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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.

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
Upon
Atomic
Around
Materialism
Kind
Range
World
Illusion
Extrapolated
Direct
Extrapolation
However
Ontology
Impossible
Rested
Existence
Actuality

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Uncertainty is NOT I don't know. It is I can't know. I am uncertain does not mean I could be certain.
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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.
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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.
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The structure underlying the phenomena is not given by material objects like the atoms of Democritus but by the form that determines the material objects. The Ideas are more fundamental than the objects.
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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.
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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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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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Nature is made in such a way as to be able to be understood. Or perhaps I should put it-more correctly-the other way around, and say that we are made in such a way as to be able to understand Nature.
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Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.
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The reality we can put into words is never reality itself.
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Unless you stake your life, life will not be won.
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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 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.
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The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.
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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.
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The one who insists on never uttering an error must remain silent.
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The more closely you look at one thing, the less closely can you see something else.
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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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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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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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