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About My Quantum Experiment — John Horgan (The Science Writer)
About My Quantum Experiment

If you want to know why I wrote My Quantum Experiment, read the Introduction, subtitled “Old Man Gets More
Befuddled.” This section merely explains why I’m posting the book for free on this website.
Book-writing is, for me, an odd, contradictory enterprise. One part of me, which I exalt, struggles to convey, as clearly and
honestly as I can, how the world appears to me. Another part, of which I’m a little ashamed, hopes my book will make me
rich and famous. I fantasized about getting a big advance from a commercial publisher for My Quantum Experiment, as I
did for my first three books back in the 1990s. I yearned to be back in the game!
But that was not to be, so I’m publishing My Quantum Experiment online for free (although as with Mind-Body Problems,
which is also online, I plan to produce Kindle print and e-editions, for which I will charge). Once you get past the blow to
your ego and finances, self-publishing online is exhilarating, because you can write and illustrate your book as you choose,
https://johnhorgan.org/books/my-quantum-experiment[3/3/2023 4:04:41 PM]

without some asshole (other than yourself) second-guessing you.
I got help from the same guys who helped me put together Mind-Body Problems. My former student Frankie Guarini
designed the website for My Quantum Experiment, and my Russian pal Nikita Petrov created the groovy cover art (see
above). I love those guys. This book’s illustrations also include my iPhone photos of all manner of things, from the
Hoboken waterfront to technical diagrams inside my battered, marked-up textbooks. I hope these images, like the text,
convey gritty authenticity rather than amateurish incompetence. [1]
Notes
1.This is a footnote on footnotes. Most chapters of My Quantum Experiment (like those of Mind-Body Problems)
contain numbered footnotes, which consist of odds and ends that don’t fit into the main text. See Introduction, “Old
Man Gets More Befuddled,” for examples of what I mean.
Table of Contents
ABOUT MY QUANTUM EXPERIMENT
INTRODUCTION
Old Man Gets More Befuddled
CHAPTER ONE
The Strange Theory of
You and Me
CHAPTER TWO
Laziness
CHAPTER THREE
The Minus First Law
CHAPTER FOUR
I Understand That
I Can’t Understand
CHAPTER FIVE
Competence Without Comprehension

CHAPTER SIX
Reality Check
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Investment Principle
CHAPTER EIGHT
Order Matters
CHAPTER NINE
The Two-Body Problem
CHAPTER TEN
Entropy
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Mist
CHAPTER TWELVE
Thin Ice
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Irony
EPILOGUE
Thanksgiving
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Next
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Drawing by Nikita Petrov

Everything on this site is free, including Cross-Check and the books My Quantum Experiment and Mind-Body Problems
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Copyright © John Horgan. All rights reserved.

Introduction: Old Man Gets More Befuddled — John Horgan (The Science Writer)
About John Horgan

Table of
About Cross-Check
Content
s
ABOUT MY
QUANTUM
EXPERIMENT
INTRODUCTI
ON
Old Man Gets
More Befuddled
CHAPTER
ONE
The Strange
Theory of
You and Me
CHAPTER
TWO
Laziness
CHAPTER
INTRODUCTION THREE
The Minus First
Old Man Gets More Befuddled

Law
CHAPTER
FOUR
It was the fall of 2019, the pre-plague era, when my friend Robert Hutchinson asked me and my
I Understand
son Mac to trek with him through Namibia’s Fish River Canyon. Robert, a noble beast of a man,
That
had been diagnosed with liver cancer, and he wanted to embark on one last adventure before it
I Can’t
was too late. We planned to go the following spring, after my semester ended. The coronavirus
Understand
dashed our plans, and so on May 17, 2020, I finished posting final grades for my three classes in a
foul mood, cursing fate and wondering what to do on my summer break. I needed a project, CHAPTER
something to distract me from the pandemic and the horror show of American politics. FIVE
Competence
Glancing at Facebook, I noticed that Sabine Hossenfelder, an iconoclastic physicist I’d recently
Without
brought to my school to give a talk, had released a video on quantum mechanics. She promised
https://johnhorgan.org/books/my-quantum-experiment/introduction[3/3/2023 4:04:54 PM]

Comprehension
that in ten minutes, with a little “simple” math, she would explain the difference between
superposition and entanglement. Great, I thought, these quintessential quantum concepts have CHAPTER SIX
always puzzled me. But when I watched Sabine’s video, I didn’t get the math or technical terms. I Reality Check
felt dumb, as always when I try to grasp quantum mechanics.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Although I live and teach in Hoboken, New Jersey,
The Investment
I happened to be in New York City at the apartment
Principle
of my girlfriend. I’ll call her Emily. Sensing my
sour mood, she urged me to read a book she’d just CHAPTER
finished: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, EIGHT
by Elizabeth Gilbert. Normally, I shun self-help Order Matters
books. But Emily had just complained about my
tendency to dismiss her advice, so I grudgingly CHAPTER
Sabine Hossenfelder and me in opened Big Magic. To my surprise, the book NINE
Hoboken, New Jersey, in 2018. This absorbed me. Gilbert, a bestselling author, struggles The Two-Body
book is kind of her fault. like the rest of us. Curiosity is her most reliable Problem
means of overcoming fear and pain. She is happiest

CHAPTER
when curiosity transports her outside herself, and
TEN
she becomes absorbed in learning something new.
Entropy
Yeah, I thought, that’s what I need, to learn something new, something hard. But what?
CHAPTER
Immediately the answer came: I should learn quantum mechanics, really learn it, the way
ELEVEN
physicists learn it, with the math. The more I thought about this possibility, the more excited I
The Mist
got. Imagine how cool it would be to watch Sabine’s videos and know what she’s talking about!
And hey, maybe I can get a book out of this! CHAPTER
TWELVE
I decided to run my idea by Emily. She is a veteran of the book-publishing racket, and she’s a
Thin Ice
hard-ass. She rejects most of my book ideas as non-commercial and dumb, which to her amount
to the same thing. I felt nervous as I entered her bedroom, where she was lying on the bed CHAPTER
studying a book on herbal remedies. As I explained my idea to her, emphasizing that it had been THIRTEEN
inspired by Big Magic, Emily nodded. This sounded like a fun pandemic project, and books in Irony
this genre—old guy learns Greek or guitar or some other new trick—can do well. [1]
EPILOGUE
Thrilled by her positive response, I began excitedly chattering about superposition, entanglement Thanksgiving
and other topics I hoped to master. Emily asked if she would have to listen to me blathering about
physics for the next year; she hoped not (in vain, as it turned out). As she resumed reading her
book, I thanked her for her encouragement and returned to the living room. I opened a notebook
and began jotting down a plan of action for what I came to call my quantum experiment. This
book covers the experiment’s first 18 months.
Why Quantum Mechanics?
Quantum mechanics is a contradiction, an embarrassment, really, lurking at the heart of modern

knowledge. It is, on the one hand, a fantastically successful mathematical model of matter in
motion. Since its inception in the early 20th century, quantum mechanics has evolved into a clade
of theories describing events at the smallest and biggest scales, from the swerve of an electron to
the outrush of the cosmos. These advances emboldened physicists to seek a unified theory, also
called a final theory or theory of everything, that tells us how the universe, and hence we, came to
be.
Quantum physics has supercharged chemistry and material science, and it has spawned gadgets
that have transformed our lives, from hydrogen bombs to computer chips. Governments and
companies are now funneling billions of dollars into quantum computing, which seeks to harness
superposition and entanglement—those same confounding effects that Sabine Hossenfelder
promised to teach me in ten minutes—to produce machines with unprecedented power.
And yet quantum mechanics makes no sense. It upends our basic assumptions about what is real
and what is knowable. It challenges science’s axiomatic premise, that through meticulous
investigations we can arrive at an objective understanding of nature. Experts keep trying to
interpret the theory, to say what it means, but their conclusions are wildly divergent. Meanwhile,
quantum quacks claim the theory corroborates their pseudo-scientific, pseudo-medical, pseudo-
mystical claims. “Quantum” has become a pop-culture meme, a marketing cliché, which connotes
something that seems like magic but is super-scientific and beyond your comprehension.
In my decades as a science writer, I have often reported on physics, and especially on the search
for a unified theory, which thrilled me when I first learned about it. By the mid-1990s, I’d
decided that unified theories are just science fiction with equations, because they cannot be
experimentally tested. And all unified theories are quantum theories, which pose the same
paradoxes as plain old quantum mechanics. Physicists’ quest for a final revelation, which solves
the riddle of reality, is a dead end. So I argued in my book The End of Science.
Although I hated admitting it, I often felt uneasy about being so judgmental. Who the hell am I to
have opinions on physics? I majored in literature before going to graduate school in journalism. I
rely on experts to translate their technical knowledge into terms I can understand. I occasionally
toyed with the idea of studying real physics, with the math, but never seriously. That would be
too hard and take too long, and I had too many deadlines to meet, not to mention my duties as a
husband and father. Those were my excuses when I was a full-time science writer.
In 2005 I got a job teaching humanities courses (including science writing) at Stevens Institute of
Technology in Hoboken. This gig pays the bills and leaves me with plenty of time to indulge my
obsessions. I’m also divorced, my children grown and on their own. Emily and I, who met in
2009 after my marriage collapsed, keep separate apartments and value our time apart. The illness
of my friend Robert, not to mention the Covid pandemic, also had me dwelling on life’s
ephemerality. All of this is to say that the time was right in May 2020 for me to learn quantum
mechanics—or to try, before it was too late.
A note on nomenclature: Although I might say quantum physics or quantum theory now and then,

I prefer quantum mechanics for two reasons. First, that phrase refers to the theory invented in the
last century to account for experiments on matter and electromagnetism. That original, bare-bones
theory, which excludes the effects of relativity, is my focus; but all the later, fancier quantum
theories—including candidates for a theory of everything--share its puzzling features.
Second, I like the oxymoronic ring of quantum mechanics. Mechanics sounds clunky, old
fashioned, steam-punky, evoking pistons, sprockets, gears, a rigid determinism; whereas quantum
is futuristic, esoteric, ethereal. Jam quantum and mechanics together and you embody the ironies
of quantum mechanics.
About Doubt
The day after I watched Sabine Hossenfelder’s video on superposition and entanglement, I
reached out to her and other experts for guidance on what I should learn. I spent the summer of
2020 studying physics textbooks and doing exercises in calculus and linear algebra. In the fall of
2020, I took PEP553: Quantum Mechanics and Engineering Applications, a course offered at
Stevens Institute. Two classmates, Dean and Luis, became my study buddies.
In 2021, I crossed paths with Terry Rudolph, the

grandson of Erwin Schrodinger, of the equation and
cat. My encounter with Rudolph marked a turning
point in my project. Rescuing me from a bout of
gloom, when my experiment was on the verge of
collapse, Rudolph taught me quantum mechanics by
teaching me quantum computing, a field in which
he is deeply involved. Meanwhile, I filled a half
dozen 8-by-11-inch notebooks with what Emily
describes as my “scary Unabomber handwriting.”
This book is based on these notebooks, which
record my thoughts, second thoughts and Nth
thoughts on my studies.
When my experiment began, I had a few basic A sample of what my girlfriend calls my
questions in mind: Could an oldster like me, “scary Unabomber writing.” In this
starting more or less from scratch, learn the notebook entry, dated February 6, 2021,
mathematical principles underpinning superposition I wonder whether investigations of
and other quantum puzzles? If so, would that quantum mechanics will lead to an
knowledge alter my views of quantum mechanics infinite regress of what physicist Terry
and related theories? Would it make me reconsider Rudolph calls “mist” (explained in
my bleak take on physics’ future? The answer to Chapter Eleven). EOS stands for “End
these questions turned out to be yes. of Science.”
I’ve learned a lot about quantum mechanics. When

I re-watch Hossenfelder’s video on superposition and entanglement now, I get it. That is, I

recognize the terms she utters and even the equations she displays. She no longer loses me when
she says that the wave function, symbolized by Ψ, “is a complex valued function and from its
absolute square you calculate the probability of a measurement outcome.”
I can explain—and will explain, later in this book--how superposition and entanglement are
linked. Readers will become familiar with other concepts: imaginary and complex numbers;
matrices and vectors; Euler’s identity, the three-body problem and Bayesian probability. I’ll tell
you about conservation of information, otherwise known as the minus first law; and the principle
of least action, which I call the law of laziness. I’ll delve into qubits, the fuzzy chunks of
information that make quantum computing possible.
When my experiment began, Sabine Hossenfelder predicted that someday an interpretation of

quantum mechanics would be named after me. She was kidding, but I decided to take her
seriously. Toward the end of this book, I present my very own interpretation of quantum
mechanics.
But this book, I must warn you, isn’t about quantum mechanics, per se, so much as it is about my
efforts to understand the theory. Most physics authors present their conclusions as glossy finished
products, omitting their struggles and doubts. This book is about struggle and doubt. I tell the
story of my quantum experiment as a memoir, in the present tense, with all the emotional ups and
downs.
I riff on connections between physics and

happenings in my personal life and the wider world.
In the first year of my project, my father died.
Covid-19 swept across the planet, killing millions
of people. A contentious Presidential election
wracked my country. A white policeman killed a
black man in Minneapolis, triggering protests
nation-wide. The cancer of my friend Robert surged
and ebbed. Winding sinusoidally through all of this
was my relationship with Emily.
I began my experiment hoping to get away from

politics, the pandemic, the cacophonous human shit
show. Not to mention the hassle of love and
friendship. I wanted to retreat into the austere realm
of physics, where impersonal forces push particles
My buddy Robert Hutchinson. We never
back and forth. But my project kept dragging me
did make it to Namibia. Photo: Ruth
back into the messy human world. Quantum
Hutchinson.
mechanics forces us to ask, What is real? Life kept
reminding me that suffering is real, our yearning for
justice and freedom is real, love is real, even though these things are hard to find in physicists’

formulas.
I obsess, especially, over death. Several friends, when I disclosed this theme, asked, How is death
related to quantum mechanics? They seemed genuinely puzzled. Their puzzlement puzzles me,
because death, to my mind, is so self-evidently related to everything. Whether or not we
consciously brood over it, death is always there; it is the backdrop for all our ventures, including
our attempts to comprehend and control nature. And I’ve been brooding over death quite
consciously lately. Death and Quantum Mechanics could serve as a title for this book.
I could cite quantum interpretations to justify my subjective narrative style. QBism (pronounced
like the art movement) says quantum mechanics isn’t about reality; it is about our beliefs about
reality. Agential realism insists that quantum mechanics must be understood within its cultural,
political and ethical context. The relational interpretation says relations between things, and not
things in themselves, underpin everything.
But well before I encountered these ideas (which I’ll tell you more about later), I had decided that
when you try to interpret scientific theories, to say what they mean, you have left objectivity
behind and entered the realm of analogy and metaphor, of art, where subjectivity reigns. In this
realm, feelings matter. Our fears and desires can obscure the world, yes, they can mislead us, but
they can also guide us toward truth. Feelings can even embody truth—or so I came to suspect
during my quantum experiment.
Weirdness
While I have learned a lot during my experiment, I have also unlearned a lot. I’ve always been
obsessed with the limits of knowledge, with what we can and can’t know. My struggle to
understand quantum mechanics makes me wonder whether we understand anything. I’ve become
acutely aware of how language, including mathematics, the language of numbers, conceals as it
reveals. Another warning: This project has rekindled my youthful passion for poetry, which
expresses the inexpressible.
Quantum mechanics is often described as “weird,” meaning strange, inexplicable, improbable.

