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What QM does have, however, is the word, “uncertainty.” Uncertainty is a mathematical relation between certain pairs of measurable qualities, like position and momentum. It says that if you can measure X to within a degree of certitude, then the maximum certitude you can get for Y is a function of the certitude for X. As a consequence of wave-particle duality, you can’t measure both quantities as accurately as you want to. What this means epistemologically and metaphysically is perpetually up for debate...
Uncertainty, in its more general usage, is something with which literature is far more intimate. We’re all aware of our own incomplete knowledge and inability to divine the future. This is the very motivation for physics in the first place. And the word forms the core of perhaps the most accurate and beautiful conception of poetics—John Keats’s “Negative Capability”: “when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” I believe that herein...
...past year, Obama has changed the tenor of international diplomacy through his speeches and actions. The results have not been visibly shocking, but that does not mean his accomplishment should be dismissed. Major conflicts do not start when the first shot is fired; they start when the first harsh word is thrown and when antagonism builds at a local level between individuals. Obama’s repeatedly stated commitment to open-minded dialogue is preventing and mitigating grassroots antagonism around the world...
...Spain's northeastern Catalonia region, you need look no further than Las Arenas. The striking, late 19th century arena with faux Moorish arches, located near Barcelona's central Plaza de España, once pulled in thousands of bullfighting aficionados for the traditional - and gory - Sunday corrida (the Spanish word for "bullfight"). Today, it is being converted into a shopping mall...
...sign of popular support for the measure that we were able to collect 180,000 signatures - three times the number we needed to present a legal initiative before parliament," says Jennifer Berengueras, spokeswoman for Prou (the word means "enough" in the Catalan language), the association that organized the campaign...