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...separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible.

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
Possible
Science
Observer
Observers
Observed
Phenomenon
Separation
Observation
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More quotes by Werner Heisenberg

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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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Natural science, does not simply describe and explain nature it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves
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The more closely you look at one thing, the less closely can you see something else.
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Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.
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Every experiment destroys some of the knowledge of the system which was obtained by previous experiments.
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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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We will have to abandon the philosophy of Democritus and the concept of elementary particles. We should accept instead the concept of elementary symmetries.
Werner Heisenberg
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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
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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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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.
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Both matter and radiation possess a remarkable duality of character, as they sometimes exhibit the properties of waves, at other times those of particles. Now it is obvious that a thing cannot be a form of wave motion and composed of particles at the same time - the two concepts are too different
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There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
Werner Heisenberg
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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 reality we can put into words is never reality itself.
Werner Heisenberg
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The basic idea is to shove all fundamental difficulties onto the neutron and to do quantum mechanics in the nucleus.
Werner Heisenberg
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Looking at something changes it.
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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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
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A consistent pursuit of classical physics forces a transformation in the very heart of that physics.
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.
Werner Heisenberg