The Map Is Not The Territory: The Future Is Not The Past
Robert Anton Wilson, November 7th, 1997
The map is not the territory. In quantum physics, you set up one experimental apparatus-build up a mathematical theory to fit the results you get-and you have proven that light travels in waves.
You set up another experimental apparatus and another theoretical system to account for what you get, and you prove that light travels in particles.
Back in the twenties there was a big argument-well, actually it goes back to the previous century, but it heated up in the 1920s-does light travel as waves or as particles; is light waves or is it particles? And the answer seems to be that light is waves when it feels like being waves, and it’s particles when it feels like being particles.
Light is waves and light is particles. That leads a lot of physicists to promulgate the theory that the universe is irrational…
