Talk:Not even wrong/Archives/2014

Actual Quotation
The actual quotation from source 2 is: "a friend showed [Pauli] the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli's views. Pauli remarked sadly, 'It is not even wrong.'" We've had a few well-meaning people over the history of this page who "corrected" that to the well-known "It is not only not right, it is not even wrong" version of the phrase, but that is in fact not in this particular original source. As far as I have been able to determine, it's not in _any_ original source -- but if someone has a counterexample, posting it here would be useful. In the interim, _please_ do not muddy the history further! 50.0.150.25 (talk) 04:30, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for checking this. I agree with what you propose.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   11:50, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Either way, the English isn't a complete rendering of the German text given, so if both are kept in their present form, they should be either be given consistently, or an explanation of the difference added. The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 16:13, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
 * That is an issue, I agree -- I have tried to edit the text to clean that up by also mentioning the apocryphal version without citation. (I am assuming a citation to Google search results would be inappropriate, though it would demonstrate the point.)  Is there any primary source for the German text, or any reason to believe that it's not a backformation from the English?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.0.150.25 (talk) 05:22, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Refs here and in Wolfgang_Pauli both lead to http://dx.doi.org/10.1098%2Frsbm.1960.0014 but I don't have access to that online. Maybe someone has a copy they can check? The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 08:21, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Quoting Pauli's original German words was helpful, at least to readers with some knowledge of the language. Could somebody add the German original of Pauli's second quotation, either inline or in a footnote?  Thanks!  Reify-tech (talk) 13:56, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

There is a pre-Pauli version of the "Not Even Wrong" type statement given by the physicist Arthur Schuster in 1911, "We all prefer being right to being wrong, but it is better to be wrong than to be neither right nor wrong", Arthur Schuster (1911), "The Progress of Physics", Cambridge University Press, p.117. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.185.148.35 (talk) 16:55, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * An interesting precursor to Pauli's quote. Probably worth adding to the article, if the ref checks out.  Reify-tech (talk) 17:25, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I do not have access to that book but Wikipedia policy is to assume good faith. This user provided a quote and reference so I added it.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  18:33, 10 March 2014 (UTC)


 * It's here on Google Books or here on Archive.org for those who can't see Google Books. It's not really applicable; it's about condemning those unwilling to hazard a guess about the nature of things in modern physics, instead of standing behind the numbers.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:07, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

The meaning of the quote may not directly relate to a lack of falsifiability or other errors of hypothesis. To be "wrong" is to be within the realm of being right. If you are much further from being right than that, you are "not even wrong".Ryukurai (talk) 21:03, 27 May 2014 (UTC)


 * That's not what the quote means in common parlance, or as far as I can tell in original usage. "The Earth orbits Jupiter" would be wrong; "the Earth orbits the Sun because of its essential essence desiring communion with the Sun" is "not even wrong" (though others may have better examples), because there's nothing checkable there, nothing meaningful there.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:12, 28 May 2014 (UTC)