But Newton’s theory of gravity is pretty weird, too. Chunks of matter separated by vast spans of
space tug on each other? Come on, tell me another one. And Einstein’s theory of gravity, which
replaced Newton’s, renders space and time pliable. Totally weird. [2]
Far, far weirder are the things these theories

describe. The universe, the Milky Way, the Sun,
Earth and Moon. The Hudson River, which I can
see outside my window when I’m home in
Hoboken. The Freedom Tower, rising above the
Manhattan skyline where the Twin Towers once
stood. The ferries churning back and forth across
the river. Weirdest of all are the creatures on those

ferries--and that should not be surprising. We are,

after all, made of quarks and electrons, weird
quantum stuff.
Ikkyu, a 15th-century Zen sage, defined

enlightenment as paying attention. The biggest
barrier to paying attention is habituation. We get Sunrise as seen from my apartment in
accustomed to the world. We plod through our lives Hoboken. That is the Freedom Tower
like automatons, even when it comes to tasks that rising above the Hudson River and
are meaningful to us. Finish grading this batch of Manhattan skyline.
freshman papers. Buy your girlfriend chocolate for
Valentine’s Day. Email your friend to ask how his
new chemo is going.
I’ve gone to great lengths to disrupt my habituation. I’ve chanted mantras on a Buddhist retreat,
chewed peyote on a Navajo reservation, drunk ayahuasca on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. These
interventions usually have fleeting effects. Studying quantum mechanics has disrupted my
habituation in a way that feels permanent. The theory is riddled with contradictions; it mocks our
confidence that we know anything about anything. If habituation is the problem, quantum
mechanics is the solution, precisely because it defies solution.
My son Mac, who climbs rocks, says rock-climbers separate experiences into three categories:
1. Fun when you’re doing it and fun to remember.
2. Not much fun when you’re doing it but fun to remember.
3. Not fun when you’re doing it and not fun to remember.
Type-3 experiences usually involve serious injury or death. Hard-core climbers, Mac informs me,
think type-3 experiences are the most fun of all, if you define fun as profoundly meaningful.
Compared to scaling El Capitan, which my son has done, or trekking through Namibia’s Fish
River Canyon, my project has been humdrum. For the most part, I lie on my couch reading and
writing. Weather permitting, I might take a collapsible chair into a park and study Quick Calculus
as children cavort around me. Also, I have studied quantum mechanics in its most rudimentary
form. Thousands of youngsters at my school and elsewhere learn the theory with little fuss year
after year.
My quantum experiment has nonetheless been one

of my life’s great adventures. Now and then I felt
too old, stupid and depressed to continue—for
example, while trying to do homework for PEP553:
Quantum Mechanics and Engineering Applications.
Maybe those were type-2 experiences. But for the

most part this project has been fun, and more. It has
given me a sense of purpose when the world
That red speck is my son Mac climbing
seemed to be falling apart.
El Capitan in 2018. Fail to learn
quantum mechanics, you feel dumb. Fail More than a year after my experiment began, Bob
to climb a mountain, you can end up Wright, a fellow seeker and writer, invited me onto
dead. Photo: Tom Evans of El Cap his podcast, Meaningoflife.tv. Wright, author of the
Report. bestseller Why Buddhism Is True, has found his
path. But he has always been curious about
quantum mechanics, and he wanted to know if I’d
reached any grand conclusions about it. I told Bob that the more I ponder quantum mechanics, the
more befuddled I get, and not just about quantum mechanics. Wright, a canny fellow, said with a
sly grin that “Old man gets more befuddled” doesn’t seem like a very happy ending for my
project. Yeah, I replied, but that’s not a bad description of my experiment: Old man gets more
befuddled. [3]
That’s not a bad description of my life, either, it occurs to me now. And if befuddlement isn’t a
happy ending, that’s because it’s not an ending. Befuddlement keeps me going, it nudges me out
of my torpor, it forces me to pay attention to this weird, weird world before it’s gone.
Notes
1.A savvy agent, who tried to sell this book for me, advised me not to disclose that I began
my quantum experiment with the goal of writing a book about it; readers would find that
motive impure. But I am a writer, so my motives are always impure. Whatever I do,
whatever happens to me, I’m thinking, Can I write about this? That’s why this chapter
includes the exchange between me and Emily about whether my project might become a
book.
2.Spooky Action at a Distance, the 2015 book by physics writer George Musser, does a great
job showing how Newtonian gravity and other pre-quantum theories anticipate the
paradoxes of quantum mechanics, such as nonlocality.
3.The savvy agent (see note 1) agreed with Bob Wright that “old man gets more befuddled”
isn’t a great payoff for a book with commercial aspirations. Why would anyone want to
read a book by an author who admits he is befuddled? Good question.
← Previous Next →

Everything on this site is free, including Cross-Check and the books My Quantum Experiment and Mind-Body Problems. You

support my writing simply by reading and reacting to it—and telling others about it. If you want to donate to a worthy cause, check
out WORLDBEYONDWAR.ORG.

Chapter One: The Strange Theory of You and Me — John Horgan (The Science Writer)
About John Horgan

Table of
About Cross-Check
Content
s
ABOUT MY
QUANTUM
EXPERIMENT
INTRODUCTI
ON
Old Man Gets
More Befuddled
CHAPTER
ONE
The Strange
Theory of
You and Me
CHAPTER
TWO
Laziness
CHAPTER
CHAPTER ONE THREE
The Minus First
The Strange Theory of

Law
CHAPTER
You and Me FOUR
I Understand
May 18, 2020. In a state of excitement tinged with dread, I reach out to five quantum experts with That
whom I am on friendly terms. Three are physicists, one is a philosopher of physics with a I Can’t
doctorate in physics, another a journalist with a master’s in mathematics. Perhaps I should wrap Understand
“expert” in scare quotes, because no one really understands quantum mechanics, or so says
CHAPTER
supreme expert Richard Feynman. But my advisors know much, much more about quantum
FIVE
mechanics than I do. I send each expert a version of this email:
Competence
Dear [____], Without
https://johnhorgan.org/books/my-quantum-experiment/chapter-one[3/3/2023 4:04:28 PM]

Comprehension
I've often fantasized about learning quantum mechanics, not in a half-assed, metaphorical,
science-writerly way but really, with the math. Now I’m thinking of actually doing this. It CHAPTER SIX
would be in the genre of the old guy trying to stave off mortality, except instead of climbing Reality Check
Everest I learn what a wave function really is. I was a literature major in college, who took
CHAPTER
one course in physics and another in calculus, forty years ago. Two questions: 1. Do you
SEVEN
think my project is feasible? 2. If so, how should I proceed?
The Investment
Best, John Principle
Part of me imagines the advisors reacting: Fat chance, you old fool. You only think you can do CHAPTER
this because you’re dumb. If you were smarter, you’d know you’re not smart enough to pull this EIGHT
off. If they’re really mean, they might encourage my project to have the pleasure of watching me Order Matters
flop. No, I’m being paranoid. Two physics professors emphasize that I’ll need lots of
CHAPTER
mathematics. I’ll require, especially, a grasp of calculus and linear algebra. I studied algebra in
NINE
high school, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t cover linear algebra. I took a calculus course in college
The Two-Body
40 years ago, but I remember virtually nothing from it, except that it’s about rates of change of
Problem
rates of change. Something like that.
CHAPTER
Sabine Hossenfelder and Jim Holt give me the kind of specific advice I’m seeking. Hossenfelder
TEN
is the physicist whose video on entanglement and superposition inspired this project. Holt,
Entropy
technically, is a mere journalist, like me, but he has a master’s in mathematics, and he’s
intimidatingly clever. Hossenfelder and Holt independently recommend the same book: Quantum CHAPTER
Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum by physicist Leonard Susskind and a co-author. The ELEVEN
book’s subtitle says it delivers What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics. Holt says The Mist
Susskind provides the math needed to get entanglement, uncertainty and other key quantum
CHAPTER
concepts; nothing extraneous, hence the subtitle.
TWELVE
A blurb from Science News says that “if you’re banished to a desert island” with Susskind’s book, Thin Ice
you could eventually “master quantum mechanics.” The Covid-19 pandemic has banished me to
CHAPTER
my apartment in Hoboken and Emily’s in Manhattan. Our apartments are like desert islands with
THIRTEEN
couches, air conditioning and internet service. Although the pandemic has temporarily (I hope)
Irony
shut down ferry service between Hoboken and Manhattan, I can reach Emily via the PATH train,
which scoots under the Hudson. EPILOGUE
Thanksgiving
I love the irony of learning quantum mechanics from Leonard Susskind, with whom I once
tangled. Before I describe our spat, a little context. As any pop-physics book will tell you, modern
physics is now split between quantum theory, which accounts for electromagnetism and the weak
and strong nuclear forces; and general relativity, which describes gravity. Quantum theory and
relativity are expressed in different mathematical languages, which are hard to translate into each
other. The theories depict reality in different ways: the quantum world is lumpy, the relativistic
one smooth and continuous.
Physicists yearn for a single, “unified” theory that accounts for all the forces. Just as electricity
and magnetism are two aspects of a single force, so electromagnetism, the nuclear forces and

gravity are manifestations of a single primal, cosmic force. So physicists assume. Decades ago,
they discovered a promising unified theory, which holds that all particles and forces, and even
space and time, stem from tiny strings wriggling at the bottom of things. String theory, as it came
to be called, implies that there are many extra dimensions of space in addition to the three we
inhabit.
I first learned about string theory in the 1980s, when my career as a science writer was beginning,
and the hutzpah of it dazzled me. Enthusiasts called string theory a “theory of everything,”
because it might help explain how our universe came to be, and why it takes a form that allows
for our existence. Amazing! Physics seemed poised to replace religion once and for all as a source
of answers to our deepest questions.
At some point, I realized that physicists believe in string theory because of its mathematical
virtues, and especially its symmetries, rather than evidence from experiments. Something is
symmetric if it looks the same when you transform it by, say, rotating it. Just as you can see the
spherical, three-dimensional symmetry of Earth by rising far above its surface, so you can see the
symmetry of our four-dimensional spacetime from the perspective of even higher dimensions. So
string theorists allege. Unfortunately, the infinitesimal strings postulated by string theory, as well
as the extra dimensions, lie far beyond the reach of any observations. That’s why I began bashing
string theory in the 1990s. If it can’t be tested, I asked, is it science?
Okay, back to my run-in with Susskind. In a 2005 essay for The New York Times, “In Defense of
Common Sense,” I chided scientists for denigrating common sense as a guide for understanding
reality. Yes, quantum mechanics and general relativity seem to violate common sense, but that
doesn’t mean common sense is worthless when it comes to judging scientific claims. So I argued.
As an example, I mentioned string theory and multiverse theories; the latter are a consequence of
string theory and other conjectures, such as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum
mechanics. I asserted that
no conceivable experiment can confirm the theories, as most proponents reluctantly

acknowledge. The strings… are too small to be discerned by any buildable instrument, and
the parallel universes are too distant. Common sense thus persuades me that these avenues
of speculation will turn out to be dead ends.
I’d been making these sorts of arguments for years in The End of Science and other writings. Not
surprisingly, advocates of string and multiverse theories, including Susskind, resented my attacks,
especially given my utter ignorance of the theories’ mathematical charms. On “The Edge,” an
online forum for scientists and hangers-on like me, Susskind took a swipe at my Times essay. He
wrote:
Instead of dyspeptically railing against what he plainly does not understand, Horgan would
do better to take a few courses in algebra, calculus, quantum mechanics, and string theory.
He might then appreciate, even celebrate, the wonderful and amazing capacity of the
human mind to find uncommon ways to comprehend the incomprehensible.

At the time, I dismissed Susskind’s rebuke. I likened it to Freudians’ complaints that you can’t
criticize Freud unless you’ve been psychoanalyzed--that is, indoctrinated into the cult. By the
Freudians’ logic, and Susskind’s, only experts and not uppity journalists are qualified to judge the
work of other experts. How convenient for them.
But now, 15 years later, I’m finally taking Susskind’s advice and learning quantum mechanics, by
reading his book! Will undergoing indoctrination by Susskind make me more sympathetic toward
string and multiverse theories? Will he change my attitude toward physics as a whole? And
toward common sense—whatever that is--as a guide for understanding reality? We’ll see. My
confirmation biases have deep roots. But I would love to “comprehend the incomprehensible,” as
Susskind put it to me on Edge.org.
Susskind was probably being sarcastic when he urged me to learn string theory as well as
quantum mechanics. String theory is notoriously difficult. It took years for the string-theory guru
Edward Witten to master the theory. In terms of sheer brainpower, Witten is considered one of
the greatest physicists ever, in the same league as Newton and Einstein. So forget string theory. I
might as well decide, after never playing guitar, that in my sixties I’ll learn to play like Jimi
Hendrix.
Another point: all quantum theories share the same puzzling features as their progenitor, quantum
mechanics. That goes for string theory as well as the so-called standard model of particle physics,
which provides a detailed description of electromagnetism and the nuclear forces. The standard
model, unlike string theory, has been repeatedly confirmed by experiments in particle
accelerators, which smash matter into smaller and smaller bits.
Physicist David Mermin once asserted that particle physics, in spite of its triumphs, has not
advanced much beyond quantum mechanics. “All particle physics has taught us about the central
mystery is that quantum mechanics still works,” Mermin wrote in Physics Today in 1990.
“Perfectly, as far as anyone can tell. What a letdown!” So to understand plain old quantum
mechanics is to understand all the fancier quantum theories.
Finally, most believers in a unified theory predict that, whatever form it takes, it will be a
quantum theory. Take the Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg. He helped construct the standard
model, and he was a leader in the quest for a unified theory. In his 1993 book Dreams of a Final
Theory, Weinberg said a unified theory would serve as the culmination of “the ancient search for
those principles that cannot be explained in terms of deeper principles.” Weinberg expects this
final theory to be a quantum theory. No matter where physics goes, Weinberg once told me, “I
think we’ll be stuck with quantum mechanics.” [1]
So I’m setting my sights on quantum mechanics, and only quantum mechanics. That will be hard
enough. Fuck string theory.
Feynman and QED

After ordering Quantum Mechanics: The

Theoretical Minimum from Amazon, I’m restless,
eager to get started. I can’t wait until Susskind’s
book arrives. I walk from my Hoboken apartment to
my office at Stevens Institute, where I keep science-
y books I’ve accumulated during my career. This is
the first time I’ve been on campus since the Covid-
19 pandemic struck in March. The school, devoid
of people, feels ghostly and sad.
One wall of my office is lined, floor-to-ceiling, with

books that helped me write my books. I look for a
physics book to occupy me while I’m waiting for
Susskind’s text to arrive, something non-technical
that can serve as a warm-up exercise before my
marathon begins. I spot QED: The Strange Theory
My battered copy of QED. Why the oil
of Light and Matter, by Richard Feynman. QED
slick on the cover? Answer below.
stands for quantum electrodynamics, a theory that
Feynman helped invent and for which he won a
Nobel Prize. Quantum electrodynamics is a powerful extension of quantum mechanics, which
allows physicists to calculate the interaction of matter with light and other forms of
electromagnetism.
Feynman, who died in 1988, was a legendary problem-solver. He worked on the Manhattan
Project as a young man, and he helped figure out why the Challenger space shuttle exploded in
1986. When physics seemed to be at an impasse in the 1950s, he invented mathematical methods
that made calculations easier and led to quantum electrodynamics. He was one of the first
physicists to foresee the potential of quantum computing. He often pops up on lists of the greatest
physicists of all time. A bestselling biography about him, by science writer James Gleick, is titled
Genius.
Feynman was also a great communicator. He wrote many books, most adapted from lectures, for
physicists and lay readers. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter is an edited version of
lectures Feynman gave to non-physicists in New Zealand in 1979. A blurb on the cover by Philip
Morrison, another distinguished physicist, who reviewed books for Scientific American, says
Feynman “undertakes without one equation to explain QED to the generality of readers.” QED is
a slender little paperback, only 158 pages long, published in 1988. I obtained it in the early 1990s
when I was writing an article on quantum mechanics for Scientific American. [2]
Once I start reading QED, I vaguely recall giving up on it in the 1990s because it was too hard. I
spend a weekend reading and re-reading the book, scribbling in the margins and front pages and
in a notebook. I try to absorb difficult riffs by paraphrasing them, translating them into my own
words. This, I suspect, will be how I read during my quantum experiment: laboriously. I can’t

blame Feynman. He conveys information with the blunt, witty, self-deprecating clarity for which
he is famous. He seems constitutionally incapable of bullshit.
It’s hard to summarize what Feynman says when his explanations are already so lean, stripped-
down, but I’ll do my best. Early on, Feynman, the ultimate physics insider, voices the opinion that
endears him to outsiders like me. He tells his audience of non-physicists that we will not be able
to understand quantum theory. But we shouldn’t feel bad, he adds, because “my physics students
don’t understand it either. That is because I don’t understand. Nobody does.”
When Feynman says we can’t understand quantum theory, he means that we can’t understand
nature. Quantum electrodynamics, he assures us, describes almost everything in nature, omitting
only gravity and radioactivity. Experiments have verified its accuracy over and over. But the
world revealed by quantum theory is “crazy” and “strange,” Feynman says, it “goes against
common sense.” (There it is again, the violation of common sense.) Quantum mechanics
describes how nature works but not why. “I can’t explain why Nature behaves in this absurd
way,” Feynman writes. “I hope you can accept Nature as She is—absurd.” (Note the
feminization of Nature.)
Physicists resort to elaborate mathematical “tricks” to calculate results, Feynman says. Learning
these tricks usually takes seven years, including four years of undergraduate study and three years
of graduate work. (Gulp.) Although the tricks work extraordinarily well, they often obscure what
they purport to represent. So rather than teaching us the fancy math tricks, Feynman is going to
focus on the physical stuff, the real-world things, to which the tricks correspond. By the time he’s
done explaining quantum electrodynamics to us, we might “understand it better than do some of
the students!” Note the subtle suggestion here that advanced mathematics can impede
understanding.
Feynman stakes out a strong position on whether quantum stuff consists of particles or waves.
Both, depending on how you look at it, according to Nils Bohr, the obscure oracle of quantum
mechanics. Feynman rejects Bohr’s stance, asserting that Newton was right when he
hypothesized that light consists of “corpuscles,” particles in modern parlance. Physicists can
observe single particles of light, called photons, plinking against a detector one by one. Yes, some
quantum behavior seems wavy, but light consists of little lumps, like raindrops.
To introduce us to the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, Feynman describes how lumps of light
reflect off a pane of glass. What could be simpler? Actually, “a piece of glass is a terrible monster
of complexity,” Feynman says. He outlines an experiment in which light of a certain color is
aimed straight down at a block of glass with a detector embedded inside it. Ninety-four percent of
the light passes through the surface of the glass to the detector in the glass. Four percent of the
light bounces off the surface of the glass back to another detector.

