5 M i s s i n g t h e p o i n t , n o t p l a y i n g w i t h a fu l l d e c k Note: you are reading an excerpt from: James Elkins, “Failure in Twentieth-Century Painting” (unpublished MS) Revised 9.2001 This page was originally posted on: www.jameselkins.com Send all comments to:
[email protected] Part Two – 2 – 7: Missing the point There is no doubt that the classical and romantic genres of landscape painting evolved during the great age of European imperialism now seem exhausted, at least for the purposes of serious painting. Traditional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century landscape conventions are now part of the repertory of kitsch. — W.J.T. Mitchell1 Niels Bohr had no problem understanding Einstein’s arguments, but in that he was not much different from the dozens, and later hundreds, of people who had disagreements with Einstein’s claims. As Bohr’s biographer Abraham Pais shows, Bohr did more than comprehend Einstein’s points: he got very quickly to the core of the matter. He understood before other people did that the quantization of light and energy might entail something even more radical: the quantization of matter. The “Bohr model” of the atom is evidence of the speed at which he zeroed in on the central problem. Later, his arguments with Einstein show his awareness of the role played by observation in quantum mechanics, and his attempts to reconcile Heisenberg and Schrödinger show how clearly he saw that the matrix and wave models needed to be fused.