He was a German physicist and philosopher. In 1925, he discovered a way to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of matrices. For that discovery, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for 1932. In 1927 he published his uncertainty principle, upon which he built his philosophy and for which he is best known.
(1901 – 1976)
– Werner Heisenberg Quotes –
Natural science, does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves.
~ Werner Heisenberg
Science no longer is in the position of observer of nature, but rather recognizes itself as part of the interplay between man and nature.
~ Werner Heisenberg
Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be, has only a limited range of applicability.
~ Werner Heisenberg
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.
~ Werner Heisenberg
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
~ Werner Heisenberg
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
I think that the discovery of antimatter was perhaps the biggest jump of all the big jumps in physics in our century.
~ Werner Heisenberg
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.
~ Werner Heisenberg
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
The violent reaction on the recent development of modern physics can only be understood when one realises that here the foundations of physics have started moving; and that this motion has caused the feeling that the ground would be cut from science.
~ Werner Heisenberg
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.
~ Werner Heisenberg
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
~ Werner Heisenberg
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.
~ Werner Heisenberg
It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.
~ Werner Heisenberg
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.
~ Werner Heisenberg
The atom of modern physics can only be symbolized by a partial differential equation in an abstract multidimensional space.
~ Werner Heisenberg
Quantum theory reminds us, as Bohr has put it, of the old wisdom that when searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both players and spectators.
~ Werner Heisenberg
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
The chain of cause and effect could be quantitatively verified only if the whole universe were considered as a single system—but then physics has vanished, and only a mathematical scheme remains.
~ Werner Heisenberg
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
