1) https://www.giffordlectures.

org/lectures/physics-and-philosophy

Physics and Philosophy

 Werner Carl Heisenberg

1955 to 1956
University of St. Andrews

These lectures discuss the theoretical and empirical results brought about with the
development of quantum physics, at the same time giving an insight into the extent to
which such results go beyond the scope of pure science and affect fundamental
philosophical conceptions of reality and of the place of man in it. The latter theme is
investigated both theoretically and historically. From the former perspective,
Heisenberg focuses on the structural links between physical theories and their
philosophical premises. He pays special attention to the interaction between ontological
and epistemological assumptions at stake in the axiomatic postulations of every physical
theory. In the context of his historical reconstruction, Heisenberg establishes some
fundamental links between quantum physics and ancient and modern developments of
the philosophical idea of a ‘fundamental’ substance or structure of matter in Western
thought.

This interaction between a theoretical approach and a historical perspective also

structures the presentation of the main notions and results of quantum theory, which
are always discussed in their relation to classical physics.

Heisenberg’s presentation is preceded by an introduction by Prof. F. S. C. Northrob,

isolating three central questions the lectures intend to answer: What do the
experimentally verified theories of contemporary (quantum) physics affirm? How do
they require man to think of himself in relation to the universe described by such
theories? How is this new way of thinking, which is a creation of the Western world,
going to affect other parts of the world?

The first three chapters, ‘An Old and a New Tradition’, ‘The History of Quantum Theory’
and ‘The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory’, discuss the origin of quantum
physics and the fixation of its main concepts and results during the first quarter of the
twentieth century, especially in the Copenhagen School, to which Heisenberg himself
belonged and which is taken to have produced a consistent account of the apparently
contradictory dualism between classical and quantum physics. The phenomenon of
radiations emitted by a black body, to the explanation of which quantum physics was
originally connected, is discussed, as is Planck’s law of heat radiation, Einstein’s
interpretations of the photoelectric effect and of the observations on the specific heat of
solid bodies, and Bohr’s explanation of the stability of the atom by appeal to Planck’s
hypothesis. The concepts of a ‘probability wave’, indeterminacy (Heisenberg) and of
complementarity (Bohr) are introduced and explained. The third chapter in particular
deals extensively with the concept of a probability function, expressing both the
indeterminacy due to uncertainty relations at an ontological level, and an epistemic
concept of uncertainty linked with the error theory.

Chapter 4 is devoted to ‘Quantum Theory and the Roots of Atomic Science’, and
establishes philosophical links between the Greeks’ conceptions of matter, with a special
reference to the Pythagoreans and to Plato, and the concept of an ‘elementary particle’
in modern physics as a ‘mathematical form’ (as a solution to some eternal law of motion
of matter). ‘The Development of Philosophical Ideas since Descartes …’ (chapter 5)
continues the investigation of the links between the history of philosophy and the
history of physics, focusing on Descartes and Kant. Chapters 6 and 7 investigate in depth
the issue of the relations between different scientific conceptual systems, with respect to
the consistency and flexibility of their mathematical formalizations, and offer a brief
presentation of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Chapter 8 discusses and replies to three different lines of argument against the
Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, while the next two chapters, ‘Quantum
Theory and the Structure of Matter’ and ‘Language and Reality in Modern Physics’,
investigate both the ontology of the new theory, which is linked to the Aristotelian
notion of ‘potential’ and to the history of the search for a ‘unification principle’ in
modern physics, and the status and limits of its linguistic apparatus. Finally, the
concluding chapter is devoted to ‘The Role of Modern Physics in the Present
Development of Human Thinking’.

Chiara Tablet

2)

Physics and Philosophy

by Werner Heisenberg (1958)

5
The Development of Philosophical Ideas Since Descartes in Comparison with the New Situation in
Quantum Theory

IN THE two thousand years that followed the culmination of Greek science and
culture in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. the human mind was to a large extent
occupied with problems of a different kind from those of the early period. In the first
centuries of Greek culture the strongest impulse had come from the immediate reality
of the world in which we live and which we perceive by our senses. This reality was
full of life and there was no good reason to stress the distinction between matter and
mind or between body and soul. But in the philosophy of Plato one already sees that
another reality begins to become stronger.

In the famous simile of the cave Plato compares men to prisoners in a cave who are
bound and can look in only one direction. They have a fire behind them and see on a
wall the shadows of themselves and of objects behind them. Since they see nothing
but the shadows, they regard those shadows as real and are not aware of the objects.
Finally one of the prisoners escapes and comes from the cave into the light of the sun.
For the first time he sees real things and realises that he had been deceived hitherto by
the shadows. For the first time he knows the truth and thinks only with sorrow of his
long life in the darkness. The real philosopher is the prisoner who has escaped from
the cave into the light of truth, he is the one who possesses real knowledge. This
immediate connection with truth or, we may in the Christian sense say, with God is
the new reality that has begun to become stronger than the reality of the world as
perceived by our senses. The immediate connection with God happens within the
human soul, not in the world, and this was the problem that occupied human thought
more than anything else in the two thousand years following Plato. In this period the
eyes of the philosophers were directed toward the human soul and its relation to God,
to the problems of ethics, and to the interpretation of the revelation but not to the outer
world. It was only in the time of the Italian Renaissance that again a gradual change of
the human mind could be seen, which resulted finally in a revival of the interest in
nature.

The great development of natural science since the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries was preceded and accompanied by a development of philosophical ideas
which were closely connected with the fundamental concepts of science. It may
therefore be instructive to comment on these ideas from the position that has finally
been reached by modern science in our time.

The first great philosopher of this new period of science was Rene Descartes who
lived in the first half of the seventeenth century. Those of his ideas that are most
important for the development of scientific thinking are contained in his Discourse on
Method. On the basis of doubt and logical reasoning he tries to find a completely new
and as he thinks solid ground for a philosophical system. He does not accept
revelation as such a basis nor does he want to accept uncritically what is perceived by
the senses. So he starts with his method of doubt. He casts his doubt upon that which
our senses tell us about the results of our reasoning and finally he arrives at his
famous sentence: ''cogito ergo sum'. I cannot doubt my existence since it follows from
the fact that I am thinking. After establishing the existence of the I in this way he
proceeds to prove the existence of God essentially on the lines of scholastic
philosophy. Finally the existence of the world follows from the fact that God had
given me a strong inclination to believe in the existence of the world, and it is simply
impossible that God should have deceived me.

This basis of the philosophy of Descartes is radically different from that of the ancient
Greek philosophers. Here the starting point is not a fundamental principle or
substance, but the attempt of a fundamental knowledge. And Descartes realises that
what we know about our mind is more certain than what we know about the outer
world. But already his starting point with the 'triangle' God - Word - I simplifies in a
dangerous way the basis for further reasoning. The division between matter and mind
or between soul and body, which had started in Plato's philosophy, is now complete.
God is separated both from the I and from the world. God in fast is raised so high
above the world and men that He finally appears in the philosophy of Descartes only
as a common point of reference that establishes the relation between the I and the
world.