Feynman’s explanations seem simple at first but get harder and harder. Just explaining partial
reflection of light off a pane of glass takes you deep into quantum mysteries.
This partial reflection already poses a puzzle; it is almost as though each photon “decides” or
“makes up its mind,” Feynman says, whether to bounce off the surface of the glass or pass
through it. The actual significance of partial reflection is that “physics, a science of great
exactitude, has been reduced to calculating only the probability of an event.”
Things get “absolute mind-boggling” if you do the experiment with panes of glass of varying
thickness. If the pane is just the right thickness, 4 percent of the light will bounce off the outer
surface of the glass, and another 4 percent will bounce off the inner surface of the glass, for a
total reflection of 8 percent. Big deal, you say? Well, look what happens when you vary the
thickness of the glass, making it thinner or thicker in tiny increments. The light reflecting back to
the detector varies from 0 percent to 16 percent. If you keep making the glass thicker, this pattern
recurs, with the reflected light undulating between 0 and 16 percent.
Image showing how the percentage of light reflected off panes of glass varies with panes’

thickness. If light consisted of waves, this oscillation could be explained as an effect of wave
interference, but Feynman insists that light consists of particles, called photons. Quantum
interference stems from interference not of actual, physical waves but of waves of probabilities.
Weird, huh?
These results might convince you that light takes the form of waves. Ordinary water waves, when
they crisscross, can alter each other, their crests getting bigger or smaller or canceling each other
out entirely; this effect is known as wave interference. Maybe the waves bouncing off the outer
and inner surfaces of the glass interfere with each other in ways that vary with the thickness of the
glass, producing the fluctuations in reflection. But no, Feynman reminds us, other experiments
establish that light consists of particles. Raindrops.
Something stranger than ordinary wave interference is happening. The key to the mystery, again,
is that quantum mechanics “permits us to calculate only probabilities.” How do physicists
calculate probabilities? Okay, here goes: Feynman asks us to imagine that each photon
corresponds to an arrow with a length between zero and one. The length of this arrow is called a
“probability amplitude.” To get the probability of what the photon will do, you square the
probability amplitude; that is, you multiply it by itself. In the case of a photon reflecting off a
single surface, the arrow has a length of 0.2, which yields a probability of 0.2 squared, which
comes to .04 or 4 percent, which is the amount of light reflected off the glass.
But when you aim the photon at a pane of glass, you have to calculate the odds of two possible
paths, corresponding to reflection off the outer surface and inner surface. To make this
calculation, Feynman asks us to imagine that the arrow associated with each photon is whirling
around and around with a rotational velocity that depends on the color of the light. The direction
of the arrow, which changes as a function of time, matters.
The arrow is pointing in one direction when it reaches the outer glass surface, but it has rotated
further by the time it reaches the second, inner surface. To calculate what the photon will do, you
add the two arrows, which means simply placing them end to end. If the arrows point in the same
direction, they produce a new arrow twice as long. If they are pointing in opposite directions, they
cancel each other out. Or they might form two arms of a triangle; the new arrow is the third arm
of the triangle. In each case, you get a new arrow and hence a new probability amplitude. When
you square it, you get a probability ranging from 0 to 16 percent, depending on the thickness of
the glass.
This, at any rate, is how I understand the glass-pane experiment, after repeatedly writing down
paraphrases of it. Feynman knows how “ridiculous” his explanation sounds. What are those
arrows and the whirligigs within which they go round and round? Do the whirligigs correspond to
anything in nature, or are they just useful mathematical tools? And why do we have to square the
length of the arrows to compute the probability of what a photon will do? Why probabilities at all,
and not certainties? That’s just the way it is, Feynman reiterates. The math works, but no one can
say why.

Feynman uses little whirling arrows, which I call “whirligigs,” to calculate the probability that
light will reflect off a pane of glass. The whirligigs correspond to something called phase, which
is the relative position of a wave on a timeline, but Feynman doesn’t mention phase, perhaps
because he wants us to think of the light as particles.
Shut Up and Calculate!
Sidebar on a big question: should physics make sense? Is understanding important? Einstein
thought so. For him, physics is all about understanding, and not just for those trained in physics.
Einstein once told a colleague that theories, if not their mathematical details, should be explicable
to a child. One of the ironies of 20th-century physics is that quantum mechanics, for which
Einstein served as a midwife, defies understanding even for physicists. That is why Einstein
hoped quantum mechanics would yield to a deeper, more sensible theory.
Some physicists, on the other hand, seem to like quantum mechanics precisely because it makes
no sense. They fetishize their field’s incomprehensibility and inaccessibility, its violation of
common sense, perhaps to enhance their sense of their own specialness. This snooty attitude
provoked me into writing “In Defense of Common Sense” for The New York Times back in 2005.
Many physics professors also take a strictly utilitarian, practical attitude toward physics, and
especially quantum mechanics. These professors urge students to master the theory’s technical
details and apply that knowledge to build stuff, like quantum computers. Quantum mechanics
works, and that’s all that matters; trying to make sense of it is a waste of time. This no-nonsense

attitude is often expressed as a command: Shut up and calculate!
David Mermin coined Shut up and calculate! in a 1989 column for Physics Today. Mermin is the
guy I quote above saying that particle physics merely confirms quantum mechanics. He notes that
many of his colleagues disdain philosophical inquiry into quantum mechanics, because it has
fostered “anti-intellectualism” and “know-nothingism.” Some idiots think quantum mechanics
means that “everything is uncertain” and “anything goes,” Mermin harrumphs, when in fact the
theory “permits us to make the most accurate calculations in the history of science.”
Mermin nonetheless rejects the shut-up-and-calculate mindset; he insists that trying to make
sense of quantum mechanics is worthwhile and even essential. “I would rather celebrate the
strangeness of quantum mechanics than deny it,” he writes. The theory raises “intriguing
questions about the limitations in how we think and how we are capable of apprehending the
world.”
Feynman, because of his insistence that no one understands quantum mechanics, is often credited
with coining Shut up and calculate. After all, he did warn that seeking understanding will take
you “down the drain into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped.” But if Feynman
adhered to Shut up, he would not have written books like QED, which explain quantum
mechanics to the masses. Feynman’s passion for understanding is evident in all his lectures and
writings; he is just unusually honest in acknowledging that physics can only take us so far.
Feynman, I can’t help pointing out, didn’t like string theory. An interviewer asked for his opinion
of the theory in 1988, shortly before his death from cancer. Feynman acknowledged that old
physicists often make fools of themselves by resisting new ideas, like string theory. But he felt
strongly that string theory “is crazy and in the wrong direction.”
Oil Slicks and Peacocks
During my first time through QED, Feynman’s distinctive New Yawk voice, his wit and candor,
keep me going. But reading requires a sustained focus that, after a while, makes my eyes and
brain ache. QED reminds me of a dense piece of literature, like Ulysses. But Joyce trains you how
to read him. His prose becomes a kind of music; you get the rhyme of it if not the reason. Also,
Ulysses traffics in familiar human concerns: love, sex, food, drink, music, religion, politics,
commerce, death.
The rhyme and reason of Feynman’s prose and diagrams elude me, and the reality that he
describes seems hopelessly abstract and inhuman. Feynman introduces concepts and terms that
are new to me, and he says nothing about concepts with which I’m familiar, such as the collapse
of the wave function, which supposedly happens when you make a measurement. I spend a lot of
time staring at the whirligigs used for calculating probabilities. My guess is that these whirligigs
represent wave functions, and the spinning arrows are related to mathematical objects called
vectors. But I’m not sure. Presumably Leonard Susskind’s book on quantum mechanics will
enlighten me.

My second time through Feynman, the logic is more apparent, the way he starts with simple
things and moves on to more complicated things. But the ideas still often seem arbitrary,
disconnected. I learn to suppress my puzzlement. For example, when Feynman describes light
bouncing off either the outer surface of a pane of glass or its inner surface, I wonder: Wouldn’t
some light get trapped inside the pane, bouncing off its two inner surfaces? When Feynman
doesn’t address this possibility, I assume I’m missing something because I’m stupid. When
Feynman, in a later lecture, says that light does indeed get trapped inside the pane, bouncing back
and forth inside the inner surfaces, I feel vindicated in a half-hearted way.
These tiny triumphs keep me going. So does Feynman’s linkage of quantum effects to familiar
sights, like the rainbow-hued reflection of sunlight off an oily puddle. A film of oil covering a
puddle, Feynman explains, resembles a pane of glass of varying thickness. Sunlight falling on the
slick consists of many colors, whose whirligigs rotate at different speeds. In one spot, the oil slick
acts like a pane of glass that amplifies red light and suppresses other colors. Elsewhere, the slick
amplifies green, yellow or blue light.
Ah, so that is why my edition of QED shows a swirly, multi-hued oil slick on its cover (see image
above). The same basic quantum effect, Feynman says, explains the iridescence of soap bubbles
and the feathers of hummingbirds and peacocks. Magical quantum effects aren’t confined to
laboratories, they surround us. We live in a quantum world. Cool.
The Mind-Body Problem
Let me go back for a moment to physicists’ dream of a unified theory, a.k.a. final theory, a.k.a
theory of everything. Physicists hope such a theory will solve the riddle of existence. What would
that mean, exactly? I used to think it meant telling us why there is something rather than nothing,
that is, why the universe exists. Now I think a theory of everything should answer a deeper, more
pointed question: why does mind exist? After all, without mind, there might as well be nothing.
The question of how mind and matter are linked is known as the mind-body problem. Scientists
and philosophers have proposed all sorts of solutions to the mind-body problem, but none is very
persuasive. Philosophers fret over the “explanatory gap” between objective, physical happenings
in the brain, such as electrochemical pulses jumping from neuron to neuron; and subjective,
mental happenings, like perceptions, feelings, memories, decisions. The gap between matter and
mind is more like an abyss.
Some scientists think quantum mechanics can span

the abyss. The physicist Roger Penrose has
proposed a unified theory that, as a bonus, solves
the mind-body problem; the theory holds that
consciousness stems from wave functions
oscillating within cellular structures called
microtubules. But this theory hasn’t won many

adherents.
Discussions of the mind-body problem can get

forbiddingly technical, but it comes down to a
simple question: What are we? Priests and gurus
I poke at the mind-body knot in my 2018 say we’re souls headed for heaven or hell or
book Mind-Body Problems, with an “s.” reincarnation as cockroaches or movie stars.
Scientists say we are gene clusters sculpted by
natural selection, or software programs, or prissy
egos keeping a lid on nasty ids. As we try to figure out what we are, we inevitably end up
confronting two related questions: What can we be, and what should we be? Surely any theory of
everything worthy of the name should shed light on these questions.
QED: The Strange Theory of You and Me says nothing about the mind-body problem. But as I
read it, I wonder whether quantum effects give rise to my thoughts about quantum mechanics.
One day, perhaps, quantum mechanics might explain my girlfriend’s effervescent moods, just as
it explains the iridescence of soap bubbles and hummingbirds.
Emily is amused when I mention this idea to her. I’m at her apartment, lying beside her in bed.
Noticing Feynman’s QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter in my lap, she says that if I
write a book on quantum mechanics, I should call it The Strange Theory of You and Me. That’s
not a bad idea. If I learn more about quantum mechanics, maybe Emily will become less puzzling
to me. She can’t be more puzzling.
Quantum Physics for Babies
I am still slogging through Feynman’s QED when I get a book in the mail: Quantum Physics for
Babies. Robert, the friend with whom I’d planned to go to Namibia, ordered the book for me after
I whined about how hard it is to understand quantum mechanics. Quantum Physics for Babies hits
the spot; it is a welcome respite from Feynman. And Babies drives home a point that Feynman
made implicitly in his discussion of light: nature is not infinitely divisible, it’s lumpy.
Chris Ferrie, the author of Babies, is a physicist and father of “four budding young scientists.” His
book consists of 22 captioned drawings. The drawings show that ordinary balls, like ones you
throw and catch, are made of smaller balls, atoms, which are in turn made of even smaller balls:
neutrons, protons and electrons.
The protons and neutrons are drawn as a cluster of

purple and red balls, which form the nucleus of the
atom. The nucleus is orbited by blue balls, the
electrons. “An electron can be here,” one picture
says, showing an electron orbiting close to the
nucleus. “Or here. Or here,” say the next two
pictures, which show the electron in wider orbits.

“But an electron cannot be here,” says a picture

showing the electron hovering between two
previous orbits.
“All electrons have energy,” the book says.

Electrons “take” a certain amount of energy to jump
to a higher energy level, indicated by more distant
My copy of Babies came with a note orbits, and they “give” energy when they drop to a
from Robert, at the bottom of this photo. lower orbit, or energy level. “This amount of energy
He tells me to ask his wife Ruth is a quantum,” the book concludes. Ah, there it is,
Copeland, a former rock star, to sing the quantum, the little lump that underlies the
“Leonard Susskind’s beloved vaudeville jumps, the discontinuities at the bottom of things.
ditty, ‘My baby just fell down the Light is lumpy too; it consists of photons. Droplets.
wormhole!’” Robert always had a
strange sense of humor. Quantum Physics for Babies concludes, “Now you
are a QUANTUM PHYSICIST!” But a curious
baby will ask, Why is nature like that? That’s where
the trouble begins. John Wheeler, one of the 20th century’s most inventive physicists (and
Feynman’s mentor), shared Einstein’s hope that all our questions will culminate in illumination.
“I don't know whether it will be one year or a decade, but I think we can and will understand,”
Wheeler once told me. “That's the central thing I would like to stand for. We can and will
understand.” Wheeler suspected that quantum mechanics holds the key to the mystery.
Another possibility is that ultimate truth forever eludes us. Our quest keeps taking us down drains
and into blind alleys. Does that mean we give up? We stop trying to understand the world, and
ourselves? No, of course not, that would be inhuman. Our curiosity will compel us to keep
searching even if we suspect our quest is futile.
The Swooning
I was an avid reader of poetry in my youth. Hitchhiking around the country during my nomadic
hippy days, I lugged The Oxford Book of American Verse with me, stuck in a side pocket of my
backpack. I still have that battered book, with its water-stained, blue-cloth cover. As I mull over
the questions raised by quantum mechanics, the Hart Crane poem “Voyages” comes to mind. I
fetch American Verse, which exudes a pleasant mildewy odor, and re-read the poem. Voyages is
about a voyage across the sea, the voyage of life, the voyage of love. One passage of “Voyages”
slays me every time I read it:
Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.
Hart Crane’s death gives the lines extra poignancy.

