Words – Part 4
Just where no ideas are,
the proper word is never far.
Men usually believe if only they hear words,
that there must be some sort of meaning.
Mephistopheles (Goethe’s Faust)
When the first terms seemed to come right [Bohr’s existing rules] I became excited, making one error after another. By three o’clock in the morning all my calculations lay before me. It was correct in all terms. Suddenly I no longer had any doubts about the consistency of the new quantum mechanics that my calculations described. I was deeply alarmed,…I had gone beyond the surface of things and was beginning to see a strangely beautiful interior,…and felt dizzy,…this wealth of mathematical structures Nature had so generously spread before me.
Werner Heisenberg (describing his matrix theory of quantum mechanics)
From Mephistopheles taunting our gullibility, to the far reaches of genius seen within Heisenberg’s stupendous “Uncertainty Principle”, every livelong day is a reminder we make decisions based upon partial data, bias, chance, undisclosed motives, and misunderstanding. And that’s just deciding what to have for dinner.
Can we actually have informative shared decision making with families about the particulars of intensive care or hospital services or emergency treatments?
One example (from a bazillion) – probiotics to reduce death, necrotizing enterocolitis, and infection in premature infants – two excellent discussions attached.
Joe Kaempf, MD
District VIII Oregon Representative
Portland, OR
Volume 13, Number 18