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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

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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
Think
Modern
Mathematical
Thinking
Fact
Physics
Unambiguously
Language
Forms
Plato
Sense
Definitely
Units
Facts
Physical
Expressed
Form
Decided
Smallest
Ideas
Ordinary
Favor
Matter
Objects
Favors

More quotes by Werner Heisenberg

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Nature allows only experimental situations to occur which can be described within the framework of the formalism of quantum mechanics
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Where no guiding ideals are left to point the way, the scale of values disappears and with it the meaning of our deeds and sufferings, and at the end can lie only negation and despair. Religion is therefore the foundation of ethics, and ethics the presupposition of life.
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The 'path' comes into existence only when we observe it.
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There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
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My mind was formed by studying philosophy, Plato and that sort of thing.
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In my paper the fact the XY was not equal to YX was very disagreeable to me. I felt this was the only point of difficulty in the whole scheme...and I was not able to solve it.
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It was about three o'clock at night when the final result of the calculation [which gave birth to quantum mechanics] lay before me ... At first I was deeply shaken ... I was so excited that I could not think of sleep. So I left the house ... and awaited the sunrise on top of a rock.
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Every experiment destroys some of the knowledge of the system which was obtained by previous experiments.
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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.
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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.
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Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.
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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.
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The very act of observing disturbs the system.
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Can quantum mechanics represent the fact that an electron finds itself approximately in a given place and that it moves approximately with a given velocity, and can we make these approximations so close that they do not cause experimental difficulties?
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In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas- and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed.
Werner Heisenberg
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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.
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The existing scientific concepts cover always only a very limited part of reality, and the other part that has not yet been understood is infinite.
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I think that the discovery of antimatter was perhaps the biggest jump of all the big jumps in physics in our century.
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It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.
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Thus, the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known, and conversely.
Werner Heisenberg