While ancient Greek philosophy had tried to find order in the infinite variety of things
and events by looking for some fundamental unifying principle, Descartes tries to
establish the order through some fundamental division. But the three parts which
result from the division lose some of their essence when any one part is considered as
separated from the other two parts. If one uses the fundamental concepts of Descartes
at all, it is essential that God is in the world and in the I and it is also essential that the
I cannot be really separated from the world. Of course Descartes knew the
undisputable necessity of the connection, but philosophy and natural science in the
following period developed on the basis of the polarity between the 'res cogitans' and
the 'res extensa', and natural science concentrated its interest on the 'res extensa'. The
influence of the Cartesian division on human thought in the following centuries can
hardly be overestimated, but it is just this division which we have to criticise later
from the development of physics in our time.

Of course it would be wrong to say that Descartes, through his new method in
philosophy, has given a new direction to human thought. What he actually did was to
formulate for the first time a trend in human thinking that could already be seen
during the Renaissance in Italy and in the Reformation. There was the revival of
interest in mathematics which expressed an increasing influence of Platonic elements
in philosophy, and the insistence on personal religion. The growing interest in
mathematics favoured a philosophical system that started from logical reasoning and
tried by this method to arrive at some truth that was as certain as a mathematical
conclusion. The insistence on personal religion separated the I and its relation to God
from the world. The interest in the combination of empirical knowledge with
mathematics as seen in the work of Galileo was perhaps partly due to the possibility
of arriving in this way at some knowledge that could be kept apart completely from
the theological disputes raised by the Reformation. This empirical knowledge could
be formulated without speaking about God or about ourselves and favoured the
separation of the three fundamental concepts God-World-l or the separation between
'res cogitans' and 'res extensa'. In this period there was in some cases an explicit
agreement among the pioneers of empirical science that in their discussions the name
of God or a fundamental cause should not be mentioned.

On the other hand, the difficulties of the separation could be clearly seen from the
beginning. In the distinction, for instance, between the 'res cogitans' and the 'res
extensa' Descartes was forced to put the animals entirely on the side of the 'res
extensa'. Therefore, the animals and the plants were not essentially different from
machines, their behaviour was completely determined by material causes. But it has
always seemed difficult to deny completely the existence of some kind of soul in the
animals, and it seems to us that the older concept of soul for instance in the
philosophy of Thomas Aquinas was more natural and less forced than the Cartesian
concept of the 'es cognitans', even if we are convinced that the laws of physics and
chemistry are strictly valid in living organisms. One of the later consequences of this
view of Descartes was that, if animals were simply considered as machines, it was
difficult not to think the same about men. Since, on the other hand, the 'res cogitans'
and the 'res extensa' were taken as completely different in their essence. it did not
seem possible that they could act upon each other. Therefore. in order to preserve
complete parallelism between the experiences of the mind and of the body, the mind
also was in its activities completely determined by laws which corresponded to the
laws of physics and chemistry. Here the question of the possibility of 'free will' arose.
Obviously this whole description is somewhat artificial and shows the grave defects of
the Cartesian partition.

On the other hand in natural science the partition was for .several centuries extremely
successful. The mechanics of Newton and all the other parts of classical physics
constructed after its model started from the assumption that one can describe the
world without speaking about God or ourselves. This possibility soon seemed almost
a necessary condition for natural science in general.

But at this point the situation changed to some extent through quantum theory and
therefore we may now come to a comparison of Descartes's philosophical system with
our present situation in modern physics. It has been pointed out before that in the
Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory we can indeed proceed without
mentioning ourselves as individuals, but we cannot disregard the fact that natural
science is formed by men. Natural science does not simply describe and explain
nature; it is a part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as
exposed to our method of questioning. This was a possibility of which Descartes
could not have thought, but it makes the sharp separation between the world and the I
impossible.
If one follows the great difficulty which even eminent scientists like Einstein had in
understanding and accepting the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, one
can trace the roots of this difficulty to the Cartesian partition. This partition has
penetrated deeply into the human mind during the three centuries following Descartes
and it will take a long time for it to be replaced by a really different attitude toward
the problem of reality.

The position to which the Cartesian partition has led with respect to the 'res extensa'
was what one may call metaphysical realism. The world, i.e., the extended things,
'exist'. This is to be distinguished from practical realism, and the different forms of
realism may be described as follows: We 'objectivate' a statement if we claim that its
content does not depend on the conditions under which it can be verified. Practical
realism assumes that there are statements that can be objectivated and that in fact the
largest part of our experience in daily life consists of such statements. Dogmatic
realism claims that there are no statements concerning the material world that cannot
be objectivated. Practical realism has always been and will always be an essential part
of natural science. Dogmatic realism, however, is, as we see it now, not a necessary
condition for natural science.

But it has in the past played a very important role in the development of science;
actually the position of classical physics is that of dogmatic realism. It is only through
quantum theory that we have learned that exact science is possible without the basis of
dogmatic realism. When Einstein has criticised quantum theory he has done so from
the basis of dogmatic realism. This is a very natural attitude. Every scientist who does
research work feels that he is looking for something that is objectively true. His
statements are not meant to depend upon the conditions under which they can be
verified. Especially in physics the fast that we can explain nature by simple
mathematical laws tells us that here we have met some genuine feature of reality, not
something that we have - in any meaning of the word - invented ourselves. l his is the
situation which Einstein had in mind when he took dogmatic realism as the basis for
natural science. But quantum theory is in itself an example for the possibility of
explaining nature by means of simple mathematical laws without this basis. These
laws may perhaps not seem quite simple when one compares them with Newtonian
mechanics. But, judging from the enormous complexity of the phenomena which are
to be explained (for instance} the line spectra of complicated atoms), the
mathematical scheme of quantum theory is comparatively simple. Natural science is
actually possible without the basis of dogmatic realism.

Metaphysical realism goes one step further than dogmatic realism by saying that 'the
things really exist'. This is in fact what Descartes tried to prove by the argument that
'God cannot have deceived us.' The statement that the things really exist is different
from the statement of dogmatic realism in so far as here the word 'exist' occurs, which
is also meant in the other statement 'cogito ergo sum' . . . 'I think, therefore I am.' But
it is difficult to see what is meant at this point that is not yet contained in the thesis of
dogmatic realism; and this leads us to a general criticism of the statement 'cogito ergo
sum', which Descartes considered as the solid ground on which he could build his
system. It is in fact true that this statement has the certainty of a mathematical
conclusion, if the words 'cogito' and 'sum' are defined in the usual way or, to put it
more cautiously and at the same time more critically, if the words are so defined that
the statement follows. But this does not tell us anything about how far we can use the
concepts of 'thinking' and 'being' in finding our way. It is finally in a very general
sense always an empirical question how far our concepts can be applied.

The difficulty of metaphysical realism was felt soon after Descartes and became the
starting point for the empiristic philosophy, for sensualism and positivism.

The three philosophers who can be taken as representatives for early empiristic
philosophy are Locke, Berkeley and Hume. Locke holds, contrary to Descartes, that
all knowledge is ultimately founded in experience. This experience may be sensation
or perception of the operation of our own mind. Knowledge, so Locke states, is the
perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas. The next step was taken by
Berkeley. If actually all our knowledge is derived from perception, there is no
meaning in the statement that the things really exist; because if the perception is given
it cannot possibly make any difference whether the things exist or do not exist.
Therefore, to be perceived is identical with existence. This line of argument then was
extended to an extreme scepticism by Hume, who denied induction and causation and
thereby arrived at a conclusion which if taken seriously would destroy the basis of all
empirical science.

The criticism of metaphysical realism which has been expressed in empiristic

philosophy is certainly justified in so far as it is a warning against the naive use of the
term 'existence'. The positive statements of this philosophy can be criticised on similar
lines. Our perceptions are not primarily bundles of colours or sounds; what we
perceive is already perceived as something, the accent here being on the word 'thing',
and therefore it is doubtful whether we gain anything by taking the perceptions
instead of the things as the ultimate elements of reality.

The underlying difficulty has been clearly recognised by modern positivism. This line
of thought expresses criticism against the naive use of certain terms like 'thing',
'perception', 'existence' by the general postulate that the question whether a given
sentence has any meaning at all should always be thoroughly and critically examined.
This postulate and its underlying attitude are derived from mathematical logic. The
procedure of natural science is pictured as an attachment of symbols to the
phenomena. The symbols can, as in mathematics, be combined according to certain
rules, and in this way statements about the phenomena can be represented by
combinations of symbols. However! a combination of symbols that does not comply
with the rules is not wrong but conveys no meaning.

The obvious difficulty in this argument is the lack of any general criterion as to when
a sentence should be considered as meaningless. A definite decision is possible only
when the sentence belongs to a closed system of concepts and axioms, which in the
development of natural science will be rather the exception than the rule. In some
cases the conjecture that a certain sentence is meaningless has historically led to
important progress, for it opened the way to the establishment of new connections
which would have been impossible if the sentence had a meaning. An example in
quantum theory that has already been discussed is the sentence: 'In which orbit does
the electron move around the nucleus?' But generally the positivistic scheme taken
from mathematical logic is too narrow in a description of nature which necessarily
uses words and concepts that are only vaguely defined.

The philosophic thesis that all knowledge is ultimately founded in experience has in
the end led to a postulate concerning the logical clarification of any statement about
nature. Such a postulate may have seemed justified in the period of classical physics,
but since quantum theory we have learned that it cannot be fulfilled. The words
'position' and 'velocity' of an electron,

€ for instance, seemed perfectly well defined as to both their meaning and their
possible connections. and in fact they were clearly defined concepts within the
mathematical framework of Newtonian mechanics. But actually they were not well
defined, as is seen from the relations of uncertainty. One may say that regarding their
position in Newtonian mechanics they were well defined, hut in their relation to
nature they were not. This shows that we can never know beforehand which
limitations will be put on the applicability of certain concepts by the extension of our
knowledge into the remote parts of nature, into which we can only penetrate with the
most elaborate tools. Therefore, in the process of penetration we are bound sometimes
to use our concepts in a way which is not justified and which carries no meaning.
Insistence on the postulate of complete logical clarification would make science
impossible. We are reminded here by modern physics of the old wisdom that the one
who insists on never uttering an error must remain silent.

A combination of those two lines of thought that started from Descartes, on the one
side, and from Locke and Berkeley. on the other, was attempted in the philosophy of
Kant, who was the founder of German idealism. That part of his work which is
important in comparison with the results of modern physics is contained in
The Critique of Pure Reason. He takes up the question whether knowledge is only
founded in experience or can come from other sources, and he arrives at the
conclusion that our knowledge is in part 'a priori' and not inferred inductively from
experience. Therefore, he distinguishes between 'empirical' knowledge and knowledge
that is 'a priori'. At the same time he distinguishes between 'analytic' and 'synthetic'
propositions. Analytic propositions follow simply from logic, and their denial would
lead to self-contradiction. Propositions that are not 'analytic' are called 'synthetic'.

What is, according to Kant, the criterion for knowledge being 'a priori'? Kant agrees
that all knowledge starts with experience but he adds that it is not always derived from
experience. It is true that experience teaches us that a certain thing has such or such
properties, but it does not teach us that it could not be different. Therefore, if a
proposition is thought together with its necessity it must be 'a priori'. Experience never
gives to its judgments complete generality. For instance, the sentence 'The sun rises
every morning' means that we know no exception to this rule in the past and that we
expect it to hold in future. But we can imagine exceptions to the rule. If a judgment is
stated with complete generality, therefore, if it is impossible to imagine any exception,
it must be 'a priori'. An analytic judgment is always 'a priori'; even if a child learns
arithmetic from playing with marbles, he need not later go back to experience to know
that 'two and two are four'. Empirical knowledge, on the other hand, is synthetic.

But are synthetic judgments a priori possible? Kant tries to prove this by giving
examples in which the above criteria seem to be fulfilled. Space and time are, he says,
a priori forms of pure intuition. In the case of space he gives the following
metaphysical arguments:

1. Space is not an empirical concept, abstracted from other experiences, for

space is presupposed in referring sensations to something external, and
external experience is only possible through the presentation of space.
2. Space is a necessary presentation a priori, which underlies all external
perceptions; for we cannot imagine that there should be no space, although
we can imagine that there should be nothing in space.
3. Space is not a discursive or general concept of the relations of things in
general, for there is only one space, of which what we call 'spaces' are parts,
not instances.
4. Space is presented as an infinite given magnitude, which holds within itself all
the parts of space; this relation is different from that of a concept to its
instances, and therefore space is not a concept but a form of intuition.

These arguments shall not be discussed here. They are mentioned merely as examples
for the general type of proof that Kant has in mind for the synthetic judgments a
priori.
With regard to physics Kant took as a priori, besides space and time, the law of
causality and the concept of substance. In a later stage of his work he tried to include
the law of conservation of matter, the equality of 'actio and reactio' and even the law
of gravitation. No physicist would be willing to follow Kant here, if the term 'a priori'
is used in the absolute sense that was given to it by Kant. In mathematics Kant took
Euclidean geometry as 'a priori'.

Before we compare these doctrines of Kant with the results of modern physics we
must mention another part of his work, to which we will have to refer later. The
disagreeable question whether 'the things really exist', which had given rise to
empiristic philosophy, occurred also in Kant's system. But Kant has not followed the
line of Berkeley and Hume, though that would have been logically consistent. He kept
the notion of the 'thing-in-itself' as different from the percept, and in this way kept
some connection with realism.

Coming now to the comparison of Kant's doctrines with modern physics, it looks in
the first moment as though his central concept of the 'synthetic judgments a priori' had
been completely annihilated by the discoveries of our century. The theory of relativity
has changed our views on space and time, it has in fact revealed entirely new features
of space and time, of which nothing is seen in Kant's a priori forms of pure intuition.
The law of causality is no longer applied in quantum theory and the law of
conservation of matter is no longer true for the elementary particles. Obviously Kant
could not have foreseen the new discoveries, but since he was convinced that his
concepts would be 'the basis of any future metaphysics that can be called science' it is
interesting to see where his arguments have been wrong.

As example we take the law of causality. Kant says that whenever we observe an
event we assume that there is a foregoing event from which the other event must
follow according to some rule. This is, as Kant states, the basis of all scientific work.
In this discussion it is not important whether or not we can always find the foregoing
event from which the other one followed. Actually we can find it in many cases. But
even if we cannot, nothing can prevent us from asking what this foregoing event
might have been and to look for it. Therefore, the law of causality is reduced to the
method of scientific research; it is the condition which makes science possible. Since
we actually apply this method, the law of causality is 'a priori' and is not derived from
experience.

Is this true in atomic physics? Let us consider a radium atom, which can emit an a-
particle. The time for the emission of the a-particle cannot be predicted. We can only
say that in the average the emission will take place in about two-thousand years.
Therefore, when we observe the emission we do not actually look for a foregoing
event from which the emission must according to a rule follow. Logically it would be
quite possible to look for such a foregoing event, and we need not be discouraged by
the fact that hitherto none has been found. But why has the scientific method actually
changed in this very fundamental question since Kant?

Two possible answers can be given to that question. The one is: We have been
convinced by experience that the laws of quantum theory are correct and, if they are,
we know that a foregoing event as cause for the emission at a given time cannot be
found. The other answer is: We know the foregoing event, but not quite accurately.
We know the forces in the atomic nucleus that are responsible for the emission of the
a-particle. But this knowledge contains the uncertainty which is brought about by the
interaction between the nucleus and the rest of the world. If we wanted to know why
the ~~-particle was emitted at that particular time we would have to know the
microscopic structure of the whole world including ourselves, and that is impossible.
Therefore, Kant's arguments for the a priori character of the law of causality no longer
apply.

A similar discussion could be given on the a priori character of space and time as
forms of intuition. The result would be the same. The a priori concepts which Kant
considered an undisputable truth are no longer contained in the scientific system of
modern physics.

Still they form an essential part Of this system in a somewhat different sense. In the
discussion of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory it has been
emphasised that we use the classical concepts in describing our experimental
equipment and more generally in describing that part of the world which does not
belong to the object of the experiment. The use of these concepts, including space,
time and causality, is in fact the condition for observing atomic events and is, in this
sense of the word, 'a priori'. What Kant had not foreseen was that these a priori
concepts can be the conditions for science and at the same time can have only a
limited range of applicability. When we make an experiment we have to assume a
causal chain of events that leads from the atomic event through the apparatus finally
to the eye of the observer; if this causal chain was not assumed, nothing could be
known about the atomic event. Still we must keep in mind that classical physics and
causality have only a limited range of applicability. It was the fundamental paradox of
quantum theory that could not be foreseen by Kant. Modern physics has changed
Kant's statement about the possibility of synthetic judgments a priori from a
metaphysical one into a practical one. The synthetic judgments a priori thereby have
the character of a relative truth.

If one reinterprets the Kantian 'a priori' in this way, there is no reason to consider the
perceptions rather than the things as given. Just as in classical physics, we can speak
about those events that are not observed in the same manner as about those that are
observed. Therefore, practical realism is a natural part of the reinterpretation.
Considering the Kantian 'thing-in-itself' Kant had pointed out that we cannot conclude
anything from the perception about the 'thing-in-itself'. This statement has, as
Weizsäcker has noticed. its formal analogy in the fact that in spite of the use of the
classical concepts in all the experiments a non-classical behaviour of the atomic
objects is possible. The 'thing-in-itself' is for the atomic physicist, if he uses this
concept at all, finally a mathematical structure: but this structure is - contrary to Kant -
indirectly deduced from experience.

In this reinterpretation the Kantian 'a priori' is indirectly connected with experience in
so far as it has been formed through the development of the human mind in a very
distant past. Following this argument the biologist Lorentz has once compared the 'a
priori' concepts with forms of behaviour that in animals are called 'inherited or innate
schemes'. It is in fact quite plausible that for certain primitive animals space and time
are different from what Kant calls our 'pure intuition' of space and time. The latter
may belong to the species 'man', but not to the world as independent of men. But we
are perhaps entering into too hypothetical discussions by following this biological
comment on the 'a priori'. It was mentioned here merely as an example of how the
term 'relative truth' in connection with the Kantian 'a priori' can possibly be
interpreted.

Modern physics has been used here as an example or, we may say, as a model to
check the results of some important philosophic systems of the past, which of course
were meant to hold in a much wider field. What we have learned especially from the
discussion of the philosophies of Descartes and Kant may perhaps be stated in the
following way:

Any concepts or words which have been formed in the past through the interplay
between the world and ourselves are not really sharply defined with respect to their
meaning: that is to say, we do not know exactly how far they will help us in finding
our way in the world. We often know that they can be applied

to a wide range of inner or outer experience, but we practically never know precisely
the limits of their applicability. This is true even of the simplest and most general
concepts like 'existence' and 'space and time'. Therefore, it will never be possible by
pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.

The concepts may, however, be sharply defined with regard to their connections. This
is actually the fact when the concepts become a part of a system of axioms and
definitions which can be expressed consistently by a mathematical scheme. Such a
group of connected concepts may be applicable to a wide field of experience and will
help us to find our way in this field. But the limits of the applicability will in general
not be known, at least not completely.

Even if we realize that the meaning of a concept is never defined with absolute
precision, some concepts form an integral part of scientific methods, since they
represent for the time being the final result of the development of human thought in
the past, even in a very remote past; they may even be inherited and are in any case
the indispensable tools for doing scientific work in our time. In this sense they can be
practically a priori. But further limitations of their applicability may be found in the
future.

Source: Physics and Philosophy (1958) publ. George Allen and Unwin Edition, 1959.
Chapters 2 (History), 3 (Copenhagen interpretation) and 5 (HPS).

2) Wikipedia -

Heisenberg was raised and lived as a Lutheran Christian, publishing and giving several
talks reconciling science with his faith.[144]

In his speech Scientific and Religious Truth (1974) while accepting the Romano
Guardini Prize, Heisenberg affirmed:

“In the history of science, ever since the famous trial of Galileo, it has repeatedly been
claimed that scientific truth cannot be reconciled with the religious interpretation of the
world. Although I am now convinced that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field,
I have never found it possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking as simply part
of an outmoded phase in the consciousness of mankind, a part we shall have to give up
from now on. Thus in the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder
on the relationship of these two regions of thought, for I have never been able to doubt
the reality of that to which they point.” (Heisenberg 1974, 213)[145]

“Where no guiding ideals are left to point the way, the scale of values disappears and
with it the meaning of our deeds and sufferings, and at the end can lie only negation
and despair. Religion is therefore the foundation of ethics, and ethics the presupposition
of life.” (Heisenberg 1974, 219).[146]

“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the
bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” -W.Heisenberg [147][148]

In his autobiographical article in the journal Truth, Henry Margenau (Professor Emeritus
of Physics and Natural Philosophy at Yale University) pointed out: “I have said nothing
about the years between 1936 and 1950. There were, however, a few experiences I
cannot forget. One was my first meeting with Heisenberg, who came to America soon
after the end of the Second World War. Our conversation was intimate and he
impressed me by his deep religious conviction. He was a true Christian in every sense
of that word.” [149]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg#Personal_life

- references in the article.