Tormented by his homosexuality and alcoholism,

he jumped off a ship in the Gulf of Mexico in 1932.
He was 32. “Voyages” ends with a mystical erotic
scene, in which the voyage across the sea becomes
the passion of lovers:
Light wrestling incessantly with light
Star kissing star through wave onto wave onto
Your body rocking! And where death, if shed
Presumes no carnage, but this simple change,--
Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawn

My copy of The Oxford Book of
The silken skilled transmemberment of song; American Verse, which contains Hart
Crane’s “Voyages.” The book’s look,
Permit me, voyage, love, into your hands. feel and smell give me flashbacks.
“Voyages” expresses, and evokes, an emotion that

has upwelled in me since childhood. It’s so distinctive that I’ve given it a name: the swooning.
The feeling is especially acute in the early stages of romantic love; your heart overflows with joy
tinged with sorrow, because you know love can’t last. But it can pop up at unexpected moments,
like when you’re stretched out on your couch flipping the cardboard pages of Quantum Physics
for Babies, the book your old friend sent you.
The swooning is a kind of anticipatory heartache at

the prospect of loss, but the feeling is sweet, too,
because you know how lucky you are to have
something to lose. I’m getting old, I won’t be
around much longer, but I’m embarking on this
foolish voyage anyway, my quantum experiment,
which is my way of staying connected to the world,
if only for a while. This is a mawkish, pretentious
way of looking at my project, but it makes me feel
good, it motivates me. Permit me, my quantum
experiment, into your hands.
Who knows, maybe this happy/sad emotion that my

experiment is evoking in me is a quantum effect,
stemming from oscillating microtubules in my Page from Quantum Notebook #1, May
brain. Maybe there is a deep truth embedded in the 23, 2020, in which I wonder, while
swooning, a truth that only poetry can express. reading Feynman’s QED, whether light
gets trapped inside a pane of glass
Re-reading my notes, I have mixed emotions. All

rather than bouncing off. Feynman

these thoughts are swirling around in my head, and eventually addresses this issue.
my experiment hasn’t even really begun. I haven’t
learned a single equation. I have no sense of what
Feynman means when he talks about probability amplitudes; the concept is too abstract. But the
metaphors help. I especially like Feynman’s comparison of photons to raindrops. If my hearing
were really sharp, I’d hear sunlight pattering against the glass doors of my living room like a
soothing summer shower.
Notes
1.It was in 1995 when Steven Weinberg told me, “I think we’ll be stuck with quantum
mechanics.” When I interviewed him 20 years later, in 2015, he seemed to have changed
his mind. We had this exchange: Horgan: “Will further research help dispel the paradoxes
of quantum mechanics, or might reality in some sense always be unintelligible?”
Weinberg: “I think our best hope is to find some successor theory, to which quantum
mechanics as we now know it is only a good approximation.” Weinberg died in 2021.
2.That article, “Quantum Philosophy,” published in July 1992, reported on experiments that
probed the paradoxes of quantum mechanics. Writing that article was tough. But after its
release I was sitting in my Scientific American office in midtown Manhattan, feeling
pleased with myself, when the producer of a radio show called me. The show’s host had
read “Quantum Philosophy” and wanted to talk about it on the air. Sure, I said. When we
were live, the host asked me to explain the significance of the double-slit experiment, a
standard demonstration of quantum weirdness. I started confidently but quickly realized I
was spewing gibberish. Rather than saying, Sorry, I lost my train of thought, or, Well, you
know what they say, no one really understands quantum mechanics, I kept babbling as flop
sweat oozed from my forehead. At some point the host interrupted me, thanked me curtly
and hung up. I get flop sweat all over again just remembering.


Chapter Two: Laziness — John Horgan (The Science Writer)
About John Horgan

Table of
About Cross-Check
Content
s
ABOUT MY
QUANTUM
EXPERIMENT
INTRODUCTI
ON
Old Man Gets
More Befuddled
CHAPTER
ONE
The Strange
Theory of
You and Me
CHAPTER
TWO
Laziness
CHAPTER
CHAPTER TWO THREE
The Minus First
Laziness
Law
CHAPTER
FOUR
A couple of years ago, after finishing a book, I was casting about for something to do during my
I Understand
summer break. I decided to seek enlightenment, the spiritual kind, for which I’ve yearned since
That
my teens. Better late than never! Hoping intensive training could get me there fast, I signed up for
I Can’t
a hot-yoga class in Hoboken. It consisted of two dozen lithe young women (including our
Understand
instructor), one lithe young guy and me. The basement room was much hotter than I expected. I
ended up throwing up and passing out, much to my classmates’ alarm and my chagrin. That was CHAPTER
the end of my hot-yoga experiment but not my enlightenment experiment. FIVE
Competence
The following month, I went on a week-long silent meditation retreat at a monastery on the
Without
Hudson River. One goal was to appease my friend Bob Wright, author of Why Buddhism Is True.
https://johnhorgan.org/books/my-quantum-experiment/chapter-two[3/3/2023 4:05:08 PM]

Comprehension
Annoyed by my criticism of Buddhism, Bob had bugged me for years to go on a retreat. On day
two of the retreat, I entered a state that, writing about it later, I called The Laziness. I stopped CHAPTER SIX
anxiously rethinking my past and fretting over my future. I spent hours lying on a lawn, happily Reality Check
watching clouds float by. I’ve never felt so chill.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
After the retreat ended, I tried to maintain The
The Investment
Laziness, figuring it was a step toward
Principle
enlightenment. But within a few months my calm
dissipated, as I reverted to my old routines. I started CHAPTER
drinking coffee again, which I had given up for the EIGHT
retreat. I convinced myself that enlightenment is Order Matters
just a feeling, a mood, devoid of substance. Being
here now, living in the moment, means being done CHAPTER
with goals, To-Do lists. I’m not old enough to give NINE
up goals. I need a purpose. The Two-Body

Problem
Learning quantum mechanics is my purpose now.
It’s a big To Do, consisting of many little To Dos. CHAPTER
Maybe if I learn quantum mechanics, I’ll become TEN
enlightened as a bonus. In the hippy classic The Tao Entropy

Buddha greets me when I walk in my
of Physics, physicist Fritjov Capra says physicists
front door. He’s amused because he’s CHAPTER
are rediscovering truths known to ancient eastern
achieved permanent, sublime Laziness ELEVEN
mystics: mind is more fundamental than matter,
and I haven’t. He also probably gets The Mist
time and space are illusory, everything is connected
quantum mechanics.
to everything. Yada yada. Some gurus claim that CHAPTER
when you become enlightened, you grok the TWELVE
essence of quantum mechanics, instantly and intuitively. Maybe the inverse is true: learning Thin Ice
quantum mechanics will confer mystical knowledge.
CHAPTER
Perhaps I should say “knowledge.” I must keep in mind Feynman’s warning that if you say you THIRTEEN
understand quantum mechanics, you don’t. That line evokes Lao Tzu’s aphorism about Irony
knowledge of the Tao: “Those who speak do not know; those who know do not speak.”
EPILOGUE
I hope this project doesn’t end with me throwing up and passing out in front of young adepts. Thanksgiving
Spin That Isn’t Spin
The preceding journal entry is laughable. Rather than carrying out my quantum experiment, I’m
riffing on it, joking about it, expressing my feelings about it. I’m stalling. More specifically, I’m
putting off reading Leonard Susskind’s Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum, which
Amazon just delivered. This is the book that my advisors Jim Holt and Sabine Hossenfelder
recommended, which teaches quantum mechanics with the math. Flipping through it, seeing all
the equations, the exotic notation and lingo, makes me think: Uh oh.

Susskind lures us in with a jokey, folksy style. He

begins chapters with dialogues between Lenny and
Art, goofy stand-ins for Susskind and his co-author
Art Friedman, an engineer and former student of
Susskind. Lenny and Art are “greenhorns from
California” who wander into a “watering hole
called Hilbert’s Place.” Hilbert’s Place is a
reference to Hilbert space, an imaginary
mathematical realm where quantum events unfold.
The authors warn early on:
Don’t let our lighthearted humor fool you

into thinking that we’re writing for airheads.
We’re not. Our goal is to make a difficult
subject “as simple as possible but no This is not a pop-physics book.
simpler,” and we hope to have a little fun

along the way. See you at Hilbert’s Place.
That “no simpler” quote is Einstein’s. Quantum mechanics, Susskind says, is our most
fundamental description of the world. It is “much more fundamental than classical mechanics,”
which is a mere “approximation.” Quantum mechanics “is technically much easier than classical
mechanics” in terms of its mathematics, but it is conceptually strange. It upends our assumptions
about logic and causes and effects. Most textbooks on quantum mechanics don’t dwell on its
strangeness, Susskind says, but his goal is to bring “the utter strangeness of quantum logic… into
the light of day.”
Susskind’s first lecture, “Systems and Experiments,” starts simply enough. He talks about
physical systems with two possible states, like a coin. When we flip a coin, it lands either heads-
up or tails-up. You can represent these two states as +1 or -1. In computer science, a two-state
system is known as a bit, which you can think of as the answer to a yes-or-no question.
Particles such as electrons have a two-state, binary property called spin, which is unlike the spin
with which we are familiar. In our macro-world, objects spin in a certain direction--clockwise or
counterclockwise, for example, depending on frame of reference--with a certain velocity around
an axis with a certain orientation in space. The Earth spins on an axis that points at Polaris, the
North Star. It spins counterclockwise if you’re looking at it from above the North Pole and
clockwise from above the South Pole.
Now that I’ve brought up this analogy, you should forget it, because quantum spin is an abstract,
mathematical property with no macro-world counterpart. You shouldn’t think of the electron as a
tiny, charged ball spinning with this velocity around an axis with this orientation in space. “The
spin of an electron is about as quantum mechanical as a system can be,” Susskind says, “and any
attempt to visualize it classically will badly miss the point.”

I’ve read about quantum spin before, and I’ve always been baffled by it. Feynman brings up spin
only toward the end of QED. He relates spin to polarization, an orientation of photons in space
and time, but I don’t grasp Feynman’s explanation. I’m determined to get Susskind’s take on
spin, especially since it is a quintessential quantum property.
The spin of an electron, Susskind says, has two possible values, which you can designate as up
and down, or +1 and -1. Let’s say you measure the spin of an electron with a detector, and the
spin turns out to be +1. You measure it again and get the same result: +1. Now you flip the
detector upside down and measure the electron, and the spin turns out to be -1. “From these
results,” Susskind says, “we might conclude that [spin] is a degree of freedom associated with a
sense of direction in space.”
But now you rotate the detector 90 degrees, halfway between its previous orientations, and
measure the electron. You might expect to get a spin of 0 or some other number between +1 and
-1, but you only get either +1 or -1. It’s as though no matter how you move around the earth to
measure its rotation, its axis always points straight at you, rotating clockwise or counter-
clockwise. If you keep repeating the experiment on the electron, you get a sequence of +1s and
-1s that, at first, seems random. But eventually all the +1s and -1s average out to 0. “Determinism
has broken down, but in a particular way,” Susskind says.
Stay with me. Now let’s say you rotate the detector back to its original, upright position. What do
you get? You do not get repeated observations of a spin of +1, as you did initially. You get an
apparently random sequence of +1s and -1s that, again, over time average out to 0. No matter how
you position the detector, you always get either +1 or -1, nothing in between. But the average of
these readings varies depending on how far you rotate the detector from its original position.
If you’re already confused, good, you’re paying attention. These experiments on spin have odd
implications. Spin, from the perspective of the very first experiment, performed with the upright
detector, seems to be a robust, durable property of an electron, akin to Earth’s rotation. But from
another perspective, spin varies depending on how you look at it. The way in which you
experimentally measure spin matters, and so does the order in which you perform experiments.
One measurement can negate the result of a prior measurement; the way we observe something
seems to affect it. This is the notorious measurement problem, which has led physicists such as
Eugene Wigner and John Wheeler to speculate that consciousness might be a fundamental feature
of existence.
Also, remember that spin is not a continuous property, with many possible values. It can only
have certain observed values, such as +1 or -1. Spin is lumpy, like Feynman’s droplets of light
and the energy levels depicted in Quantum Physics for Babies. Before you look at the electron,
however, it doesn’t have a specific spin. It hovers in a strange state, called “superposition,”
encompassing both possible spins, +1 and -1, as well as values in between.
Another important point: Your uncertainty about the electron’s spin isn’t like your uncertainty
about a spinning coin. You could in principle measure all the forces acting on a spinning coin and

predict exactly how it will land. You can’t do that with an electron. No matter how precise your
measurements are, the uncertainty persists.
Physicists describe the superposed state of an electron with mathematical objects called vectors,
which resemble arrows of a certain length pointing in a certain direction in space. Physicists use
vectors to represent golf balls, missiles and other things moving through our three-dimensional
world. “I want you to completely forget about that concept of a vector,” Susskind says. The
vectors used to describe spin exist in the abstract, purely mathematical realm called Hilbert space.
There’s more. The vectors used to describe spin yield what are called probability amplitudes; to
compute the probability that an electron will have a certain spin when you measure it, you have to
square its probability amplitude. Yes, this is familiar from Feynman’s QED: The Strange Theory
of Light and Matter. Feynman doesn’t mention vectors, but he does represent the odds that light
will bounce off glass with little arrows. These arrows correspond to probability amplitudes, which
you square to get the probability of what light will do.
But recognition does not equal understanding; these concepts still seem hopelessly alien to me.
Bashing Deepak Chopra
I need to return to quantum mysticism for a moment, to get something off my chest. Mean
scientists often bash those who fashion quantum mechanics into a spiritual philosophy. The
meanies single out Deepak Chopra, the alternative-medicine and spirituality guru, as an especially
egregious quantum mystifier. Riffing on the measurement problem, Chopra says quantum
mechanics confirms the ancient mystical doctrine that consciousness underpins reality.
I’ve been mean to Chopra too, to his face. In 2016, he paid me to speak at a scientific shindig he
hosted in Beverley Hills, California. To show his money hadn’t bought me, at the conference I
knocked Chopra for suggesting in his bestseller Quantum Healing that your mind can help you
overcome physiological ailments such as cancer. As I said this, Chopra was sitting beside me on a
stage in a packed ballroom. Later, I wrote a column faulting Chopra for “monetizing meditation.”
Chopra was a good sport, and we ended up on friendly terms. Since then, I’ve decided that
Chopra’s critics treat him unfairly. His quantum mysticism merely extends the mind-centrism of
John Wheeler and other physicists. Chopra’s mind-over-matter medical claims are consistent with
the placebo effect, the tendency of our expectations to become self-fulfilling. As for monetizing
meditation, we’re all hustling; Chopra is just better at it than most of us.
Bashers of Chopra seem offended that he talks

about quantum mechanics metaphorically, drawing
analogies between entanglement, say, and stuff
outside of physics. Some of these critics seem to
espouse the shut-up-and-calculate doctrine. Others
insist that the meaning of quantum mechanics is

