Copenhagen - Michael Frayn [7]
Bohr You were always so combative! It was the same when we played table-tennis at Tisvilde. You looked as if you were trying to kill me.
Heisenberg I wanted to win. Of course I wanted to win. You wanted to win.
Bohr I wanted an agreeable game of table-tennis.
Heisenberg You couldn’t see the expression on your face.
Bohr I could see the expression on yours.
Heisenberg What about those games of poker in the ski-hut at Bayrischzell, then? You once cleaned us all out! You remember that? With a non-existent straight! We’re all mathematicians—we’re all counting the cards—we’re 90 per cent certain he hasn’t got anything. But on he goes, raising us, raising us. This insane confidence. Until our faith in mathematical probability begins to waver, and one by one we all throw in.
Bohr I thought I had a straight! I misread the cards! I bluffed myself!
Margrethe Poor Niels.
Heisenberg Poor Niels? He won! He bankrupted us! You were insanely competitive! He got us all playing poker once with imaginary cards!
Bohr You played chess with Weizsäcker on an imaginary board!
Margrethe Who won?
Bohr Need you ask? At Bayrischzell we’d ski down from the hut to get provisions, and he’d make even that into some kind of race! You remember? When we were there with Weizsäcker and someone? You got out a stop-watch.
Heisenberg It took poor Weizsäcker eighteen minutes.
Bohr You were down there in ten, of course.
Heisenberg Eight.
Bohr I don’t recall how long I took.
Heisenberg Forty-five minutes.
Bohr Thank you.
Margrethe Some rather swift skiing going on here, I think.
Heisenberg Your skiing was like your science. What were you waiting for? Me and Weizsäcker to come back and suggest some slight change of emphasis?
Bohr Probably.
Heisenberg You were doing seventeen drafts of each slalom?
Margrethe And without me there to type them out.
Bohr At least I knew where I was. At the speed you were going you were up against the uncertainty relationship. If you knew where you were when you were down you didn’t know how fast you’d got there. If you knew how fast you’d been going you didn’t know you were down.
Heisenberg I certainly didn’t stop to think about it.
Bohr Not to criticise, but that’s what might be criticised with some of your science.
Heisenberg I usually got there, all the same.
Bohr You never cared what got destroyed on the way, though. As long as the mathematics worked out you were satisfied.
Heisenberg If something works it works.
Bohr But the question is always, What does the mathematics mean, in plain language? What are the philosophical implications?
Heisenberg I always knew you’d be picking your way step by step down the slope behind me, digging all the capsized meanings and implications out of the snow.
Margrethe The faster you ski the sooner you’re across the cracks and crevasses.
Heisenberg The faster you ski the better you think.
Bohr Not to disagree, but that is most … most interesting.
Heisenberg By which you mean it’s nonsense. But it’s not nonsense. Decisions make themselves when you’re coming downhill at seventy kilometres an hour. Suddenly there’s the edge of nothingness in front of you. Swerve left? Swerve right? Or think about it and die? In your head you swerve both ways …
Margrethe Like that particle.
Heisenberg What particle?
Margrethe The one that you said goes through two different slits at the same time.
Heisenberg Oh, in our old thought-experiment. Yes. Yes!
Margrethe Or Schrödinger’s wretched cat.
Heisenberg That’s alive and dead at the same time.
Margrethe Poor beast.
Bohr My love, it was an imaginary cat.
Margrethe I know.
Bohr Locked away with an imaginary phial of cyanide.
Margrethe I know, I know.
Heisenberg So the particle’s here, the particle’s there …
Bohr The cat’s alive, the cat’s dead …
Margrethe You’ve swerved left, you’ve swerved right …
Heisenberg Until the experiment is over, this is the point, until the sealed chamber is opened, the abyss detoured; and it turns out that the particle has met itself again, the cat’s dead …
Margrethe And you