Well, it does not really explain things; in fact the founding fathers of quantum mechanics rather prided themselves on giving up the idea of explanation. They were very proud that they dealt only with phenomena: they refused to look behind the phenomena, regarding that as the price one had to pay for coming to terms with nature. And it is a fact of history that the people who took that agnostic attitude towards the real world on the microphysical level were very successful. At the time it was a good thing to do. But I don't believe it will be so indefinitely. Of course, I cannot produce theorems to that effect. If you go back to, say, David Hume, who made a careful analysis of our reasons for believing things, you find that there is no good reason for believing that the sun will come up tomorrow, or that this programme will ever be broadcast. It's a habit we have, of believing that things will continue very much as they did before. However, it is a fact that this seems to be a good habit! I cannot make that a theorem, because I think Hume's analysis is sound, but nevertheless I do believe it's a good habit, to look for explanations.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Well, it does not really explain things; in fact the founding fathers of quantum mechanics rather prided themselves on giving up the idea of explanation. They were very proud that they dealt only with phenomena: they refused to look behind the phenomena, regarding that as the price one had to pay for coming to terms with nature. And it is a fact of history that the people who took that agnostic attitude towards the real world on the microphysical level were very successful. At the time it was a good thing to do. But I don't believe it will be so indefinitely. Of course, I cannot produce theorems to that effect. If you go back to, say, David Hume, who made a careful analysis of our reasons for believing things, you find that there is no good reason for believing that the sun will come up tomorrow, or that this programme will ever be broadcast. It's a habit we have, of believing that things will continue very much as they did before. However, it is a fact that this seems to be a good habit! I cannot make that a theorem, because I think Hume's analysis is sound, but nevertheless I do believe it's a good habit, to look for explanations." in the context of "John S. Bell, interview in The Ghost in the Atom: A Discussion of the Mysteries of Quantum Physics (1986) edited by P. C. W. Davies and Julian R. Brown" to mean that wisdom is timeless.