This is all that I know about Heisenberg's religious ideas, but they appear to be pretty
conventional, and it seems like it would be easy to find more info if you want it.

Nobel Laureate Werner Heisenberg: GOD Is Waiting at the

Bottom of the Glass
Submitted by administrator on Thu, 11/03/2011 - 22:12
Author/Compiler: Tihomir Dimitrov (http://nobelists.net; also
see http://scigod.com/index.php/sgj/issue/view/3)

WERNER HEISENBERG – NOBEL LAUREATE IN PHYSICS

Nobel Prize: Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics
“for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the
discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen.” In 1927 Heisenberg published the famous
principle of uncertainty (indeterminacy) that bears his name.

Nationality: German.

Education: Ph.D. in physics, University of Munich, Germany, 1923; Dr. Phil. Habil., University
of Goettingen, Germany, 1924.

Occupation: Professor of Physics at the Universities of Copenhagen (Denmark), Leipzig, Berlin,

Goettingen, and Munich.

♦♦♦
1. “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the
bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” [“Der erste Trunk aus dem Becher der
Naturwissenschaft macht atheistisch, aber auf dem Grund des Bechers wartet Gott.”]
(Heisenberg, as cited in Hildebrand 1988, 10).

2. In his autobiographical article in the journal Truth, Henry Margenau (Professor Emeritus of
Physics and Natural Philosophy at Yale University) pointed out: “I have said nothing about the
years between 1936 and 1950. There were, however, a few experiences I cannot forget. One was
my first meeting with Heisenberg, who came to America soon after the end of the Second World
War. Our conversation was intimate and he impressed me by his deep religious conviction. He
was a true Christian in every sense of that word.” (Margenau 1985, Vol. 1).

3. In his article Scientific and Religious Truth (1973) Heisenberg affirmed:

“In the history of science, ever since the famous trial of Galileo, it has repeatedly been claimed
that scientific truth cannot be reconciled with the religious interpretation of the world. Although
I am now convinced that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I have never found it
possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking as simply part of an outmoded phase in the
consciousness of mankind, a part we shall have to give up from now on. Thus in the course of my
life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of
thought, for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point.” (Heisenberg
1974, 213).

4. “Where no guiding ideals are left to point the way, the scale of values disappears and with it
the meaning of our deeds and sufferings, and at the end can lie only negation and despair.

Religion is therefore the foundation of ethics, and ethics the presupposition of life.” (Heisenberg
1974, 219).

5. Einstein believed in strict causality till the end of his life. In his last surviving letter to
Einstein, Heisenberg writes that while in the new quantum mechanics Einstein’s beloved
causality principle is baseless, “We can console ourselves that the good Lord God would know
the position of the particles, and thus He could let the causality principle continue to have
validity.” (Heisenberg, as cited in Holton 2000, vol. 53).

See also Heisenberg’s articles:

- Heisenberg, Werner. 1970. “Erste Gespraeche ueber das Verhaeltnis von Naturwissenschaft
und Religion (1927).” Werner Trutwin, ed. Religion-Wissenschaft-Weltbild. Duesseldorf:
Patmos-Verlag, pp. 23-31. (Theologisches Forum. Texte fuer den Religionsunterricht 4.)

- Heisenberg, Werner. 1973. “Naturwissenschaftliche und religioese Wahrheit.” Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung, 24 Maerz, pp. 7-8. (Speech before the Catholic Academy of Bavaria, on
acceptance of the Guardini Prize, 23 March 1973).

- Heisenberg, Werner. 1968. “Religion und Naturwissenschaft.” Bayer, Leverkusen. Sofort-

Kongress-Dienst 24, 1-2.
- Heisenberg, Werner. 1969. “Kein Chaos, aus dem nicht wieder Ordnung wuerde. Drei
Atomphysiker diskutieren ueber Positivismus, Metaphysik und Religion.” Die Zeit 24, No. 34,
29-30.

5) http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~mebden/misc/scientists.pdf
"The first drink from the cup of natural science brings atheism, but at the bottom of the cup
waits God." – Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) "I am very astonished that the scientific picture
of the real world around me is deficient.... it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really
near to our heart, that really matters to us.... It knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or
bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but
the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously." – Erwin
Schrödinger (1887-1961) "To interpret man's religion to man's science in not only mutually
intelligible, but mutually interdependent terms, remains, as I believe, the great task of our time
if we are to see any stable order in events, or make any consistent sense of experience." – Sir
Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) "The more I study physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics."
– Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "Religion without science is lame, science without religion is
blind." – Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "...the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-
mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.
Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to
suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter - not,
of course, our individual minds, but the mind in which the atoms out of which our individual
minds have grown to exist as thoughts... The new knowledge compels us to revise our hasty first
impressions that we had stumbled into a universe which either did not concern itself with life or
was actively hostile to life. The old dualism of mind and matter, which was mainly responsible
for the supposed hostility, seems likely to disappear, not through matter becoming in any way
more shadowy or insubstantial than heretofore, or through mind becoming resolved into a
function of the working of matter, but through substantial matter resolving itself into a creation
and manifestation of mind." – Sir James Jeans (1877-1946) "All matter originates and exists only
by virtue of a force which brings the particles of the atom to vibration. I must assume behind
this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all
matter." – Max Planck (1858-1947) "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever."
– James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) "I have never been an atheist.... The impossibility of
conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through
chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God." – Charles Darwin (1809-
1882) "Religion is partly fundamental and immutable, partly circumstantial and mutable." – Sir
Isaac Newton (1642-1727) "God grant me the company of those who seek the truth." – Sir Isaac
Newton (1642-1727) "To say that man is too insignificant to deserve communion with God, one
must be very great indeed to judge of it." – Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) "The Bible shows the way
to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go." – Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) "I do not feel obliged
to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has
intended us to forgo their use." – Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
According to a poll of scientists conducted in 1999, the top physicists of all time include Albert
Einstein (#1), Isaac Newton (#2), James Clerk Maxwell (#3), Werner Heisenberg (#5), Galileo
Galilei (#6), and Erwin Schrödinger (#8). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/541840.stm The
above quotations are from famous scientists, mostly physicists. In the opinion of Sir Peter
Medawar (1915-1987), one of the top biologists of the twentieth century, “Scientists as a class
are rationalists, at least in the limited sense of believing without qualification in the necessity of
reason.... Young scientists must however never be tempted into mistaking the necessity of
reason for the sufficiency of reason. Rationalism falls short of answering the many simple and
childlike questions people like to ask: questions about origins and purposes such as are often
contemptuously dismissed as nonquestions or pseudoquestions, although people understand
them clearly enough and long to have the answers. These are intellectual pains that rationalists
– like bad physicians confronted by ailments they cannot diagnose or cure – are apt to dismiss as
"imagination". It is not to rationalism that we look for answers to these simple questions
because rationalism chides the endeavour to look at all."

https://www.edge.org/conversation/werner_heisenberg-science-and-religion
SCIENCE AND RELIGION
By Werner Heisenberg [6.3.07]

Werner Heisenberg in the lecture hall

Photo by Jochen Heisenberg

WERNER HEISENBERG (1901–1976) was born in Würzberg, Germany, and

received his doctorate in theoretical physics from the University of Munich. He
became famous for his groundbreaking Uncertainty (or Indeterminacy) Principle
and was the recipient of The Nobel Prize in Physics 1932. After World War II he
was named director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics.

