Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in Hans Adriaansens (1980) Talcott Parsons and the Conceptual Dilemma. p. 10
1980s
“Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.”
Physics and Philosophy (1958)
Context: The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Werner Heisenberg 42
German theoretical physicist 1901–1976Related quotes

in Physical Process and Physical Law, in an edition by [Timothy E. Eastman, Hank Keeton, Physics and Whitehead: quantum, process, and experience, SUNY Press, 2004, 0791459136, 181]

“Physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an attempt by an atom to understand itself.”
Source: Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos

Derrida Jacques, Elisabeth Weber (1995), Points...: Interviews, 1974-1994. p. 115

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

“The inherent contradiction of human life has now reached an extreme degree of tension”
Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), VI
Context: The inherent contradiction of human life has now reached an extreme degree of tension: on the one side there is the consciousness of the beneficence of the law of love, and on the other the existing order of life which has for centuries occasioned an empty, anxious, restless, and troubled mode of life, conflicting as it does with the law of love and built on the use of violence. This contradiction must be faced, and the solution will evidently not be favourable to the outlived law of violence, but to the truth which has dwelt in the hearts of men from remote antiquity: the truth that the law of love is in accord with the nature of man. But men can only recognize this truth to its full extent when they have completely freed themselves from all religious and scientific superstitions and from all the consequent misrepresentations and sophistical distortions by which its recognition has been hindered for centuries.

“No word in our language — not even "Socialism"— has been employed more loosely than "Mysticism."”
Christian Mysticism (1899) http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14596, Preface
Context: No word in our language — not even "Socialism"— has been employed more loosely than "Mysticism." … The history of the word begins in close connexion with the Greek mysteries. A mystic is one who has been, or is being, initiated into some esoteric knowledge of Divine things, about which he must keep his mouth shut…

Source: 1950s–1960s, The Linguistic Sciences and Language Teaching, 1964, p. 13. cited in: David Brazil (1995) A Grammar of Speech. p. 9.
“The 'language theory' is inadequate as a description of the nature of mathematics.”
100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)