Re: Great Truth and their Contraries

Robert Owen (rowen@technologist.com)
Thu, 25 Nov 1999 19:51:49 -0500

Damien Broderick wrote:

> >Niels Bohr, who declared that a great truth is a statement whose
> >opposite is also a great truth.
>
> It is a great truth that the earth orbits the sun. It is a great error (one
> believed in mistake for hundreds of thousands of years) that the sun orbits
> the earth (or, more strictly, that the earth does *not* orbit the sun).

Dear Damien,

I don't really regard the heliocentricity of our Solar System as a "great" "truth" -- I find it rather trivial --a bore, actually. Recall that Sherlock Holmes was of this opinion exactly.

On the other hand, "wave-particle duality" (Scroedinger & Heisenberg) and "The Principle of Complementarity" (Bohr) help make life interesting, don't you think?



Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA