Werner Heisenberg - Observe Quotes

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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.

Werner Heisenberg
We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

Werner Heisenberg
Since the measuring device has been constructed by the observer... we have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

Werner Heisenberg
The idea that we do observe something already indicates something irreversible. If we draw a pencil line on a paper, for instance, we have established something which cannot be undone, so to speak. Every observation is irreversible, because we have gained information that cannot be forgotten.

Werner Heisenberg
Some physicists would prefer to come back to the idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist independently of whether we observe them. That, however, is impossible.

Werner Heisenberg
In fact, our ordinary description of nature, and the idea of exact laws, rests on the assumption that it is possible to observe the phenomena without appreciably influencing them.

Werner Heisenberg