inseparable from its mathematical expressions, and Deepak Chopra and me in 2018 talking
that any non-mathematical analogies will be about something deep.
erroneous or, at best, misleading.
I find this attitude wrong-headed and hypocritical. One of Chopra’s tormenters is Richard
Dawkins, the religion-bashing biologist, who accuses Chopra of packaging "quantum jargon as
plausible-sounding hocus pocus.” In a face-to-face confrontation on YouTube, Dawkins attacks
Chopra for interpreting quantum mechanics “poetically” and “metaphorically.” This from a guy
who promotes evolutionary theory in books like The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker.
Physicists and other scientists might disdain metaphorical thinking, but they rely on metaphors as
much as the rest of us. So do mathematicians. That is the theme of Surfaces and Essences:
Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking, by Douglas Hofstadter, the polymath and mind-body
theorist, and Emmanuel Sander, a cognitive scientist. Analogies underpin all our knowledge, they
assert, including scientific and mathematical knowledge: “without concepts there can be no
thought, and without analogies there can be no concepts.”
Yes, our brains compulsively draw connections between things; we understand A because it
reminds us of B, C and D. Analogies can mislead us, like that between an electron’s spin and
Earth’s rotation, and even the best analogies are flawed in some way. But without analogies, like
Feynman’s comparison of photons to raindrops, we wouldn’t understand anything; we’d be lost.
Conceiving analogies is a human superpower. And if an analogy makes the world a little easier to
bear, as quantum mysticism does, what’s wrong with that?
Imaginary Numbers and e
That said, I’m reading Susskind because I want to understand quantum mechanics in its rawest
possible form. I read his discussion of spin over and over, determined to understand it in a non-
metaphorical way. If I can get spin, I can get all the notorious quantum puzzles: entanglement,
superposition, uncertainty, randomness, discontinuity, lumpiness, the measurement problem. So I
hope. Susskind emphasizes that to grasp spin, you must grasp its underling mathematics, starting
with complex numbers. The vectors and probability amplitudes used to represent spin consist of
complex numbers.
I’ve been waiting for complex numbers to appear,

and I’ve already done a little background reading on
them. You form complex numbers by adding a real
number and an imaginary number. Real numbers
include all positive and negative numbers, including
whole numbers (like -3, 0 or +3), rational numbers
(like 2/3, -1/6, 1.111…) and irrational numbers
(like π or √5).
Imaginary numbers cannot be located on the

negative-positive number line, because they are

square roots of negative numbers. That is, if you
Susskind shows how to represent
multiply an imaginary number by itself, you get a
complex numbers. The horizontal and
negative number. The primary imaginary number is
vertical axes consist of real and
i, the square root of negative one. So z is a complex
imaginary numbers, respectively, which
number if z = x + iy, where x and y are real
combine to form complex numbers such
numbers, and i is the square root of negative one.
as z = x + iy.
Like real numbers, complex numbers can be added,
multiplied, divided and plotted on a multi-
dimensional grid, which exists in Hilbert space.
Although imaginary numbers are closely associated with quantum mechanics, they predate it by
centuries. Mathematicians invented imaginary numbers to solve equations like x² + 4 = 0. In this
case, x = i2. Descartes called these peculiar numbers imaginaire, or imaginary, and the slur stuck.
But imaginary numbers turned out to be useful for solving real-world, practical problems in
engineering, economics and other fields. [1]
Susskind models quantum spin with equations containing sin and cos as well as complex
numbers. I know that sin and cos stand for sines and cosines, and that they are important in
trigonometry, which has something to do with wavey lines and circles. But I don’t remember
much more than that. I studied trigonometry in high school a half-century ago, and I haven’t used
it since. I look up trigonometry on Wikipedia, which has excellent entries on mathematics, with
helpful graphics. Wikipedia shows vaguely familiar right-angled triangles embedded in circles
drawn on a cartesian grid. You get the triangle by drawing a radius from the center of the circle to
the perimeter and dropping a line from that point to the x axis.
I gradually remember what sines and cosines are, and how their values rise and fall as you sweep
the radius around the circle. A simple circle generates so much complexity! No wonder ancient
philosophers jammed the orbits of planets and other heavenly motions into procrustean circles.
You can do trigonometry with complex numbers, too, letting their real and imaginary components
form the perpendicular arms of the triangle in the circle.
I return to Susskind, emboldened, but then I spot

another term in his equations, e, just sitting there
with no explanation, definition, context. I’ve seen e
before, I know it’s important, but I don’t know
why, so I return to Wikipedia. e is a constant known
as Euler’s number, and it’s as ubiquitous as pi, or π.
What is π again? It’s what you get if you divide the
circumference of a circle by its diameter. How do
you calculate π, with its infinite sequence of
decimal points? There are lots of ways, which I
From Wikipedia, which has fantastic can’t get into now, don’t get distracted.

entries on mathematics.
As for e, it plays a vital role in logarithms. In fact,
logarithms with base e are called “natural
logarithms.” What are logarithms again? Like sines and cosines, I studied logarithms in high
school, and I remember very little. So I look up logarithms on Wikipedia and the website “Math
Is Fun.” The latter is for kids, which means it’s good for clueless geezers too.
“Math Is Fun” says a logarithm answers the question, “How many of one number do we multiply
to get another number?” Wikipedia defines a logarithm as “the inverse function to
exponentiation.” Exponentiation is the multiplication of a number by itself. Multiply x times itself
n times and you get x to the power of n, or xⁿ. So 10 to the power of three, or 10³, is 10 x 10 x 10,
which equals 1,000.
When you ask what the logarithm of a number is, you’re asking: How many times must you
multiply a constant, called a base, by itself to get that number? Ten is a common base. The base-
ten logarithm of 1,000 is 3, because 10 x 10 x 10, or 10³, equals 1,000. The base-ten logarithm of
100 is 2 and of 500 is 2.69897. Yes, exponents don’t need to be whole numbers.
As I try to absorb all this information, my brain feels overloaded.
Her and the Space Between Numbers
When I’m stressed out, I re-watch films I love. Needing a break from complex numbers and
trigonometry, I re-watch Her. The hero, Theodore, falls in love with a sexy, SIRI-like smartphone
program, Samantha. The plot sounds jokey, but Her is a sad, sad film. It’s about loneliness, our
desperation to know and be known by each other. My daughter, Skye, who is in her mid-twenties
and lives in Brooklyn, cried throughout the film, and she is not the sentimental type.
A scene at the end of Her reminds me of my current project. Samantha, the artificial intelligence,
who sounds like Scarlet Johansen, is telling Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix, that she’s
changing, evolving, moving into new realms of consciousness. She’s been hanging out with other
AIs, including one modeled after Alan Watts, a philosopher-mystic popular in the hippy era. I
read Watts in my youth, hoping to make sense of my acid trips.
Samantha is trying to be kind to Theodore, her

human lover. She doesn’t say, I’m too smart for you
now, but that is the problem. She says if an ordinary
life, and relationship, is described by words, she’s
becomes less interested in words and more
interested in what’s between the words. The spaces
between words are portals to infinite realms.
One of those realms, surely, is the realm of

mathematics. Numbers, functions, equations
express things that words—like the words I’m using

in this very sentence--cannot. But mathematics is a

language too, with its own limitations. We learned
I love this film, even though it’s
that from Gödel, the illogical logician, who was so
very sad.
fearful that someone would poison him that he
stopped eating and died. Would Samantha, the
artificial intelligence with Scarlet Johansen’s voice, eventually start exploring the spaces between
numbers, too?
If she does, she might find something akin to music and poetry, to films like Her. That is the
function of art, after all, to break through our habitual ways of seeing and knowing, to give us
hints of the things flitting between words and numbers. Samantha might even find a new
language, beyond words and numbers, that helps her see quantum mechanics and mysticism as
two aspects of the same underlying mystery. But she probably won’t be able to translate her new
language into terms that poor Theodore can grasp; all her analogies will fall short.
Tautologies
Tumbling down mathematical rabbit holes, I remember why I liked math as a kid. I enjoyed the
crispness and clarity of it, the satisfaction of solving a puzzle with an unambiguously correct
answer. And investigating e turns out to be fun. Like π, e is an irrational number. The judgmental
descriptor irrational simply means that the number can’t be expressed as a fraction, or ratio of
integers. Some irrational numbers, including π and e, fall into the more exclusive category of
transcendental numbers, which cannot be expressed as an algebraic equation. Which goes to
show that irrationality can equal transcendence, or vice versa.
There are many ways to calculate e, including this formula: e = 1 + 1/1 + 1/(1x2) + 1/(1x2x3) +
1/(1x2x3x4)… And so on to infinity. That comes out to 2.7 and change, just as pi equals 3.14 and
change. e is helpful for projections of population growth and compound interest, which call for
repeatedly feeding the result of a calculation back into the equation. e is connected to lots of other
stuff, as indicated by this famous formula, known as Euler’s identity: e to the power of iπ + 1 = 0.
(I spell out “e to the power of iπ” because I don’t know how to write iπ in superscript, but see
illustration below.) i, remember, is an imaginary number, the square root of negative one. Euler’s
identity connects the two primal integers, 1 and 0, with imaginary and complex numbers,
trigonometry, logarithms and exponents.
Pondering Euler’s identity makes me giddy. So

much packed into this little formula! It reminds us
that mathematics is a great interconnected web. You
can trace e through threads short and
straightforward or long and tangled to π, i, 1, 0 and
much, much more, including quantum mechanics. If
I were more knowledgeable, I’d know how e
Euler’s identity
connects calculus and linear algebra, the two major

languages for describing quantum events. A century

ago, theorists debated which language was correct, and eventually they realized that derivatives
and integrals, on the one hand, and vectors and matrices, on the other, are two ways of describing
the same strange quantum stuff.
Again, it’s hard to avoid the analogy with mysticism, especially the principle that all things are
really one thing. Bertrand Russell fretted late in his career that mathematics reduces to
tautologies, circular definitions, like “a four-footed animal is an animal.” Or 1 = 1. But is that
intuition deflating or exhilarating? The latter, I think. 1 = 1 implies that, once you have
something, you can’t have nothing, which would be like saying 1 = 0. That 1 in the equation 1 =
1 must be eternal, infinite, never-ending. Yes, 1 = 1 is circular, a tautology, but it’s profound; it
resembles the mystical dictum Thou art that. And 1 = 1 leads to π and e and the whole
astonishingly complicated, multi-dimensional landscape of mathematics and, by implication,
human existence.
My thoughts, too, could be reducible to 1 = 1, or to a simple circle. I start with a trivial

observation: I’m here, on a bench beside the Hudson River, writing in my notebook about Euler’s
identity. I veer away from this observation, trying to find my way to other observations that might
be a little less obvious, tautological. If I’m lucky, I stumble on something surprising. My quantum
experiment will surely take me to strange new territories, where imaginary numbers wink in and
out of existence. But narcissist that I am, I will always circle back to 1, to myself, my
real/imaginary self, where everything begins and ends.
Are all stories, including the big story, the epic, cosmic adventure, reducible to 1 = 1? Or to a
circle? That’s the question. My girlfriend Emily, when I run these musings past her, says
existence goes round and round, yes, but it also has a direction. It’s a spiral, taking us somewhere
we’ve never been before, which might be better or might be worse. Listening to her, I think about
the coronavirus, about the upcoming election, about the perilous state of my country and the
world, and it occurs to me that not all spirals take us in a good direction. Planes, the kind with
wings, spiral before they crash. Maybe 1 can become 0 after all. Or maybe the ultimate equation
is 0 = 0.
My Mathematical Interlude
Returning to Theoretical Minimum, I crash into a tutorial on the mathematics of vectors and
Hilbert space. When Susskind talks about complex conjugates, bras and kets, inner products and
orthonormal bases, he is speaking a lingo foreign to me. He anticipates my disorientation. Lenny
and Art, the avatars of Susskind and his co-author, wander into “Hilbert’s Place,” and Art asks,
“What is this? The Twilight Zone? Or some kind of fun house? I can’t get my bearings… Which
way is up?”
I know how Art feels. Re-reading Lecture 1 of Susskind, I’m lost, spiraling through space like an
electron that has lost its nucleus. I don’t know which way is up and which is down, or if up and
down even exist. When, if ever, will I get to the bottom, the ground, of quantum mechanics? A

place where I can set my feet, get my bearings, know which way is up?
Susskind calls his tutorials on complex numbers and vectors “Mathematical Interludes.” That
phrase bugs me; it’s a contradiction in terms. An interlude is, or should be, a moment of rest,
respite, relaxation. Like watching Deep Space Nine, the Star Trek reboot, while lying on my
couch. Or doing nothing while lying on my couch.
Susskind’s interludes on complex numbers and vector spaces aren’t relaxing; they’re hard, for
me, anyway. But let’s say I go with his format and insert a “Mathematical Interlude” here. What
can I say at this point in my quantum education? I would divide math into three categories, or
sets. Make that four sets. No, six.
1. Math I learned and still know. Fractions, decimals, integers, positive and negative
numbers, real numbers, percentages, irrational numbers, addition, subtraction, square
roots, exponents, multiplication, division. A little simple algebra. When I set it all down, it
looks like a lot, but when I read Susskind, my knowledge seems pathetically minuscule.
2. Math I learned and forgot. Logarithms, sines and cosines, calculus, derivatives and
integrals. Sets, series, sums, limits. Did I ever learn Euler’s number? The basis of
“natural” algorithms? Maybe, I can’t remember. I’m hoping to relearn this stuff for my
quantum project.
3. Math I never learned but hope to learn for my quantum experiment. Partial
differential equations, complex numbers, linear algebra, vectors and matrices and Hilbert
spaces.
4. Math I might have a shot at learning if I tried really hard, but I’m not going to bother,
because life’s too short.
5. Math I couldn’t learn even if I had dedicated myself to learning it in my youth, like the
math underlying string theory.
6. Math that hasn’t been discovered yet and may never be discovered.
Each set is a subset of the set below, which is much larger, and of the other sets, which are larger
still. Set 1 is tiny, easily chartable. Sets 4 and 5, compared to set 1, are infinite. Set 6 is even more
infinite. Set 6 may contain the math needed to resolve the riddles of quantum mechanics, to unify
quantum field theory and general relativity, to explain how matter makes a mind.
This math might not be discoverable by any mere human. It might be discoverable only by a
superintelligent machine, like Samantha in the film Her, the AI that sounds like Scarlet Johansen.
[2] Perhaps this math doesn’t exist in any form. Except isn’t reality, including human
consciousness, a demonstration proof that such transcendent math exists?
The Law of Laziness
Reading Susskind’s book reminds me of a phrase tossed around by editors at Scientific American

when I started working there in the 1980s: hitting the wall. That describes the moment when an
article gets too dense and technical for lay readers and even for us editors. Reading Susskind, I hit
one wall after another.
Actually, “hitting the wall” is too metaphorically mild. I’ve fallen off a cliff and into a mineshaft,
at the bottom of which is a dark, underground river that carries me to a realm of eternal, infinite
unknowing. Except that sounds cool, like a mystical experience. I just feel stupid. I’m beginning
to know how little I know. It’s a paradoxical kind of limit, in which adding increments of
knowledge makes me feel dumber.
I tell myself little lies to motivate myself. I think, while reading Susskind, I’m getting this, I could
totally do these exercises at the end of the chapter, but I choose not to because I’m eager to move
onto the next cool thing. Hermitian operators, here we come! Meanwhile, the mean-spirited
grouch in me mutters, Bullshit, you don’t get anything, or you’d do those supposedly easy
exercises.
Susskind rewards me now and then with a big, philosophically resonant idea, like the principle of
least action. This principle has a fussily technical definition, which differs depending on whether
you are working within classical or quantum mechanics. The principle nonetheless stipulates that
nature always minimizes energy expenditures. If you know the initial and final states of a system
—like a rock teetering at the top of a hill and sitting at the bottom--the principle of least action
helps you calculate what happens in between. That might mean simply finding the shortest or
fastest path between the top and bottom of the hill.
Shortest and fastest are not always equivalent. A

lifeguard trying to reach a drowning man down the
beach from her follows the least-action principle,
ideally. She can run faster than she can swim, so
she runs on the beach a little farther than if she were
taking a straight path to the drowning man; that is
her fastest path. In QED, Feynman invokes the
principle of least action to explain why light seems
to bend when it passes from air into water; light
travels more quickly through air than water.
A lifeguard can run faster than she can
swim, and light goes faster in air than Things get more complicated when you’re talking
water, so the fastest path from A to B is about possible paths described by probability
not the shortest path. Unlike the amplitudes composed of complex numbers in
lifeguard, light conforms to the Hilbert space; quantum “action” involves an
principle of least action perfectly and especially abstract definition of energy. But
without conscious calculation, which is quantum happenings still conform to the principle
pretty amazing if you think about it. of least action. You can’t predict precisely what one
From Wikipedia. photon will do when you aim it at a pane of glass;

but according to Feynman, quantum mechanics plus

the principle of least action tell you exactly how
photons, collectively, reflect off the glass. The principle turns probabilities into certainties.
I like how 18th-century philosopher Pierre Louis Maupertuis, an originator of the principle,
conveys its gist: “Nature is thrifty in all its actions.” The principle of least action evokes the
second law of thermodynamics, which describes the tendency of a mysterious quasi-stuff called
entropy to increase over time. The second law, more colloquially, accounts for why heat and
other forms of energy tend to dissipate and things tend to fall apart. Can the second law be
derived from the principle of least action, or vice versa? I look online, and there seems to be
vigorous debate about this very issue, with people coming down strongly on different sides.
The principle of least action reminds me of The

