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Werner Heisenberg
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„Reality is in the observations, not in the electron.“
„The great scientific contribution in theoretical physics that has come from Japan since the last war may be an indication of a certain relationship between philosophical ideas in the tradition of the Far East and the philosophical substance of quantum theory.“
„I am the one who knocks.“
„Of course, we all know that our own reality depends on the structure of our consciousness; we can objectify no more than a small part of our world. But even when we try to probe into the subjective realm, we cannot ignore the central order…In the final analysis, the central order, or ‘the one’ as it used to be called and with which we commune in the language of religion, must win out.“
„There is an enormous difference between modern science and Greek philosophy, and that is just the empiristic attitude… Since the time of Galileo and Newton, modern science has been based upon a detailed study of nature and upon the postulate that only such statements should be made, as have been verified or at least can be verified by experiment. The idea that one can single out some events from nature by an experiment… to find out what is the constant law in the continuous change, did not occur to the Greek philosophers. Therefore, modern science has from its beginning stood on a much more modest, but at the same time much firmer, basis than ancient philosophy. Therefore, the statements of modern physics are in some way meant much more seriously than the statements of Greek philosophy.“
„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.“
„Every experiment destroys some of the knowledge of the system which was obtained by previous experiments.“
„After these conversations with Tagore some of the ideas that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense. That was a great help for me.“
„The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.“
„Modern positivism…expresses criticism against the naïve use of certain terms… by the general postulate that the question whether a given sentence has any meaning… should always be thoroughly and critically examined. This… is derived from mathematical logic. The procedure of natural science is pictured as an attachment of symbols to the phenomena. The symbols can, as in mathematics, be combined according to certain rules… However, a combination of symbols that does not comply with the rules is not wrong but conveys no meaning.The obvious difficulty in this argument is the lack of any general criterion as to when a sentence should be considered meaningless. A definite decision is possible only when the sentence belongs to a closed system of concepts and axioms, which in the development of natural science will be rather the exception than the rule. In some case the conjecture that a certain sentence is meaningless has historically led to important progress… new connections which would have been impossible if the sentence had a meaning. An example… sentence: “In which orbit does the electron move around the nucleus?”“
„The atoms in the philosophy of do not move merely by chance. Leucippus seems to have believed in complete determinism, since he is known to have said: “Naught happens for nothing, but everything from a ground and of necessity.” The atomists did not give any reason for the original motion of the atoms, which just shows that they thought of a causal description of the atomic motion; causality can only explain later events by earlier events, but it can never explain the beginning.“
„An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.“
„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.“
„I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.“
„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.“
„Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.“
„However the development proceeds in detail, the path so far traced by the quantum theory indicates that an understanding of those still unclarified features of atomic physics can only be acquired by foregoing visualization and objectification to an extent greater than that customary hitherto.“
„Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our nature of questioning.“
„Insistence on the postulate of complete logical clarification would make science impossible. We are reminded… of the old wisdom that one who insists on never uttering an error must remain silent.“
„Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?“
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