One evening during the Solvay Conference, some of the younger members
stayed behind in the lounge of the hotel. This group included Wolfgang Pauli and
myself, and was soon afterward joined by Paul Dirac. One of us said: "Einstein
keeps talking about God: what are we to make of that? It is extremely difficult to
imagine that a scientist like Einstein should have such strong ties with a religious
tradition."

"Not so much Einstein as Max Planck," someone objected. "From some of

Planck's utterances it would seem that he sees no contradiction between religion
and science, indeed that he believes the two are perfectly compatible."
I was asked what I knew of Planck's views on the subject, and what I thought
myself. I had spoken to Planck on only a few occasions, mostly about physics
and not about general questions, but I was acquainted with some of Planck's
close friends, who had told me a great deal about his attitude.

"I assume," I must have replied, "that Planck considers religion and science
compatible because, in his view, they refer to quite distinct facets of reality.
Science deals with the objective, material world. It invites us to make accurate
statements about objective reality and to grasp its interconnections. Religion, on
the other hand, deals with the world of values. It considers what ought to be or
what we ought to do, not what is. In science we are concerned to discover what
is true or false; in religion with what is good or evil, noble or base. Science is the
basis of technology, religion the basis of ethics. In short, the conflict between the
two, which has been raging since the eighteenth century, seems founded on a
misunderstanding, or, more precisely, on a confusion of the images and parables
of religion with scientific statements. Needless to say, the result makes no sense
at all. This view, which I know so well from my parents, associates the two
realms with the objective and subjective aspects of the world respectively.
Science is, so to speak, the manner in which we confront, in which we argue
about, the objective side of reality. Religious faith, on the other hand, is the
expression of the subjective decisions that help us choose the standards by
which we propose to act and live. Admittedly, we generally make these decisions
in accordance with the attitudes of the group to which we belong, be it our family,
nation, or culture. Our decisions are strongly influenced by educational and
environmental factors, but in the final analysis they are subjective and hence not
governed by the 'true or false' criterion. Max Planck, if I understand him rightly,
has used this freedom and come down squarely on the side of the Christian
tradition. His thoughts and actions, particularly as they affect his personal
relationships, fit perfectly into the framework of this tradition, and no one will
respect him the less for it. As far as he is concerned, therefore, the two realms—
the objective and the subjective facets of the world—are quite separate, but I
must confess that I myself do not feel altogether happy about this separation. I
doubt whether human societies can live with so sharp a distinction between
knowledge and faith."

Wolfgang shared my concern. "It's all bound to end in tears," he said. "At the
dawn of religion, all the knowledge of a particular community fitted into a spiritual
framework, based largely on religious values and ideas. The spiritual framework
itself had to be within the grasp of the simplest member of the community, even if
its parables and images conveyed no more than the vaguest hint as to their
underlying values and ideas. But if he himself is to live by these values, the
average man has to be convinced that the spiritual framework embraces the
entire wisdom of his society. For 'believing' does not to him mean 'taking for
granted,' but rather 'trusting in the guidance' of accepted values. That is why
society is in such danger whenever fresh knowledge threatens to explode the old
spiritual forms. The complete separation of knowledge and faith can at best be
an emergency measure, afford some temporary relief. In western culture, for
instance, we may well reach the point in the not too distant future where the
parables and images of the old religions will have lost their persuasive force even
for the average person; when that happens, I am afraid that all the old ethics will
collapse like a house of cards and that unimaginable horrors will be perpetrated.
In brief, I cannot really endorse Planck's philosophy, even if it is logically valid
and even though I respect the human attitudes to which it gives rise.

"Einstein's conception is closer to mine. His God is somehow involved in the

immutable laws of nature. Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things.
He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this
simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity.
Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is
tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is
entirely foreign to him. But as far as [Einstein] he is concerned there is no split
between science and religion: the central order is part of the subjective as well as
the objective realm, and this strikes me as being a far better starting point.

"A starting point for what?" I asked. "If you consider man's attitude to the central
order a purely personal matter, then you may agree with Einstein's view, but then
you must also concede that nothing at all follows from this view."

"Perhaps it does," Wolfgang replied. "The development of science during the

past two centuries has certainly changed man's thinking, even outside the
Christian West. Hence it matters quite a bit what physicists think. And it was
precisely the idea of an objective world running its course in time and space
according to strict causal laws that produced a sharp clash between science and
the spiritual formulations of the various religions. If science goes beyond this
strict view—and it has done just that with relativity theory and is likely to go even
further with quantum theory—then the relationship between science and the
contents religions try to express must change once again. Perhaps science, by
revealing the existence of new relationships during the past thirty years, may
have lent our thought much greater depth. The concept of complementarity, for
instance, which Niels Bohr considers so crucial to the interpretation of quantum
theory, was by no means unknown to philosophers, even if they did not express it
so succinctly. However, its very appearance in the exact sciences has
constituted a decisive change: the idea of material objects that are completely
independent of the manner in which we observe them proved to be nothing but
an abstract extrapolation, something that has no counterpart in nature. In Asiatic
philosophy and Eastern religions we find the complementary idea of a pure
subject of knowledge, one that confronts no object. This idea, too, will prove an
abstract extrapolation, corresponding to no spiritual or mental reality. If we think
about the wider context, we may in the future be forced to keep a middle course
between these extremes, perhaps the one charted by Bohr's complementarity
concept. Any science that adapts itself to this form of thinking will not only be
more tolerant of the different forms of religion, but, having a wider overall view,
may also contribute to the world of values."

Paul Dirac had joined us in the meantime. He [Paul Dirac] had only just turned
twenty-five, and had little time for tolerance. "I don't know why we are talking
about religion," he objected. "If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we
must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality.
The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite
understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the
overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these
forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many
natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me
see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is
that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so
much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the
other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no
means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want
to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than
clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion
is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so
forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the
close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church.
Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all
those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly
and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a
mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal
sins."