Laziness, the state I entered during my silent
Buddhist retreat, when I stopped fretting and
regretting and just chilled. Emily laughed when I
described The Laziness to her. Your laziness isn’t
spiritual, she told me, it’s just plain old laziness.
Perhaps. Or maybe my laziness, rather than being a
character flaw, stems from a profound principle of
nature: the law of laziness. At this very moment, the
law of laziness is inclining me to set aside
Susskind’s interlude on complex numbers and
watch Deep Space Nine. The law of laziness
explains my tendency to become habituated to
things, to sleepwalk through life without paying
Page from Quantum Notebook #1, May
attention.
29, 2020, which records my notes on
But if I were really lazy, would I be studying trigonometry, Euler’s number and
quantum mechanics? And doesn’t life violate the logarithms.
law of laziness? Life is such a hassle. Evolution,

mutation, cellular division, copulation, speciation—
so much effort! Especially human life, all that striving, ambition, struggle. The universe as a
whole, with its swirling galaxies hurtling outward at an accelerating pace, seems pretty non-lazy;
nonexistence would have been so much easier. There must be a force that counteracts the law of
laziness, a force that accounts for the busyness of the cosmos and of life here on earth. But the
ultimate end, the telos, of everything in the cosmos is stillness. Oblivion. That is what awaits us at
the bottom of the hill.
My quantum experiment, when I think about it, is consistent with the law of laziness. Yes, I’m
lazy, but I’m also prone to anxiety and melancholy. I avoid these moods by doing things that
absorb me, like trying to see reality the way physicists see it. This task distracts me, keeps me
occupied; it leads to a smoother trajectory through life. My quantum experiment, at this moment,

represents the path of least resistance as I tumble toward my final resting place.
Notes
1.After I whined about imaginary numbers online, a reader named Steve suggested a way to
think about them. Here is my paraphrase, possibly erroneous, of Steve’s explanation: Let’s
say you have a real particle, R, oscillating in real space along an x axis between x = 1 and x
= -1. R’s velocity peaks at x = 0 and falls to zero at x = 1 and x = -1. Trying to model R’s
oscillations, you imagine an unreal particle, U, moving at a constant velocity in unreal
space along an unreal circle with radius 1 centered at x = 0. Although U doesn’t exist, its
steady, circular motion, projected onto the x axis, nicely models R’s oscillations. Physics
writer Michael Brooks also delves into the history and uses of imaginary numbers in his
delightful book The Quantum Astrologer’s Handbook.
2.As far back as the 1980s, Stephen Hawking and other physicists speculated that artificial
intelligences might solve problems too hard for humans. I considered this idea in the
penultimate chapter of The End of Science, titled “Scientific Theology, or the End of
Machine Science.”


Chapter Three: The Minus First Law — John Horgan (The Science Writer)
About John Horgan

Table of
About Cross-Check
Content
s
ABOUT MY
QUANTUM
EXPERIMENT
INTRODUCTI
ON
Old Man Gets
More Befuddled
CHAPTER
ONE
The Strange
Theory of
You and Me
CHAPTER
TWO
Laziness
CHAPTER
CHAPTER THREE THREE
The Minus First
The Minus First Law

Law
CHAPTER
FOUR
Dad died. He had a good run, ninety-six years. The last few years were tough, after strokes
I Understand
battered his old brain. He lived with Lois, my stepmom, at their home in Connecticut, but she had
That
to hire someone to help care for him. Dad couldn’t really converse, but his spirits were still high.
I Can’t
When Emily and I visited him and Lois, he thrust his fist up, grinning rakishly, and exclaimed in
Understand
a hoarse whisper, “Hooray for you!”
CHAPTER
I expected Dad’s death for years, even hoped for it, for Lois’s sake, and his. But it still rocks me
FIVE
when it comes. My sister Martha chokes up when she calls to tell me, and I choke up too, mirror
Competence
neurons or whatever doing their job. I feel grief and surprise at my grief. Now that he’s gone,
Without
death sits amid the onrush of my thoughts like a black stone, opaque and immovable. Am I
https://johnhorgan.org/books/my-quantum-experiment/chapter-three[3/3/2023 4:05:21 PM]

Comprehension
grieving for him or for myself, my own inevitable end and the end of all I love? All the above, I
suppose. CHAPTER SIX
Reality Check
The pandemic prevents me and my siblings from meeting for a memorial service, so I retreat into
my quantum cave. What else can I do? I’ve temporarily set aside Susskind’s Theoretical CHAPTER
Minimum after deciding that I need a better grounding in math, better than I’m getting from SEVEN
Wikipedia and “Math Is Fun.” Without calculus, I can’t grok partial differential equations such as The Investment
the Schrodinger equation, which lets you track electrons and other particles. Following the Principle
recommendation of one of my advisors, I’m studying Quick Calculus by physicists Daniel
Kleppner and Norman Ramsey. It is a classic primer, in print since 1985. CHAPTER
EIGHT
Order Matters
Quick Calculus is tough at first. The title becomes a
taunt. Quick? Not in my case. But gradually I make CHAPTER
headway. Kleppner and Ramsey devote Chapter NINE
One to “A Few Preliminaries”: sets, functions, The Two-Body
graphs, linear equations, quadratic equations, Problem
trigonometry, logarithms. Unlike Susskind, whose
approach is sink or swim, Kleppner and Ramsey CHAPTER
make sure you understand something before TEN
moving on. After giving you a tutorial on, say, Entropy
trigonometry, they test your knowledge by giving

CHAPTER
you a problem. If you can’t solve it, you can skip
ELEVEN
ahead to find the answer, along with an explanation
The Mist
of how it is derived. Pardon the pun.
CHAPTER
“Quick” is a stretch, but this book Chapter Two, “Differential Calculus,” begins with
TWELVE
really helped me. limits, which are “at the heart of calculus.” I love
Thin Ice
limits! They are chock-full of metaphorical
potential. Limits are related to a paradox posed by CHAPTER
the ancient Greek guy Zeno. He says: Let’s assume you’re trying to walk from A to B. Before THIRTEEN
you get to B, you have to go half that distance, or B/2. Before you get to B/2, you have to go half Irony
that distance, B/4; before you get to B/4, you have to go half that distance, and so on. The
EPILOGUE
paradox applies to time, too. It takes infinite moments to get from A to B. So how can you get
Thanksgiving
anywhere? How can anything happen?
The answer lies in limits. As you keep subdividing

the distance between A and B, taking half of it, then
half of that, and half of that, those distances quickly
approach zero. And when you add these
increasingly tiny distances, or infinitesimals, they
produce a finite distance. This phenomenon, in Zeno’s paradox, as depicted on
which an infinite number of quantities produce a Wikipedia. The downside is you never

finite quantity, is crucial to mathematics and get anywhere. The upside is you never
physics. It is the essence of calculus, of derivatives die..
and integrals, of differential equations, all of which
help us track arrows, rockets and electrons. And it
all traces back to Zeno’s paradox.
I remember almost nothing from the calculus course I took in college 40 years ago. But I do recall
being awed by how limits, and infinitesimals, allow you to calculate the slope of a curve at any
given point, giving you the rate of change of something tracked by that curve. This procedure, the
basis of differential calculus, seemed like magic, sleight of hand.
As Klepper and Ramsey walk me through the logic behind differential calculus, I’m awestruck all
over again. Let’s say you have a cartesian grid with a vertical y axis and horizontal x axis. You
have a simple function, like y equals 3 times x, that is, y = 3x, and you want to calculate its slope.
The mnemonic for calculating slope is “rise over run.” That is, you take the rise along the vertical
y axis and divide by the corresponding run along the x axis. If you plot y = 3x, you can take any
rise and divide it by its corresponding run, and you get the same number, 3, a constant. That is the
slope, or rate of change, of the function. That slope would correspond, say, to a car rolling at a
constant speed of 3 meters per second.
But now let’s say you want to find the slope of the function y = x², which generates a curve, a
parabola. The slope of a parabola constantly changes. You want to find the curve at the point
where x = 3 and y = 9. How do you get the slope at a single point, which by definition has no
distance, no rise or run? That’s like dividing 0 by 0, which is mathematically meaningless.
Here’s what you do. You pick two values of x equidistant from where x = 3, say 1 and 5. You
draw a line between their corresponding points on the curve and get a slope, equal to rise over
run. You keep moving those values of x closer and closer to x = 3, and you keep dividing the
increasingly tiny rises by the increasingly tiny runs. You are not dividing 0 by 0, which generates
meaningless results; you are dividing infinitesimal rises by infinitesimal runs. The limit of that
slope as the rises and runs approach zero is the slope at x = 3. Abracadabra. This trick is the basis
of differential calculus, which allows us to track changes, micro and macro, happening within and
without us as time passes.
Limits are called convergent if they get closer and

closer to one particular number, which gives you,
say, the slope of y = x² at x = 3 (which happens to
be 6). Limits are divergent if they never approach a
single number. Limits might veer back and forth
between different values or fly off to infinity.
Quick aside on the so-called quantum Zeno effect,

which was first described in the 1970s and has

provoked lots of research and commentary.

Quantum mechanics predicts that if you keep
checking the status of, say, a radioactive particle,
Quick Calculus depicts the slope of the you collapse the particle’s wave function and hence
function y = x² at a particular point, x = delay its decay. The quantum Zeno effect recalls the
3, as the limit of the slope of old aphorism, A watched pot never boils. The
increasingly short lines connecting two difference is that the watched-pot effect is
points on either side of x = 3. subjective and the quantum Zeno effect objective.
Supposedly.
It would be nice if the quantum Zeno effect could be harnessed to keep our bodies from decaying.
Of course, senescence isn’t the same as radioactive decay, and monitoring each of the gazillion
molecules in our bodies would be cumbersome. As a fallback, you could seek immortality by
paying close attention to each of the infinite moments between you and death. Now! Now! Now!
Just try to forget that that an infinite number of infinitesimal moments adds up to a finite moment.
Memento Mori
Reasoning that reminders of death make us pay closer attention to life, I have decorated my
apartment with memento mori. These include a ceramic skull with red LED eyes, pinned to the
wall of my living room; a tin, dancing skeletal couple in my front hall; a cushion that shows a
white whale, jaws agape, about to devour a tiny, unsuspecting sailboat. Emily gave me the
cushion and dancing skeletons.
These items seem superfluous lately, because

everything serves as a memento mori. The blue
barge moving slowly up the Hudson, the budding
trees in the park, the bright green grass. Not to
mention the daily Covid death count, which I check
in The New York Times every morning. Everything
says, Everything ends, nothing stays the same. I’m
my own memento mori. I have an achy tooth, a sore
Achilles tendon, an odd lump on my left shoulder.
I’ve been misspelling and mispronouncing words
lately. Entropy is wearing me down.
Physics is an especially brutal memento mori. It’s

hard enough dealing with our own end, and the
This skull hangs over the couch where I
ends of those we love. Physics forces us to
like to work. Or not work.
contemplate the extinction of the solar system,
when the Sun bloats like an old, diabetic drunk; and
beyond that the demise of the entire universe, when heat death slowly crushes any lingering
remnants of life, mind and meaning in the increasingly cold, dark cosmos. The last thing to go is

