Even to a hardened theoretical physicist, it remains perpetually astonishing that our solid world of trees and stones can be built of quantum fields and nothing else.  The quantum field seems far too fluid and insubstantial to be the basic stuff of the universe.

Yet we have learned gradually to accept the fact that the laws of quantum mechanics impose their own peculiar rigidity upon the fields they govern, a rigidity which is alien to our intuitive conceptions but which nonetheless effectively holds the earth in place.  We have learned to apply, both to ourselves and to our subject, the words of Robert Bridges:

                 Our stability is but balance, and our wisdom lies
                 In masterful administration of the unforeseen.

Excerpt from “Field Theory,” by Freeman Dyson [via Gravity and Levity]
Photo by Mate Ugrin [via booooooom]

our wisdom lies