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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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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
Abandon
Concept
Concepts
Accept
Accepting
Democritus
Instead
Symmetry
Philosophy
Elementary
Particles

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The existing scientific concepts cover always only a very limited part of reality, and the other part that has not yet been understood is infinite.
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The 'path' comes into existence only when we observe it.
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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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An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them.
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Looking at something changes it.
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Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.
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Thus, the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known, and conversely.
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Science clears the fields on which technology can build.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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[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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Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be, has only a limited range of applicability.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole.
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