"You are simply judging religion by its political abuses," I objected, "and since
most things in this world can be abused—even the Communist ideology which
you recently propounded—all such judgments are inadmissible. After all, there
will always be human societies, and these must find a common language in
which they can speak about life and death, and about the wider context in which
their lives are set. The spiritual forms that have developed historically out of this
search for a common language must have had a great persuasive force—how
else could so many people have lived by them for so many centuries? Religion
can't be dismissed so simply as all that. But perhaps you are drawn to another
religion, such as the old Chinese, in which the idea of a personal God does not
occur?"

"I dislike religious myths on principle," Dirac replied, "if only because the myths of
the different religions contradict one another. After all, it was purely by chance
that I was born in Europe and not in Asia, and that is surely no criterion for
judging what is true or what I ought to believe. And I can only believe what is
true. As for right action, I can deduce it by reason alone from the situation in
which I find myself: I live in society with others, to whom, in principle, I must grant
the same rights I claim for myself. I must simply try to strike a fair balance; no
more can be asked of me. All this talk about God's will, about sin and
repentance, about a world beyond by which we must direct our lives, only serves
to disguise the sober truth. Belief in God merely encourages us to think that God
wills us to submit to a higher force, and it is this idea which helps to preserve
social structures that may have been perfectly good in their day but no longer fit
the modern world. All your talk of a wider context and the like strikes me as quite
unacceptable. Life, when all is said and done, is just like science: we come up
against difficulties and have to solve them. And we can never solve more than
one difficulty at a time; your wider context is nothing but a mental superstructure
added a posteriori."

And so the discussion continued, and we were all of us surprised to notice that
Wolfgang was keeping so silent. He would pull a long face or smile rather
maliciously from time to time, but he said nothing. In the end, we had to ask him
to tell us what he thought. He seemed a little surprised and then said: "Well, our
friend Dirac, too, has a religion, and its guiding principle is: 'There is no God and
Dirac is His prophet.'" We all laughed, including Dirac, and this brought our
evening in the hotel lounge to a close.

Some time later, probably in Copenhagen, I told Niels about our conversation. He
immediately jumped to the defense of the youngest member of our circle. "I
consider it marvelous," he said, "that Paul should be so uncompromising in his
defense of all that can be expressed in clear and logical language. He believes
that what can be said at all can be said clearly—or, as Wittgenstein put it, that
'whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.' Whenever Dirac sends
me a manuscript, the writing is so neat and free of corrections that merely looking
at it is an aesthetic pleasure. If I suggest even minor changes, Paul becomes
terribly unhappy and generally changes nothing at all. His work is, in any case,
quite brilliant. Recently the two of us went to an exhibition which included a
glorious gray-blue seascape by Manet. In the foreground was a boat, and beside
it, in the water, a dark gray spot, whose meaning was not quite clear. Dirac said,
'This spot is not admissible.' A strange way of looking at art, but he was probably
quite right. In a good work of art, just as in a good piece of scientific work, every
detail must be laid down quite unequivocally; there can be no room for mere
accident.

"Still, religion is rather a different matter. I feel very much like Dirac: the idea of a
personal God is foreign to me. But we ought to remember that religion uses
language in quite a different way from science. The language of religion is more
closely related to the language of poetry than to the language of science. True,
we are inclined to think that science deals with information about objective facts,
and poetry with subjective feelings. Hence we conclude that if religion does
indeed deal with objective truths, it ought to adopt the same criteria of truth as
science. But I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a
subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have
spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other
ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is
not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective
side won't get us very far.

"That is why I consider those developments in physics during the last decades
which have shown how problematical such concepts as 'objective' and
'subjective' are, a great liberation of thought. The whole thing started with the
theory of relativity. In the past, the statement that two events are simultaneous
was considered an objective assertion, one that could be communicated quite
simply and that was open to verification by any observer. Today we know that
'simultaneity' contains a subjective element, inasmuch as two events that appear
simultaneous to an observer at rest are not necessarily simultaneous to an
observer in motion. However, the relativistic description is also objective
inasmuch as every observer can deduce by calculation what the other observer
will perceive or has perceived. For all that, we have come a long way from the
classical ideal of objective descriptions.

"In quantum mechanics the departure from this ideal has been even more
radical. We can still use the objectifying language of classical physics to make
statements about observable facts. For instance, we can say that a photographic
plate has been blackened, or that cloud droplets have formed. But we can say
nothing about the atoms themselves. And what predictions we base on such
findings depend on the way we pose our experimental question, and here the
observer has freedom of choice. Naturally, it still makes no difference whether
the observer is a man, an animal, or a piece of apparatus, but it is no longer
possible to make predictions without reference to the observer or the means of
observation. To that extent, every physical process may be said to have objective
and subjective features. The objective world of nineteenth-century science was,
as we know today, an ideal, limiting case, but not the whole reality. Admittedly,
even in our future encounters with reality we shall have to distinguish between
the objective and the subjective side, to make a division between the two. But the
location of the separation may depend on the way things are looked at; to a
certain extent it can be chosen at will. Hence I can quite understand why we
cannot speak about the content of religion in an objectifying language. The fact
that different religions try to express this content in quite distinct spiritual forms is
no real objection. Perhaps we ought to look upon these different forms as
complementary descriptions which, though they exclude one another, are
needed to convey the rich possibilities flowing from man's relationship with the
central order."

"If you distinguish so sharply between the languages of religion, science, and
art," I asked, "what meaning do you attach to such apodictic statements as
'There is a living God' or 'There is an immortal soul'? What is the meaning of
'there is' in this type of language? Science, like Dirac, objects to such
formulations. Let me illustrate the epistemological side of the problem by means
of the following analogy:

"Mathematicians, as everyone knows, work with an imaginary unit, the square

root of –1, called i. We know that i does not figure among the natural numbers.
Nevertheless, important branches of mathematics, for instance the theory of

analytical functions, are based on this imaginary unit, that is, on the fact that

-1 exists after all. Would you agree that the statement 'There is a -1' means
nothing else than 'There are important mathematical relations that are most

simply represented by the introduction of the -1 concept'? And yet these

relations would exist even without it. That is precisely why this type of
mathematics is so useful even in science and technology. What is decisive, for
instance, in the theory of functions, is the existence of important mathematical
laws governing the behavior of pairs of continuous variables. These relations are

rendered more comprehensible by the introduction of the abstract concept of

-1, although that concept is not basically needed for our understanding, and
although it has no counterpart among the natural numbers. An equally abstract
concept is that of infinity, which also plays a very important role in modern
mathematics. It, too, has no correlate, and moreover raises grave problems. In
short, mathematics introduces ever higher stages of abstraction that help us
attain a coherent grasp of ever wider realms. To get back to our original question,
is it correct to look upon the religious 'there is' as just another, though different,
attempt to reach ever higher levels of abstraction? An attempt to facilitate our
understanding of universal connections? After all, the connections themselves
are real enough, no matter into what spiritual forms we try to fit them."

