Werner Heisenberg Quotes on Knowledge
Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976), whose 1925 matrix mechanics and 1927 uncertainty principle gave quantum mechanics its first complete formalism and one of its founding epistemological theses, developed in Physics and Philosophy (1958) and the late Encounters with Einstein the most extensive philosophical commentary on the Copenhagen interpretation by one of its principal architects. The doctrine that the position and momentum of a quantum system cannot be simultaneously specified to arbitrary precision is presented not as a limitation on measurement technology but as a structural feature of what "knowledge of a physical system" can in principle amount to, and the framework extends Bohr's complementarity into a general epistemology of observer-participation.
Quotes
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“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. -
Attributed to Werner Heisenberg:
“Not only is the universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”
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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.”
Ein Fachmann ist ein Mann, der einige der gröbsten Fehler kennt, die man in dem betreffenden Fach machen kann, und der sie deshalb zu vermeiden versteht. | Der Teil und das Ganze. Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik (1969); also in "Kein Chaos, aus dem nicht wieder Ordnung würde", Die Zeit No. 34 (22 August 1969); as translated in Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversation (1971) -
Attributed to Werner Heisenberg:
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
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“The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.”
Initial statement of the Uncertainty principle in "Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik" in Zeitschrift für Physik , 43 (1927) | Variant translation: The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa. As quoted in "The Uncertainty Principle" at the American Institute of Physics -
“Initial statement of the Uncertainty principle in "Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik" in Zeitschrift für Physik , 43 (1927)”
The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa. -
“Variant translation: The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa. As quoted in "The Uncertainty Principle" at the American Institute of Physics”
The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa. -
“Every experiment destroys some of the knowledge of the system which was obtained by previous experiments.”
Critique of the Physical Concepts of the Corpuscular Theory" in The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory (1930) as translated by Carl Eckhart and Frank C. Hoyt, p. 20; also in "The Uncertainty Principle" in The World of Mathematics : A Small Library of the Literature of Mathematics (1956) by James Roy Newman, p. 1051 -
“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 .”
Die Quantentheorie ist so ein wunderbares Beispiel dafür, daß man einen Sachverhalt in völliger Klarheit verstanden haben kann und gleichzeitig doch weiß, daß man nur in Bildern und Gleichnissen von ihm reden kann. | Der Teil und das Ganze. Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik (1969); also in "Kein Chaos, aus dem nicht wieder Ordnung würde", Die Zeit No. 34 (22 August 1969) ; as translated in Physi -
“Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word " understanding ."”
Physics and Philosophy(1958)