{"id":14143,"date":"2012-08-11T20:59:10","date_gmt":"2012-08-12T03:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2012\/08\/11\/14143.html"},"modified":"2012-08-11T20:59:10","modified_gmt":"2012-08-12T03:59:10","slug":"bohr-on-coincidence-in-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2012\/08\/11\/bohr-on-coincidence-in-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Niels Bohr on coincidence in movies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mary Anne and I were discussing coincidence in story plots, and this quote came to mind but I couldn't quite remember how it went, and it proved remarkably elusive to track down. Eventually I found a variant of it in an old file on my hard drive, which led me roundaboutly to the book where it appeared: Haphazard Reality: Half a Century of Science<\/a><\/cite>, by H. B. G. Casimir, p. 97. Figured I ought to quote it here so I can find it more easily next time.<\/p>\n

\n

While Gamow and Landau were at the Institute, the three of us often went to the movies together, and we had a preference for lowbrow and lurid films. Sometimes we could persuade Bohr to come with us to see a Western or a gangster film we had selected. His comments were always remarkable because he used to introduce some of his ideas on observations and measurements into his criticism.<\/p>\n

Once, after a thoroughly stupid Tom Mix film, his verdict went as follows: “I did not like that picture; it was too improbable. That the scoundrel runs off with the beautiful girl is logical; it always happens. That the bridge collapses under their carriage is unlikely but I am willing to accept it. That the the heroine remains suspended in mid-air over a precipice is even more unlikely, but again I accept it. I am even willing to accept that at that very moment Tom Mix is coming by on his horse. But that at that very moment there should also be a fellow with a motion-picture camera to film the whole business—that is more than I am willing to believe.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mary Anne and I were discussing coincidence in story plots, and this quote came to mind but I couldn’t quite…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commonplace-book","category-humor"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}