--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> How about horseshoes? Maybe you know the anecdote told by Niels
Bohr to Werner Heisenberg, who spread it further:
>
> "One of our neighbors in Tisvilde once fixed a horseshoe over the
door to his house. When a common friend asked him, 'But are you
really superstitious? Do you honestly believe that this horseshoe
will bring you luck?' he replied, 'Of course not; but they say it
works even if you don't believe in it.'"
>
> This seems to be the original story, though in secondary versions
of the same anecdote it was Niels Bohr himself who nailed a horseshoe
to his sudy-room door, and when a shocked student asked him ..., etc.
>
> Piotr
>
>
>
At a recent family reunion I entertained my cousin with this story.
Then he told me that this story came from "Politikens
Anekdotesamling" and also on which shelf it used to be on in our
grandfather's house. Annoying.
It's a pretty good reflection on Danish (and Scandinavian) attitudes
to "superstition" (and by extension, to "heritage"). I've seen
foreign visitors growing irritated at this attitude in a people they
thought to be modern and enlightened etc. You might even see the
controvery between Einstein and Bohr, or Hegel and Kierkegaard as
manifestations of the ongoing debate between Germans and Danes, which
runs approx. like this:
"The world is sytematic"
"No, it isn't"
1:
"Is too"
"Isn't"
<goto 1>
Torsten