Quote

The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms. But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary 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
Problem
Structure
Really
Ordinary
Way
Problems
Serious
Language
Wish
Speak
Cannot
Atoms

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The reality we can put into words is never reality itself.
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Nonsense. Space is blue and birds fly through it.
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A consistent pursuit of classical physics forces a transformation in the very heart of that physics.
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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.
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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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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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Science no longer is in the position of observer of nature, but rather recognizes itself as part of the interplay between man and nature. The scientific method ... changes and transforms its object: the procedure can no longer keep its distance from the object.
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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.
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The one who insists on never uttering an error must remain silent.
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Looking at something changes it.
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The basic idea is to shove all fundamental difficulties onto the neutron and to do quantum mechanics in the nucleus.
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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.
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There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
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Every experiment destroys some of the knowledge of the system which was obtained by previous experiments.
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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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It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.
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After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense.
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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
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...separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible.
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