Log24

“Here is the background to Wheeler’s explosive remarks.

John Archibald Wheeler, director of the Center
for Theoretical Physics at the University of Texas,
is one of the world’s top theoretical physicists.
In 1939 he and Niels Bohr published a paper on
‘The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission”
that laid the groundwork for atomic and hydrogen bombs.
Wheeler later played major roles in their development.”

For a rather different explosion of Wheeler’s views, see the previous post.

“In his big book, Gravity  [sic ], Wheeler puts our space
into what he calls superspace, and speculates on the
most basic physical laws which operate on superspace.
He comes to the (to me) surprising conclusion that the
rock-bottom laws are the laws of the propositional calculus!”

— Martin Gardner, letter to Donald E. Knuth, 8 January 1976,
on cover of Notices of the American Mathematical Society ,
March 2011 issue.

Fact check —

Related reading —

See as well "Up the Trinity Staircase" (yesterday afternoon)
and "British Pottery" (Log24 , December 22, 2018).