Werner Heisenberg Quotes About Science

Quotes about: Science

• What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Science, Perception, Quantum Physics

  Physics and Philosophy (1958)

• Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Science, Reality, Thinking

• You may object that by speaking of simplicity and beauty I am introducing aesthetic criteria of truth, and I frankly admit that I am strongly attracted by the simplicity and beauty of mathematical schemes which nature presents us. You must have felt this too: the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationship, which nature suddenly spreads out before us.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Nature, Truth, Science

• The conception of objective reality ... has thus evaporated ... into the transparent clarity of mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Knowledge, Science, Reality

• 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.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Sleep, Science, Night

• By getting to smaller and smaller units, we do not come to fundamental or indivisible units. But we do come to a point where further division has no meaning.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Science, Division, Fundamentals

• ...separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Science, Separation, Observation

  Werner Heisenberg (1990). “Across the frontiers”, Ox Bow Pr

• 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

  Nature, Mean, Science

• 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.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Nature, Distance, Science

• 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

  Science, Trying, Mechanic

• Nature allows only experimental situations to occur which can be described within the framework of the formalism of quantum mechanics

  Werner Heisenberg

  Science, Mechanic, Quantum

  Werner Heisenberg (1984). “Gesammelte Werke”

• 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

  Science, Transition, Wave

• Modern physics has changed nothing in the great classical disciplines of, for instance, mechanics, optics, and heat. Only the conception of hitherto unexplored regions, formed prematurely from a knowledge of only certain parts of the world, has undergone a decisive transformation. This conception, however, is always decisive for the future course of research.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Knowledge, Science, Discipline

  Werner Heisenberg (1979). “Philosophical problems of quantum physics”, Ox Bow Pr

• The incomplete knowledge of a system must be an essential part of every formulation in quantum theory. Quantum theoretical laws must be of a statistical kind. To give an example: we know that the radium atom emits alpha-radiation. Quantum theory can give us an indication of the probability that the alpha-particle will leave the nucleus in unit time, but it cannot predict at what precise point in time the emission will occur, for this is uncertain in principle.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Science, Incomplete Knowledge, Law

• I think that the discovery of antimatter was perhaps the biggest jump of all the big jumps in physics in our century.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Science, Thinking, Discovery

  Werner Heisenberg (1985). “Gesammelte Werke”

• 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.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Nature, Science, Understanding

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