Werner Heisenberg — "The meaning of 'understanding' has changed in the course of the development of p…"
The meaning of 'understanding' has changed in the course of the development of physics.
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More from Werner Heisenberg
"The smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, structures or—in Plato's sense—Ideas."
"Quantum theory does not really describe the behavior of 'things'; it describes the behavior of 'what we can know' about things."
"We wouldn't have had the moral courage to recommend to the government in the spring of 1942 that they should employ 120,000 men just for building the thing up."
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"The uncertainty principle refers to the degree of indeterminateness in the possible present knowledge of the simultaneous values of various quantities with which the quantum theory deals."
Details
On the evolution of scientific comprehension
Date: 1955 (Physics and Philosophy)
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Understanding this quote
What it means
What it means to truly understand something in physics is not fixed. As science progresses, the standards and methods for grasping nature shift. Earlier, understanding meant picturing things mechanically, like gears or billiard balls. Later, it meant writing equations that predict outcomes, even if the underlying reality defies visualization. Each breakthrough redefines what counts as a satisfying explanation, forcing scientists to abandon old intuitions and accept new, often stranger, frameworks.
Relevance to Werner Heisenberg
Heisenberg lived this shift firsthand. Trained in classical physics, he co-founded quantum mechanics and formulated the uncertainty principle, which showed that position and momentum cannot both be precisely known. He abandoned visualizable atomic orbits for abstract matrices, drawing criticism from Einstein and Schrodinger. His philosophical writings repeatedly wrestled with what 'understanding' means when intuition fails, making this observation a direct reflection of his intellectual journey and methodological convictions.
The era
Heisenberg worked during the 1920s-1970s, when physics underwent its most radical transformation since Newton. Relativity and quantum theory dismantled classical certainties about space, time, causality, and observation. Debates raged at Copenhagen, Solvay, and Gottingen over whether quantum mechanics described reality or merely predictions. World wars, the atomic bomb, and postwar reconstruction framed these discussions. Philosophers and physicists alike asked whether science still explained nature or merely calculated it, making Heisenberg's reflection deeply timely.
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