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Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be, has only a limited range of applicability.
Werner Heisenberg
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Werner Heisenberg
Age: 74 †
Born: 1901
Born: December 5
Died: 1976
Died: February 1
Academic
Mathematician
Mountaineer
Non-Fiction Writer
Nuclear Physicist
Physicist
Theoretical Physicist
University Teacher
Kreisfreie Stadt Würzburg
Werner Karl Heisenberg
Heisenberg
Werner K. Heisenberg
Concepts
Seem
Clear
Word
Seems
Applicability
May
Limited
Every
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Range
More quotes by Werner Heisenberg
What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Our scientific work in physics consists in asking questions about nature in the language that we possess and trying to get an answer from experiment by the means that are at our disposal.
Werner Heisenberg
It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet.
Werner Heisenberg
Every experiment destroys some of the knowledge of the system which was obtained by previous experiments.
Werner Heisenberg
After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense.
Werner Heisenberg
Nature allows only experimental situations to occur which can be described within the framework of the formalism of quantum mechanics
Werner Heisenberg
The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct actuality of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation is impossible, however.
Werner Heisenberg
Every tool carries with it the spirit by which it has been created.
Werner Heisenberg
The conception of objective reality ... has thus evaporated ... into the transparent clarity of mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior.
Werner Heisenberg
Looking at something changes it.
Werner Heisenberg
By getting to smaller and smaller units, we do not come to fundamental or indivisible units. But we do come to a point where further division has no meaning.
Werner Heisenberg
In the strict formulation of the law of causality—if we know the present, we can calculate the future—it is not the conclusion that is wrong but the premise. On an implication of the uncertainty principle.
Werner Heisenberg
Whether we electrons, light quanta, benzol molecules, or stones, we shall always come up against these two characteristics, the corpuscular and the undular.
Werner Heisenberg
Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.
Werner Heisenberg
There is a fundamental error in separating the parts from the whole, the mistake of atomizing what should not be atomized. Unity and complementarity constitute reality.
Werner Heisenberg
...separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible.
Werner Heisenberg
The exact sciences also start from the assumption that in the end it will always be possible to understand nature, even in every new field of experience, but that we may make no a priori assumptions about the meaning of the word understand.
Werner Heisenberg
I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.
Werner Heisenberg
The one who insists on never uttering an error must remain silent.
Werner Heisenberg
Unless you stake your life, life will not be won.
Werner Heisenberg
When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity ? And why turbulence ? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.
Werner Heisenberg