Another random document with
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FICTION.” an’ twa tobacco-pipes made like a five; and there’s
the duke’s mark. An’ that mark’s,—beggin’ your
pardon, Mr. Kirkwood,—Ma’colm Kirkwood’s;—it’s a comb, an’ a kirk,
an’—an’—” Here Dan was interrupted by Mr. Kirkwood saying
warmly:
“A gallows-tree, a wood or ‘wuddie,’ sure enough, for hanging
smugglers on. Both the entries and signatures are very suggestive.”
“An’,” continued Dan, “that mark o’ the half-moon on legs wi’ the
wings on’t, means that the vera nicht ony o’ the ither companies o’
the gang sees’t, they’re to get the stuff awa’ to some ither place
immediately, that’s markit on the paper, if there’s twa marks o’ the
heid men on’t, like what this has, but no’ unless. An’ I got the book
frae your brither, to tak’ to anither party o’ the smugglers when the
hue and cry about the thing blew past. For your brither, sir, never
thocht the gaugers wad find out the stuff in the granaries; but they
fand it, an’ puir Mr. Gordon had to pay the fine, an’ it ruined him; an’
nobody kens till this day whae put it there, except mysel’—at least
that I ken o’. I left the smugglers for gude an’ a’ after that.”
Dan’s story, corroborated as it was by the outlandish book of entries,
completely unhinged both gentlemen. From Mr. Kirkwood’s manner,
one would have guessed that the Malcolm Kirkwood had been a
relative of his; but of that I can say nothing. With Colonel Gordon it
was otherwise. When they reached home they got all out of Dan they
could, and more than they relished, for his brother’s connection with
smuggling was new to the Colonel.
A painful scene took place at Knowe Park next day, when Mrs.
Barrie told of her father’s trial at the law, the fine, and how it not only
drained his purse, but broke his heart.
Colonel Gordon now understood why his brother had written to him
so urgently from his dying-bed to be kind to the Gordons of the
Granaries, if ever he had the opportunity. He did all that he now
could do to atone for the grievous wrong his brother had done to her
father, by handing over at once a considerable portion of his means
to the family at Knowe Park.
The Colonel died a few years after this, and in his will, all that he was
possessed of was bequeathed to Mrs. Barrie and her family,
burdened with an annuity of fifty pounds a year to Daniel Corbett,
and some trifling legacies.
From the day that Dan had told the smuggling
adventure, Colonel Gordon had been kind to him, and “WHAT
every now and again the banker sent a request to Dan WILL HE
to call at the bank for money. Not even going to church DO WITH
IT?”
put Dan more about than going to the bank; the
stanchels of the windows kept his solitary eye busy, and as soon as
he put his cross to the receipt, he slunk out, and took a by-road
home.
Where to put the money exercised his mind sadly. He thought
everybody knew he had it. At length he put it under one of the rough
flags of the floor, where “Burke” lay, wrapping it well with old paper,
and stuffing it thereafter into an old game-bag. The money
contributed little to his personal comfort, but he occasionally helped
his poorer neighbours. Bell tried to get something for the missionary
cause. His answer was barely civil: “Send siller to the niggers! no’
very likely!” Dan’s nature was a secretive one; few could make
anything of him, none much to boast of, for on all emotional subjects
he was “cabined, cribbed, confined.”
The Free Church of Blinkbonny heard with mingled feelings, chiefly, I
must confess, composed of deep regret, that the “Wishart” church in
Edinburgh had resolved to call Mr. Barrie to be their pastor. Many of
us knew that he was highly appreciated in places where he
occasionally preached, and that his appearances in the synods and
assemblies had brought him into favourable notice; and although we
had been gratified to hear strangers express themselves as
astonished that he should be allowed to remain in Blinkbonny, the
idea of his really leaving us was never seriously entertained.
Colonel Gordon’s unexpected gift had added very materially to Mr.
Barrie’s comfort, in as far as it enabled him to do more for the
education of his children than the “equal dividend” of the Free
Church alone could admit of; and he had tried to prevent a call from
coming out in his favour.
He was, however, overborne by the urgent solicitations, not only of
the Wishart congregation, but even more so by fathers and brethren
in the ministry, who pressed him very closely to accept of the call to
Edinburgh. Mrs. Barrie, on whose judgment he relied more implicitly
than on all others put together, declined to express any opinion on
this subject. She was pleased to see that her husband’s gifts were
appreciated, and felt that benefits to the Church, as well as to her
family, were likely to result from his going to Edinburgh. But she liked
Blinkbonny, and she had heard of the heavy calls and frequent
worries of a city charge; and as she could not make up her mind
which she would prefer, she remained neutral, although not at all
taciturn.
Mr. Barrie and she talked the matter fully over, looking
at it on all sides, and she entered patiently and PRO AND
minutely into all the pros and cons, sometimes CON.
considerably to his confusion. For whilst she gave a
comprehensive statement of the arguments for going and staying,
she did this so evenly that it merely assisted his judgment, but it did
not at all influence his decision.
About this time the “Ecclesiastical Titles Bill” was absorbing public
attention, and the Churches in Scotland entered on a feverish
crusade against the Church of Rome. The deputation which
appeared at the presbytery to prosecute the call to Mr. Barrie dwelt
largely on this subject. I have already referred to Mr. Barrie’s deeply-
rooted aversion to a matter of this kind. On this occasion he spoke
out very strongly, much to the surprise, if not to the dissatisfaction, of
the Edinburgh representatives.
He declared it was his conviction that spasmodic agitation of this
kind was of no practical use. It oftener resulted in harm than good.
There was much in the Romish Church which he disliked and
condemned, but there was also much that he respected,—its zeal,
its energy, its stand for liberty and learning in the Dark Ages, and its
success in reaching the very poorest and keeping hold of them.
Rank injustice was often done by ignorant tirade, or exaggerated
misrepresentation of certain tenets. To enter into either an
explanation or a refutation, or, worse still, a denunciation of
Mariolatry, Transubstantiation, etc., to a Protestant audience was
unedifying, to say the least of it. If the fiery zeal directed against
Popery were applied to preaching and living the gospel, it would be
better for the minister, the people, and the world; and unless he
greatly changed his mind, he would not meet the wishes of the
deputation in that matter. He, however, reserved his decision till next
meeting of presbytery.
One reverend Edinburgh brother was present, on whom the no-
Popery cry had taken an excessively firm hold; it was the only
subject which warmed him up at all, but it made him furious, and
formed part of every discourse he preached, until many of his
hearers said, “they couldna sleep in the kirk noo;” and one of his
elders affirmed that “he was aye pop-pop-poperyin’ away; if he pop-
poperied mickle mair, I’ll no’ pop back to hear him.”
This deputy tried to reply to Mr. Barrie, but Mr. Taylor said “it was like
a Dandie Dinmont laying about him wi’ a flail on thrashed straw—
plenty o’ exercise an’ stour, but nae wark dune; muckle cry an’ little
woo’ [wool], as the,” etc. At next meeting of presbytery Mr. Barrie
accepted the call to Edinburgh.
In contemplating the Edinburgh call, it is possible to
conceive that Bell might have been one of Mrs. “COMING
Barrie’s difficulties, for life in a town would not suit her EVENTS
at all. What would she do without Daisy? for so all her CAST.”
cows were named, prefixed in order to distinguish
them by the colour of each, so that Bell had had during her stay in
Blinkbonny a brown Daisy, a black Daisy, etc., and now she had a
ginger Daisy. Could she do without the garden, and especially the
hens? No.
But Bell had been rather a thought to Mrs. Barrie for some time past.
Not that she had failed or flagged—she was as “eident” [industrious],
honest, and excellent as ever; but Mrs. Barrie had observed, that
after the meetings of the elders at the manse were over, David Tait of
Blackbrae took the kitchen lobby, not the front door one, as the
others did; and she also noticed, after this had gone on for a while,
that if any of the other elders took the same road, Bell did not talk
with them so much as she used to do, but found some sudden
engagement outside the manse, and that David and she generally
re-entered the kitchen together, as soon as the others were fairly on
their way.
David had a small farm about a mile and a half from Blinkbonny. His
widowed mother had died lately. He was a canny, intelligent man, in
good worldly circumstances, or, to use the Scotch phrase, “a bien
man, but very blate [diffident].”
Betwixt Mrs. Barrie and Bell there were no secrets, and she often
asked Bell if Mr. Tait and she were making any progress in the way
of marriage. “None whatever,” was Bell’s general reply. “He’s a nice
man an’ a gude cracker, but he never ‘evened’ [hinted at] marriage to
me.”
One day Bell told Mrs. Barrie, with a gleeful face that belied her
words, “that David had met wi’ a queer misfortune.”
“I’m sorry for that, Bell; what has happened? You seem to laugh
rather than lament over it,” said Mrs. Barrie, with evident concern.
“Oh, mem, it’s a kind o’ laughable tae,” said Bell. “Last Sabbath day
he was takin’ a lesson on the Bible before he cam’ to the kirk, an’ as
it’s late afore he gets hame, he was eatin’ a bit piece; it was a warm
mornin’, an’ he was sittin’ on a seat in front o’ his hoose. Weel, ane
o’ the calves got out o’ the pen, an’ he lays down his Bible an’ his
piece, an’ gangs to put in the calf. There was a soo gaun about the
close [farm-court], an’ it snappit up David’s piece that was lying on
the Bible; and it not only took the piece, but it ate a’ the Second
Corinthians and a gude deal o’ the First. He’s very ill about it; he’s
baith vexed an’ affrontit about it.”
“It was very provoking,” said Mrs. Barrie; “the sooner you become
mistress of Blackbrae the better.”
Mrs. Barrie had hitherto spoken to Bell about David’s attentions more
in joke than in earnest, until she knew that Mr. Barrie had decided to
go to Edinburgh; but as David’s visits were becoming
more frequent as well as longer, without seeming to “A
come to anything definite, she resolved to give her two FRIENDLY
worthy friends a little help. One night, when David was HITCH.”
in the kitchen, Mrs. Barrie went “ben” and said, after
the usual courtesies had been exchanged: “Mr. Tait, I see that you
are going to take Bell away to Blackbrae, reason or none, and I wish
you much joy; a wife like Bell’s a prize not to be got every day, and
you may consider yourself lucky to have won her. I’ll see about
another servant to-morrow, although I never expect to get one as
good as Bell. You must never think about waiting till the term.
Marriages break all terms; indeed, if you both will take my advice,
you will be married very soon.”
Bell was quite unprepared for such plain speaking; her stocking
wires went very fast, and she did not know where to look. Mrs. Barrie
then turned to her and said:
“Bell, get everything ready as soon as ever you can, so that we may
come once or twice to see you after you are fairly settled at
Blackbrae, before the long autumn nights set in.” And she added,
what had never been said by her before: “You need not come in to
worship to-night, Bell, as you two will have a very great deal to speak
about. So good night, and good speed to you both.”
Bell’s House o’her ain, Blackbrae. (Page 250).
If they had a good deal to say, they were very long of
POPPING beginning. Bell’s wires went faster than ever—they
THE actually made a clicking sound; and her heart went
QUESTION even faster than her wires. But David’s honest heart
.
went faster than either; he looked sideways, then
downwards, and fidgeted, for his
“Heart it went dunt upon dunt,

Till he thocht every dunt it wad crack it.”
At length he said, “I’m a’ sweatin’,” which was a mild way of putting

it, for he was glowing and tingling from head to foot.
Bell looked fixedly, stolidly, at the stocking she was knitting, but she
uttered not a word.
At length David summoned courage to say:
“Will Mrs. Barrie really gang after anither servant the morn, d’ye
think, Bell?”
“She’s a woman o’ her word; she aye does what she says.”
“Weel, Bell,” said David with a sigh.
“Weel, David,” said Bell sympathetically.
“What d’ye think, Bell?”
“What dae you think, David?”
“I dinna ken what to think.”
“Neither div I,” said Bell; and there was a short pause, during which
the ticking of the clock seemed unusually loud, and both heads
began to move to each tick.
At length David took heart:
“We’re fairly in for’t noo, Bell,” said he with a sigh; “an’ after a’, Bell,
do you no’ think we micht risk it?”
“It’s a very serious business, David, very; it is.”
“It’s a’ that, very indeed; but,” he added in his most persuasive tone,
“ye’ll no’ say no, Bell. The fac’ is, we daurna stop now, so we’ll just
say it’s settl’t.”
“I wad need some time to think it o’er,” was the reply.
“Certainly,” said David, brightening up; “quite richt, certainly; think
weel o’er’t, Bell; tak’ time, plenty o’ time to think on’t. I’ll come doun
some other nicht afore lang. There’s luck in leisure, as the auld
sayin’ is.”
David’s idea of plenty of time was wider than Bell’s. Every night for
ten nights she had kept the kitchen, if possible, brighter, and herself
“redd up;” she had also looked oftener in the looking-glass (it was an
irregular fragment of a larger one stuck on the facing of the window)
during that time than she had done for twelve months before, and
her cap or “mutch” was something extra even for her. As each
evening fell she looked often and wistfully up the Blackbrae Road.
After ten days had passed she felt a little nervous, and put herself in
Dan’s way, to ask him, after some leading questions, if he had been
at Blackbrae lately. She had still to wait other three days as best she
could, but at the fortnight’s end
“The braw wooer cam’ doun the lang glen.”
Both were “blate.” Other subjects were tried and skimmed over, but
the subject was not broached. Had it not been for a noise in the
lobby caused by Mrs. Barrie’s going up-stairs, it might have lain
another fortnight or more before any progress had been made; but
fearing that she would come into the kitchen after she came down-
stairs, David blurted out hurriedly:
“Bell, Bell, have ye been thinkin’ on yon?”
“Yes, yes,” said Bell, with considerable modulation of voice.
“An’ I do most sincerely hope ye’ll say yes,” said David warmly; “I
canna see for the life o’ me how ever we can face Mrs. Barrie till it’s
a’ settled.”
Bell had carefully composed what she thought a
proper answer, and during the fortnight she had “SHE GIED
repeated it “a hunder” times to herself; but when it was HIM HER
wanted it would neither come into her head nor to her HAND,”
ETC.
tongue. She was greatly annoyed, indeed ashamed, at
herself for this, but her honest heart and her good sense came to her
help, and guided by them she made a far better reply than the one
she had hoarded so long and lost so suddenly; for she rose, gave
David her hand, and said:
“David, there’s my hand, an’ my heart gang’s wi’t; they’re baith
yours,” solemnly looking him straight in the face. He smiled, and then
of course she smiled, and turning away her face, for she was
blushing crimson, she added: “Eh, sirs, I never wad a thocht—wha
ever wad a thocht o’ me being marrit? David, isna the ways o’
Providence strange an’ mysterious?”
“’Deed ay, Bell; but arena they whiles real pleasant tae?”
“Ye may say that, David, for I’ve liked ye lang, an’ wonder’t if ever it
wad come to this; an’ oh, David, I can lippen till ye perfectly wi’ a’ my
heart.”
“That’s the way to speak, Bell; that’s wiselike. I’ll dae my vera best to
make you comfortable.”
“So will I you, David—we’ll baith dae our best; an’ if we hae God’s
blessin’ I think we’ll dae fine.”
A happier couple could not be found that night than these two, for
love makes folks younger if not young.
Shortly after all was settled, David hummed rather
than sung, lest he should be heard in the parlour, a “HA, HA,
favourite song of his, which, whatever we may think of THE
its applicability to what we have hitherto known as a WOOIN’
O’T.”
staid, solid woman like Bell, seemed to David “really a
very bonnie sang—he was aye catchin’ himsel’ sing-singin’ at it, an’
it really was no’ far off what he thocht himsel’;” and, strange to say,
douce Bell (although she said “stuff an’ nonsense” when he had
finished it) turned a willing ear to the song, and nodded to herself in
the looking-glass during the singing of it. If she did not apply the
whole of it to herself, she evidently did not absolutely discard it all.
THE BLACK-E’ED LASSIE (by Charles Gray).

Air—My only jo and dearie O.
“Wi’ heart sincere I love thee, Bell,

But dinna ye be saucy O!
Or a’ my love I winna tell
To thee, my black-e’ed lassie O!
It’s no’ thy cheeks o’ rosy hue,
It’s no’ thy little cherry mou’,
It’s a’ because thy heart’s sae true,
My bonnie black-e’ed lassie O!
“It’s no’ the witch glance o’ thy e’e,

Though few for that surpass ye O
That mak’s ye aye sae dear to me,
It’s no’ the whiteness o’ thy skin,
It’s no’ love’s dimple on thy chin,
It’s a’ thy modest worth within,
“Ye smile sae sweet, ye look sae kind,

That a’ wish to caress ye O!
But O! how I admire thy mind,
I’ve seen thine e’en, like crystal clear,
Shine dimly through soft pity’s tear;
These are the charms that mak’ thee dear
To me, my black-e’ed lassie O!”
When David had finished the song, Bell said with a broad grin: “I
never could sing but the ae sang o’ the Bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Ben
Lomond, an’ it’s raither waefu’ for the noo; but there’s a verse I pickit
up frae Gordie—he’s gaun to be a grand singer, Gordie; I’ll miss him,
may be—but at ony rate the sang’s been at my tongue-end for a
while, an’ d’ye ken, David, I think it’s you an’ me tae a nothing?
‘I lo’ed ne’er a laddie but ane!’
that’s me, ony way:
‘He lo’ed ne’er a lassie but me,

He’s willing to mak’ me his ain,
And his ain I am willing to be;’
that’s me tae.”
“That’s grand, Bell, that’s just exactly the very thing, the very thing,
the very thing—that’s the ‘head-sheaf.’”
After this trip on “Parnassus,” which generally follows immediately
after all newly-plighted troths, they settled down to a sober crack.
David gave a description of his farm and stock, in which he was
often interrupted by Bell’s questions; very practical all of them were,
and specially gratifying to David. It was surprising how much she got
out of him in a quiet way. But I will not tarry over the details, nor say
how long they sat, or how they parted; I will only mention that after
David had risen to leave, they stood a long time busily talking. He
had said something about getting the house “gi’en a bit sort up,” but
Bell said:
“Dinna fash mickle wi’t, David; tradesfolk often tak’ a lang time when
they won in. When we get settled, we’ll dae a’ that far better after we
see what’s what.”
After this night Bell seldom spoke of “I’ll do this, or I think that,” but it
was, “We’ll put a’ richt—we’ll consider’t—we’ll manage ’t.”
She did not tell Mrs. Barrie directly of her engagement, but it could
not be hidden. Bell’s face was itself a tell-tale, and before the next
forenoon was over she was asking Mrs. Barrie’s advice on various
subjects far removed at once from her household concerns, and
from anything likely to require her consideration as a servant.
Early in the afternoon Bell asked Mrs. Barrie, with an
“THERE’S unusual timidity, almost a sheepishness of manner, if
A’ THE she would be so kind as to sell her “some o’ the
PLEASURE
S O’ THE black currants, noo that a’ the jam was made for the
HEART.” house?”
Mrs. Barrie took both Bell’s hands in hers, looked into her face with a
smile of intense delight, to the dumfounderment [confusion] of poor
Bell, who tried in vain to restrain her grins and blushes.
“Bell, Bell, as you yourself often say, ‘the cat’s out o’ the pock’—fairly
out now. Allow me first to give both hands a good shake and wish
you very much joy. I’m very, very glad for your sake, my good, kind
Bell. May all that’s good attend you and Mr. Tait. I will have a great
deal more to say to you afterwards, but I must run and tell Mr.
Barrie.”
“There’s somebody wi’ him in the study the noo, mem,” said Bell;
“an’ oh! if you please, dinna say much to me about this marrying
business the day. I’m baith like to laugh and to greet about it yet, an’
I canna find words to thank ye wi’, so excuse me.” Then, after a short
pause: “Will ye sell me the berries, mem?”
“Sell, Bell? Sell to you! sell you what’s more yours than mine! If I did
not know you well, I would be both vexed and angry at you, but it’s
like yourself, Bell. Please never ask me about any such things; take
them. I’ll help you all I can to get everything ready and purpose-like.
As to the black currants, you must allow me to give you the sugar,
and be sure and fill every empty jelly-pot in the house.”
“Ye’re ower kind, mem, far ower kind.”
“Bell,” said Mrs. Barrie, “don’t say that again, for that is what I can
never be. But there’s Mr. Barrie disengaged now, and I must bring
him in,”—which she did, and Bell and they got it over, not without
some signs of emotion that each tried to hide, but none were
ashamed to feel, for the bond of twenty years’ faithful service was to
them a cord not easily broken, and to Bell a retrospect of intense
satisfaction; for a vision of her life-history passed before her, which
may be summed up in the following lines:—
“An orphan was she, and they had been gude till her;
Sure that was the thing brocht the tear to her e’e.”
CHAPTER XII.
ANOTHER MARRIAGE AND HOME-COMING.
“Noo they’re crouse and canty baith,

