Werner Heisenberg - Physics 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
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
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.

Werner Heisenberg
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. We have probably no reason to regret this, because the thought of the great epistemological difficulties with which the visual atom concept of earlier physics had to contend gives us the hope that the abstracter atomic physics developing at present will one day fit more harmoniously into the great edifice of Science.

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

Werner Heisenberg
A consistent pursuit of classical physics forces a transformation in the very heart of that physics.

Werner Heisenberg
This assumption is not permissible in atomic physics; the interaction between observer and object causes uncontrollable and large changes in the system being observed, because of the discontinuous changes characteristic of atomic processes.

Werner Heisenberg
I am convinced that the spectrum of all chemical elements can be obtained... from quantum theory in a unique manner without physics by boneheaded calculation.

Werner Heisenberg
All the qualities of the atom of modem physics are derived, it has no immediate and direct physical properties at all, i.e., every type of visual conception we might wish to design is eo ipso, faulty.

Werner Heisenberg
In physics, we can only work with the assumption that we have natural laws. If we have no natural laws, then anything can happen, and we can only describe what we see, and that's all.

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. The partition of the world into observing and observed system prevents a sharp formulation of the law of cause and effect.

Werner Heisenberg