Werner Heisenberg: Quotes about ideas and thoughts

“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

Das Naturgesetz und die Struktur der Materie (1967), as translated in Natural Law and the Structure of Matter (1981), p. 34

Mathematics , Idea , Thinking , Sense

“In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas — and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed.”

Werner Heisenberg

Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversation (1971)

Idea , Happiness

“After these conversations with Tagore some of the ideas that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense. That was a great help for me.”

Werner Heisenberg

On conversations with Rabindranath Tagore, as quoted in Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations With Remarkable People (1988) by Fritjof Capra, who states that after these "He began to see that the recognition of relativity, interconnectedness, and impermanence as fundamental aspects of physical reality, which had been so difficult for himself and his fellow physicists, was the very basis of the Indian spiritual traditions."
As quoted in Pride of India (2006) by Samskrita Bharati. p. 56
Variant: After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense.

Idea , Sense , Help

“There is an enormous difference between modern science and Greek philosophy, and that is just the empiristic attitude… Since the time of Galileo and Newton, modern science has been based upon a detailed study of nature and upon the postulate that only such statements should be made, as have been verified or at least can be verified by experiment. The idea that one can single out some events from nature by an experiment… to find out what is the constant law in the continuous change, did not occur to the Greek philosophers. Therefore, modern science has from its beginning stood on a much more modest, but at the same time much firmer, basis than ancient philosophy. Therefore, the statements of modern physics are in some way meant much more seriously than the statements of Greek philosophy.”

Werner Heisenberg

p, 125
Physics and Philosophy (1958)

Law , Way , Idea , Nature

“The great scientific contribution in theoretical physics that has come from Japan since the last war may be an indication of a certain relationship between philosophical ideas in the tradition of the Far East and the philosophical substance of quantum theory.”

Werner Heisenberg

Quoted from F. Capra, The Tao of Physics.

War , Idea