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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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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
Progress
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Absorption
Happy
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More quotes by Werner Heisenberg

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The reality we can put into words is never reality itself.
Werner Heisenberg
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The 'path' comes into existence only when we observe it.
Werner Heisenberg
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The discontinuous 'reduction of the wave packets' which cannot be derived from Schroedinger's equation is ... a consequence of the transition from the possible to the actual.
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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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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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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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
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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 will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.
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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[T]he atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.
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
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The one who insists on never uttering an error must remain silent.
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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Every tool carries with it the spirit by which it has been created.
Werner Heisenberg
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It seems sensible to discard all hope of observing hitherto unobservable quantities, such as the position and period of the electron... Instead it seems more reasonable to try to establish a theoretical quantum mechanics, analogous to classical mechanics, but in which only relations between observable quantities occur.
Werner Heisenberg
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I believe that the existence of the classical path can be pregnantly formulated as follows: The path comes into existence only when we observe it.
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
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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.
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.
Werner Heisenberg