaching had instilled useful pedagogic habits. She paused regularly to find out if he was following her. As she spoke, her eyes scanned his face for total concentration. Inevitably she would discover that not only had he failed to understand, he had been daydreaming for fifteen minutes. This in turn could provoke another set piece. She would press forefinger and thumb to her forehead. A certain amount of play-acting was in order.
‘You ignorant pig!’ she might begin as Stephen set his face round contrition. Perhaps these were their moments of greatest intimacy. ‘A scientific revolution, no, an intellectual revolution, an emotional, sensual explosion, a fabulous story just beginning to unfold for us, and you and your kind won’t give it a serious minute of your time. People used to think the world was held up by elephants. That’s nothing! Reality, whatever that word means, turns out to be a thousand times stranger. Who do you want? Luther? Copernicus? Darwin? Marx? Freud? None of them has reinvented the world and our place in it as radically and bizarrely as the physicists of this century have. The measurers of the world can no longer detach themselves. They have to measure themselves too. Matter, time, space, forces – all beautiful and intricate illusions in which we must now collude. What a stupendous shake-up, Stephen. Shakespeare would have grasped wave functions, Donne would have understood complementarity and relative time. They would have been excited. What richness! They would have plundered this new science for their imagery. And they would have educated their audiences too. But you “arts” people, you’re not only ignorant of these magnificent things,you’re rather proud of knowing nothing. As far as I can make out, you think that some local, passing fashion like modernism – modernism! – is the
She belonged to an honourable tradition of women theoretical physicists, though she claimed she had not made a single discovery, not even an insignificant one. Her task was to reflect and teach. Discoveries, she said, were now the ratrace end of science and, besides, they were for the young. There had been a scientific revolution this century and hardly anyone, even among the scientists themselves, was thinking it through. During the cold evenings of a disappointing spring she sat with him by the fire and told him how quantum mechanics would feminise physics, all science, make it softer, less arrogantly detached, more receptive to participating in the world it wanted to describe. She had pet topics, set pieces which she developed each time round. On the luxury and challenge of solitude, the ignorance of so-called artists, how informed wonder would have to become integral to the intellectual equipment of scientists. Science was Thelma’s child (Charles was another) for whom she held out great and passionate hopes and in whom she wished to instil gentler manners and a sweeter disposition. This child was on the point of growing up and learning to claim less for itself. The period of its frenetic, childish egotism – four hundred years! – was drawing to a close.
She took him step by step, using metaphors in place of mathematics, through the fundamental paradoxes, the kinds of things, she said, her first-year students were expected to know: how it could be demonstrated in the laboratory that something could be a wave and a particle at the same time; how particles appeared to be ‘aware’ of each other and seemed – in theory at least – to communicate this awarenessinstantaneously over immense distances; how space and time were not separable categories but aspects of one another, and likewise matter and energy, matter and the space it occupied, motion and time; how matter itself did not consist of tiny hard bits and was more like patterned movement; how the more you knew about something in detail, the less you knew about it in general. A lifetime’s teaching had instilled useful pedagogic habits. She paused regularly to find out if he was following her. As she spoke, her eyes scanned his face for total concentration. Inevitably she would discover that not only had he failed to understand, he had been daydreaming for fifteen minutes. This in turn could provoke another set piece. She would press forefinger and thumb to her forehead. A certain amount of play-acting was in order.
‘You ignorant pig!’ she might begin as Stephen set his face round contrition. Perhaps these were their moments of greatest intimacy. ‘A scientific revolution, no, an intellectual revolution, an emotional, sensual explosion, a fabulous story just beginning to unfold for us, and you and your kind won’t give it a serious minute of your time. People used to think the world was held up by elephants. That’s nothing! Reality, whatever that word means, turns out to be a thousand times stranger. Who do you want? Luther? Copernicus? Darwin? Marx? Freud? None of them has reinvented the world and our place in it as radically and bizarrely as the physicists of this century have. The measurers of the world can no longer detach themselves. They have to measure themselves too. Matter, time, space, forces – all beautiful and intricate illusions in which we must now collude. What a stupendous shake-up, Stephen. Shakespeare would have grasped wave functions, Donne would have understood complementarity and relative time. They would have been excited. What richness! They would have plundered this new science for their imagery. And they would have educated their audiences too. But you “arts” people, you’re not only ignorant of these magnificent things,you’re rather proud of knowing nothing. As far as I can make out, you think that some local, passing fashion like modernism – modernism! – is the
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