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Nature allows only experimental situations to occur which can be described within the framework of the formalism of quantum mechanics

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
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Mechanic
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Quantum
Occur
Situations
Formalism
Allows
Mechanics

More quotes by Werner Heisenberg

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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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Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be, has only a limited range of applicability.
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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.
Werner Heisenberg
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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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Many people will tell you that an expert is someone who knows a great deal about the subject. To this I would object that one can never know much about any subject. I would much prefer the following definition: an expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in the subject, and how to avoid them.
Werner Heisenberg
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...separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible.
Werner Heisenberg
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The Same organizing forces that have shaped nature in all her forms are also responsible for the structure of our minds.
Werner Heisenberg
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The violent reaction on the recent development of modern physics can only be understood when one realises that here the foundations of physics have started moving and that this motion has caused the feeling that the ground would be cut from science
Werner Heisenberg
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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?
Werner Heisenberg
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The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.
Werner Heisenberg
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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
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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.
Werner Heisenberg
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The solution of the difficulty is that the two mental pictures which experiment lead us to form - the one of the particles, the other of the waves - are both incomplete and have only the validity of analogies which are accurate only in limiting cases.
Werner Heisenberg
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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.
Werner Heisenberg
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The reality we can put into words is never reality itself.
Werner Heisenberg
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Natural science, does not simply describe and explain nature it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves
Werner Heisenberg
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An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them.
Werner Heisenberg
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Every experiment destroys some of the knowledge of the system which was obtained by previous experiments.
Werner Heisenberg
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Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.
Werner Heisenberg
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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