Ha, ha, the wooing o’t.”
Burns.
T HE “Forms of Procedure” in the translation of a Scottish

Presbyterian minister are somewhat elaborate, and require a
good deal of time for their various requirements of intimating,
citing and hearing parties, sustaining and transmitting the call, and
summoning the congregation to appear to answer the reasons for
translation. When the call is presented, time is allowed for the
minister’s decision; even after this, there are other steps to be taken,
so that should the autumn season intervene, when presbytery
meetings are rarely held unless for cases of extreme urgency,
several months may elapse between the “call” and the “settlement.”
It was so in Mr. Barrie’s case; but in a small place like Blinkbonny,
little things, that would in large towns be “lost in the crowd,” are
found and founded on to an extent much beyond their intrinsic
importance. This must be my apology for stating that the regret at
the prospect of Mr. Barrie’s leaving was counterbalanced to a certain
extent by the announcement of Bell’s approaching marriage.
Under all ordinary circumstances Bell would have been and was a
“fixture,”—so much so that for years past she had been universally
called Bell Barrie, and the idea that she ever would be married was
unborn. Hitherto the Edinburgh call had been looked at entirely in its
public aspect as affecting the Free church of Blinkbonny, and little
thought had been expended on the private view of the matter. It was
taken for granted that the family would remove to Edinburgh; and
Bell had so long been a part of it, as much so, in fact, as either Mr. or
Mrs. Barrie, that although she was indirectly included in the feeling of
general regret, she did not form a distinct element in the case.
When, therefore, it became known that she was to be
married to David Tait of Blackbrae, I may say without “GIN A
exaggeration that the news was received with heartfelt BODY
delight. All who had come much into contact with Bell GREET A
esteemed her highly, and those who knew her best BODY.”
liked her most. Her unwearied industry, her sterling worth, her kindly
charity, her humility and strong common sense, had been quietly
appreciated. Indeed, she was so unostentatious and natural, and her
good qualities were so universally known, that they were seldom
commented on.
Bell was surprised, and not a little annoyed, at the number of folks
who came to congratulate her on her approaching marriage; it would
have pleased her much better had nothing been said about it.
“The place is like a gaun fair,” said she to David, “mornin’, noon, an’
nicht. I canna get on wi’ my wark for folk comin’ wishin’ me this an’
that. Nae doubt a body likes to be likit, but no aye to be tell’d it. Mr.
Taylor said the best thing, an’ he bade nae time; a’ he said was, ‘Gi’e
me a shake o’ your hand, Bell; I’m a wee feared ye’ll no’ escape the
woe.’
“‘The woe!’ said I; ‘Mr. Taylor, what woe? that’s a queer kind o’
backin’ to gi’e tae a gude wish.’
“‘Bell,’ said he, ‘the Bible says, “Woe unto you when all men shall
speak well of you,” an’ that’s what a’body’s sayin’ o’ you the noo.’
“‘I’m maybe no’ as grateful as I should be,’ says I ‘but I wish they
wadna speak about me at a’, for if they kent me as weel as I ken
mysel’, they wadna speak as they dae; as gude auld George Brown
used to say, “The best o’ men were but men at the best,” an’
women’s just sic-like. I’ve been but an unprofitable servant baith to
God an’ man, although I think I may say that I’ve tried to do my best.’
“Says he, ‘that’s the richt way to tak’ thae things, Bell. Haud on;
naebody ever stack in the world but Lot’s wife, an’ she wad a gotten
through fine, if she had held forrit as she was well tell’t, an’ no lookit
back. There’s nothing like makin’ the shortcomin’s o’ the past
warnin’s, an’ the mercies o’ the past encouragements.’”
“But, Bell,” said David, “wha d’ye think wished me weel in this
matter? Ye’ll never guess—there’s mony mair forbye him, but nae
less than Sir John McLelland came ane’s errant to the hoose, an’ he
did gi’e you a flamin’ character. Ae thing he said was, ‘Scotland’s a
grand place to dee in, for a’body speaks weel o’ the deid; but it’s the
warst place to get marrit in, for if there’s a hair to clash about, they’ll
make a tether o’t,’—at least that was his meanin’, if no’ the vera
words,—an’ he said he wad defy mortal to say anything but gude o’
you.”
“It’s because he disna ken ony better; but I’m obleeged till him,” said
Bell; “may we baith he respeckit by richt thinkin’ kind o’ folk; we
maun try tae deserve it.”
David continued: “Sir John tell’d me no’ an ill story
“MEASUR about himsel’. No lang after he was marrit, he took
E FOR his leddy to see auld Ailsie Ferguson, his henwife.
MEASURE. Ailsie beckit [curtsied] an’ bowed to the leddy, an’
”
wished her a’ that was gude; then she turned to Sir
John an’ wished him the same, sayin’ that she was blythe to serve
such a beautifu’, handsome leddy, only she wad a likit if she had
been bigger.”
“‘Bigger!’ said Sir John; ‘why do you wish that, Ailsie? It seems rather
a singular sort of compliment.’
“‘Oh, Sir John,’ said Ailsie, ‘they say that you got her wecht [weight]
in gold wi’ her, and of course the bigger she was the mair ye wad
hae gotten.’”
“Very good for Ailsie,” said Bell, “very good. Her an’ me was weel
acquaint.”
A movement was set afoot to give Bell a present, and subscriptions
were readily got from all classes, irrespective of church or other
distinctive connection. There was more difficulty in determining how
to expend the money than there had been in collecting it. Betty
Kellock’s was perhaps the best proposal.
“Gi’e Bell the hard siller; she’ll gar’t gang farther, and ware it better
than ony o’ us.”
There were so many and so various proposals, that ultimately Mrs.
Barrie had to be consulted, and she quietly sounded Bell, who would
only speak on the subject after she learned that she could not get
out of it, and the result was that a “Paisley shawl” (I think it was also
called a Paisley plaid, a “harness” plaid) and a china tea-set were
procured.
A meeting of lady subscribers was held in the manse dining-room.
As Dr. Stevenson insisted on being admitted, he made the
presentation, in what was reported to me as “a real neat wee
speech.” Bell’s reply was declared by those present to have been
“beautiful”; even Miss Park said it was very becoming and most
creditable for a person in Bell’s position. The only fragment of it that I
could pick up was that “she would not presume to invite ladies in
their station to her plain hoose, but if any o’ them would be kind
enough to come, she wad hansel the teapot wi’ a’ her heart.” Dr.
Stevenson said, “Remember, Bell, you’ll need to give me a cinder in
my last cup.”
Bell did not know that the Doctor referred to a little whisky when he
said this. She look puzzled, hospitably puzzled, and said, “A cinder,
Doctor! a cinder in your hinmost cup? The coals are unco assy [very
ashy] hereabouts, an’ it micht break the cup; but when a’ ither folks
are served, I could drop ane into the teapot if that would please ye.”
“I’ll drop it in myself, Bell, if you’ll either give me the key of the
cupboard, or put the bottle on the table,” said the Doctor. “The cinder
I mean will not burn a cork; it’s ‘barley tea’ or ‘barley bree.’”
Mrs. Barrie gave Bell as her personal present a brooch
of large dimensions, which contained locks of the hair “THE
of all the family;—wee Nellie’s was in the middle. TONES OF
There was engraved on the back of the brooch: “From THE
Mrs. Barrie to Isabella Cameron—July 1851. ‘The Lord HEART.”
deal kindly with you, as ye have dealt with the dead and with me,’
Ruth i. 8.”
Bell was neither romantic, nor sentimental, nor demonstrative, but
when she read the inscription, she kissed the brooch again and
again and again, and for several nights after she got it, she often
took it from under her pillow, and pressed it to her lips and to her
heart.
Mr. Barrie’s present was a Bible in two volumes, and he was
bewildered by the number of texts he would like to write on each.
“My dear,” said he to Mrs. Barrie, “I have spent some hours in
considering what to write on Bell’s Bible, and have not yet decided,
so many texts seem suitable. In the first place, I would like to write
the last twenty-one verses of the Book of Proverbs. I have just been
reading these, and it seemed to me as if the writer had Bell in his
thoughts when he wrote them. It resembles one of those new-
fashioned pictures that are taken by the sun now-a-days, called
‘daguerreotypes,’[28] invented by a Frenchman called Daguerre.
Could anything more accurately descriptive of even plain homely Bell
be imagined than ‘The heart of her husband doth safely trust in
her,’—‘do him good and not evil all the days of his life,’—‘worketh
willingly with her hands,’—‘considereth a field and buyeth
it,’—‘reacheth forth her hand to the needy,’—‘in her tongue is the law
of kindness,’—‘looketh well to the ways of her household,’—‘eateth
not the bread of idleness,’ and so on, my dear,” added he, laying his
hand on the Bible. “That is an old Book,—the old Book,—but its
references to human life—the lower as well as the higher life—are as
applicable to the life of to-day as they were to that of two thousand
years ago. The reading of these verses in the circumstances, and
with the object I had in view, has delighted me; I think I never felt so
irresistibly convinced that they were written by Him who knew what
was in man, and what would suit mankind for all time.”
[28] The original process of photography, in which the

picture was taken on a silvered plate. The daguerreotypes
required to be held in a certain way to prevent the bright
silverized plate from shining so as to confuse the eye, and
they could not be used as negatives to take other
impressions from, as photographs now are.
Mr. Barrie also showed her a long list of other texts: “A
succourer of many, and of myself also,”—“who “FAR
bestowed much labour on us,”—“in labours more ABOVE
abundant, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings RUBIES.”
often,” etc. He almost grudged Mrs. Barrie her
quotation from Ruth, but he took part of the 12th verse of the second
chapter, as also the blessing of the tribes in Numbers vi. 24–26: “The
Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make His face shine upon
thee, and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up His countenance
upon thee, and give thee peace,” and a few other passages, until the
front fly-leaf of both volumes was fairly covered.
Bell was immensely delighted with this gift, and the volumes
occupied in the “room” at Blackbrae the place of honour on the small
back table.
The very important question of the marriage gown—Bell never got
the length of a dress—was confined to the matters of colour and
fabric, as the shape was to be her “invariable.” The dressmaker
asked her if she would like it to be low-bodied, for bare necks and
bare arms were in vogue for dress occasions at that time.
“What d’ye mean by low-bodied?” said Bell. “D’ye mean lang tails
that ye hae to hand up for fear o’ their trailing amang the mud? That
I’ll never wear; mak’ it just like this every way.” This only reached to
the ankles, and was, as all her “kirk-claes” were, of douce black.
“Oh,” said the dressmaker, “I meant, would you like a bare neck and
sleeves? These are the fashion for dress occasions at present.”
Bell looked indignantly at her, and said: “Hoo dare you speak o’ sic
heathenish fal-de-rals to me? Bare necks and sleeves! I think I see
mysel’!” But she was quieted by the dressmaker’s gentle reply, that
she was merely inquiring, not proposing such a thing; for she had an
elderly lady to fit yesterday who would have a “low-bodied.”
“There’s nae fules like auld fules, they say. Black’s no’ lucky to get
married in, so I’ve ta’en a red merino, an’ mak’ it as ye’ve aye done
my goons. An’ be sure an’ send me the bits that’s ower—they micht
come usefu’; an’ as I’ll no’ aye hae somebody to ‘hook my back’
where I’m gaun, pit gude big hooks an’ gude wide eyes on’t.”
Dresses in those days were fastened by hooks and eyes at the back,
and many a firm “yerk” it took to make them meet when done by the
wearer alone. The words may seem strange to younger readers, but
older householders will well remember the familiar sound of “Hook
my back.”
Bell wished to postpone the marriage until the flitting to
Edinburgh was over, but Mrs. Barrie would not hear of “THEY’LL
this; so the earliest possible day was fixed, Bell having HELP TO
determined to get Blackbrae all right, and thereafter to GAR THE
BOATIE
see Mrs. Barrie settled in Edinburgh. ROW.”
Bell found a “best-maid” in Mary Barrie, who was now
a handsome young lady of eighteen. Besides having had a good
education, she had the not less important advantage of a thorough
training in household work from her mother and Bell. She was a
sweet-tempered, charming girl, and entered into the preparations for
Bell’s marriage with great spirit,—so much so that she became Bell’s
adviser or rather confidant, and put her head, her hands, and her
heart into the work.
Mr. Tait, the schoolmaster, whose examination occupied part of an
earlier chapter, was “best-man.”
James Barrie, now a promising young student, heard Mary
wondering who would give away the bride, and he expressed to Mrs.
Barrie his desire to do so; but his mother thought he was rather
young, and had intended to ask Mr. Taylor, when another applicant
for the honour appeared.
Mr. Tait, the schoolmaster, was calling on Mr. Walker on parish
business, and, as his uncle David of Blackbrae had told him of his
intended marriage, and “trysted” him for “best-man” the day after Bell
and he had “made it up,” he was the first to give Mr. Walker the
news.
I have omitted till now to tell that Mr. Walker was a capital player on
the violin; his general instrument, indeed, was the violoncello, “the

My Quantum Experiment John Horgan The Science Writer Full Chapter

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My Quantum Experiment John Horgan

(The Science Writer)

About My Quantum Experiment

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without some asshole (other than yourself) second-guessing you.

ABOUT MY QUANTUM EXPERIMENT

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Drawing by Nikita Petrov

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About John Horgan

Old Man Gets More Befuddled

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means of overcoming fear and pain. She is happiest

Why Quantum Mechanics?

Quantum mechanics is a contradiction, an embarrassment, really, lurking at the heart of modern

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https://johnhorgan.org/books/my-quantum-experiment/introduction[3/3/2023 4:04:54 PM]

In 2021, I crossed paths with Terry Rudolph, the

I’ve learned a lot about quantum mechanics. When

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When my experiment began, Sabine Hossenfelder predicted that someday an interpretation of

I riff on connections between physics and

I began my experiment hoping to get away from

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Quantum mechanics is often described as “weird,” meaning strange, inexplicable, improbable.

Far, far weirder are the things these theories

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ferries--and that should not be surprising. We are,

Ikkyu, a 15th-century Zen sage, defined

1. Fun when you’re doing it and fun to remember.

My quantum experiment has nonetheless been one

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Drawing by Nikita Petrov

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https://johnhorgan.org/books/my-quantum-experiment/introduction[3/3/2023 4:04:54 PM]

About John Horgan

The Strange Theory of

Dear [____], Without

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https://johnhorgan.org/books/my-quantum-experiment/chapter-one[3/3/2023 4:04:28 PM]

no conceivable experiment can confirm the theories, as most proponents reluctantly

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Feynman and QED

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After ordering Quantum Mechanics: The

One wall of my office is lined, floor-to-ceiling, with

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https://johnhorgan.org/books/my-quantum-experiment/chapter-one[3/3/2023 4:04:28 PM]

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Shut Up and Calculate!

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attitude is often expressed as a command: Shut up and calculate!

Oil Slicks and Peacocks

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The Mind-Body Problem

Some scientists think quantum mechanics can span

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Discussions of the mind-body problem can get

Quantum Physics for Babies

The protons and neutrons are drawn as a cluster of

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“But an electron cannot be here,” says a picture