Niels Bohr — "The word 'reality' is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly."
The word 'reality' is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly.
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More from Niels Bohr
"It is a great pity that human beings cannot find all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness."
"The great thing is to be able to make a mistake without knowing it."
"We are suspended in language. Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We constantly have to be aware of the fact that we are suspended in language."
"The scientist's greatest reward is the joy of discovery."
"One must be clear that, as far as the atoms are concerned, we are not dealing with an analogy to everyday experience but with something quite different."
Details
Attributed to him in discussions, emphasizing the role of language in defining reality.
Date: Approx. 1930s-1950s
EducationalVerification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: grok
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Even the concept of 'reality' is just a word we invented, and like any tool, it can be misused or misunderstood. We often assume reality is a fixed, self-evident thing, but our ability to talk about it depends entirely on using language carefully. Before arguing about what is real, we need to agree on what we mean by the word itself, because sloppy usage leads to confused thinking.
Relevance to Niels Bohr
Bohr pioneered quantum mechanics and the Copenhagen interpretation, where particles lack definite properties until measured. This forced him to question whether 'reality' even applied at the atomic scale in the classical sense. He famously debated Einstein over whether quantum mechanics described reality or merely our knowledge of it. For Bohr, physics was as much about the language we use to describe nature as about nature itself, since measurement and description are inseparable.
The era
Bohr worked during the early-to-mid 20th century, when quantum mechanics shattered classical assumptions about a deterministic, observer-independent universe. Philosophers like Wittgenstein were simultaneously arguing that linguistic confusion caused most philosophical problems. Einstein's relativity had already redefined space and time, and logical positivism questioned which statements were meaningful. Amid this upheaval, physicists confronted experiments suggesting that observation shaped outcomes, making the precise use of everyday words like 'reality' genuinely urgent.
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