Wave particle duality is a core feature of our world. Or rather, we should say, it is a core feature of our mathematical descriptions of our world. But what is critical to note here is that, however ambiguous our images, the universe itself remains whole and is manifestly not fracturing into schizophrenic shards. It is this tantalizing wholeness and the thing itself that drives physicists onward like an eternally beckoning light that seems so teasingly near. It is always out of reach.
Margaret WertheimThis is what I call the "cosmological problem" of science. Science has the instrumental function that has given us computers and so on, but its cosmological function is to give us a picture of the world we inhabit as human beings, and on that level it's failing a vast number of people.
Margaret WertheimNature rarely does anything mathematically perfect, and naturalism results from imperfections and deviations.
Margaret WertheimWhen I was a physics major in the late 1970s, my very few fellow female students and I had high hopes that women would soon stand equal with men in science. But progress has proved slower than many of us imagined.
Margaret WertheimWhen you're in a room with twenty people who've all got the True Theory of the universe, it's difficult to know what to do. And the paradox is that so much important science is now being done by huge teams. With Higgs boson, for example, it's estimated there were around ten thousand scientists and engineers involved in building the machines that made this discovery possible.
Margaret WertheimI don't know of any science writing going on in women's magazines, unless you count medical stories about things like breast cancer. I still think there's a huge problem about how we can actively engage a wider range of women. I'm not saying women must be a separate audience - I'm just responding to the reality that the majority of people who do read science magazines are male. That's not a value judgment; it's a statistical fact.
Margaret Wertheim