"With respect to the epistemological side of the problem, your comparison may
pass," Bohr replied. "But in other respects it is quite inadequate. In mathematics
we can take our inner distance from the content of our statements. In the final
analysis mathematics is a mental game that we can play or not play as we
choose. Religion, on the other hand, deals with ourselves, with our life and death;
its promises are meant to govern our actions and thus, at least indirectly, our
very existence. We cannot just look at them impassively from the outside.
Moreover, our attitude to religious questions cannot be separated from our
attitude to society. Even if religion arose as the spiritual structure of a particular
human society, it is arguable whether it has remained the strongest social
molding force through history, or whether society, once formed, develops new
spiritual structures and adapts them to its particular level of knowledge.
Nowadays, the individual seems to be able to choose the spiritual framework of
his thoughts and actions quite freely, and this freedom reflects the fact that the
boundaries between the various cultures and societies are beginning to become
more fluid. But even when an individual tries to attain the greatest possible
degree of independence, he will still be swayed by the existing spiritual
structures—consciously or unconsciously. For he, too, must be able to speak of
life and death and the human condition to other members of the society in which
he's chosen to live; he must educate his children according to the norms of that
society, fit into its life. Epistemological sophistries cannot possibly help him attain
these ends. Here, too, the relationship between critical thought about the spiritual
content of a given religion and action based on the deliberate acceptance of that
content is complementary. And such acceptance, if consciously arrived at, fills
the individual with strength of purpose, helps him to overcome doubts and, if he
has to suffer, provides him with the kind of solace that only a sense of being
sheltered under an all-embracing roof can grant. In that sense, religion helps to
make social life more harmonious; its most important task is to remind us, in the
language of pictures and parables, of the wider framework within which our life is
set."
 Werner Heisenberg in the lecture hall
Photo by Jochen Heisenberg

Wolfgang shared my concern. "It's all bound to end in tears," he said. "At the
dawn of religion, all the knowledge of a particular community fitted into a spiritual
framework, based largely on religious values and ideas. The spiritual framework
itself had to be within the grasp of the simplest member of the community, even if
its parables and images conveyed no more than the vaguest hint as to their
underlying values and ideas. But if he himself is to live by these values, the
average man has to be convinced that the spiritual framework embraces the
entire wisdom of his society. For 'believing' does not to him mean 'taking for
granted,' but rather 'trusting in the guidance' of accepted values. That is why
society is in such danger whenever fresh knowledge threatens to explode the old
spiritual forms. The complete separation of knowledge and faith can at best be
an emergency measure, afford some temporary relief. In western culture, for
instance, we may well reach the point in the not too distant future where the
parables and images of the old religions will have lost their persuasive force even
for the average person; when that happens, I am afraid that all the old ethics will
collapse like a house of cards and that unimaginable horrors will be perpetrated.
In brief, I cannot really endorse Planck's philosophy, even if it is logically valid
and even though I respect the human attitudes to which it gives rise.

"Einstein's conception is closer to mine. His God is somehow involved in the

immutable laws of nature. Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things.
He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this
simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity.
Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is
tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is
entirely foreign to him. But as far as [Einstein] he is concerned there is no split
between science and religion: the central order is part of the subjective as well as
the objective realm, and this strikes me as being a far better starting point.
"A starting point for what?" I asked. "If you consider man's attitude to the central
order a purely personal matter, then you may agree with Einstein's view, but then
you must also concede that nothing at all follows from this view."

"Perhaps it does," Wolfgang replied. "The development of science during the

past two centuries has certainly changed man's thinking, even outside the
Christian West. Hence it matters quite a bit what physicists think. And it was
precisely the idea of an objective world running its course in time and space
according to strict causal laws that produced a sharp clash between science and
the spiritual formulations of the various religions. If science goes beyond this
strict view—and it has done just that with relativity theory and is likely to go even
further with quantum theory—then the relationship between science and the
contents religions try to express must change once again. Perhaps science, by
revealing the existence of new relationships during the past thirty years, may
have lent our thought much greater depth. The concept of complementarity, for
instance, which Niels Bohr considers so crucial to the interpretation of quantum
theory, was by no means unknown to philosophers, even if they did not express it
so succinctly. However, its very appearance in the exact sciences has
constituted a decisive change: the idea of material objects that are completely
independent of the manner in which we observe them proved to be nothing but
an abstract extrapolation, something that has no counterpart in nature. In Asiatic
philosophy and Eastern religions we find the complementary idea of a pure
subject of knowledge, one that confronts no object. This idea, too, will prove an
abstract extrapolation, corresponding to no spiritual or mental reality. If we think
about the wider context, we may in the future be forced to keep a middle course
between these extremes, perhaps the one charted by Bohr's complementarity
concept. Any science that adapts itself to this form of thinking will not only be
more tolerant of the different forms of religion, but, having a wider overall view,
may also contribute to the world of values."

Paul Dirac had joined us in the meantime. He [Paul Dirac] had only just turned
twenty-five, and had little time for tolerance. "I don't know why we are talking
about religion," he objected. "If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we
must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality.
The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite
understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the
overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these
forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many
natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me
see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is
that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so
much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the
other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no
means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want
to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than
clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion
is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so
forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the
close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church.
Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all
those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly
and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a
mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal
sins."

"You are simply judging religion by its political abuses," I objected, "and since
most things in this world can be abused—even the Communist ideology which
you recently propounded—all such judgments are inadmissible. After all, there
will always be human societies, and these must find a common language in
which they can speak about life and death, and about the wider context in which
their lives are set. The spiritual forms that have developed historically out of this
search for a common language must have had a great persuasive force—how
else could so many people have lived by them for so many centuries? Religion
can't be dismissed so simply as all that. But perhaps you are drawn to another
religion, such as the old Chinese, in which the idea of a personal God does not
occur?"

"I dislike religious myths on principle," Dirac replied, "if only because the myths of
the different religions contradict one another. After all, it was purely by chance
that I was born in Europe and not in Asia, and that is surely no criterion for
judging what is true or what I ought to believe. And I can only believe what is
true. As for right action, I can deduce it by reason alone from the situation in
which I find myself: I live in society with others, to whom, in principle, I must grant
the same rights I claim for myself. I must simply try to strike a fair balance; no
more can be asked of me. All this talk about God's will, about sin and
repentance, about a world beyond by which we must direct our lives, only serves
to disguise the sober truth. Belief in God merely encourages us to think that God
wills us to submit to a higher force, and it is this idea which helps to preserve
social structures that may have been perfectly good in their day but no longer fit
the modern world. All your talk of a wider context and the like strikes me as quite
unacceptable. Life, when all is said and done, is just like science: we come up
against difficulties and have to solve them. And we can never solve more than
one difficulty at a time; your wider context is nothing but a mental superstructure
added a posteriori."
And so the discussion continued, and we were all of us surprised to notice that
Wolfgang was keeping so silent. He would pull a long face or smile rather
maliciously from time to time, but he said nothing. In the end, we had to ask him
to tell us what he thought. He seemed a little surprised and then said: "Well, our
friend Dirac, too, has a religion, and its guiding principle is: 'There is no God and
Dirac is His prophet.'" We all laughed, including Dirac, and this brought our
evening in the hotel lounge to a close.

Some time later, probably in Copenhagen, I told Niels about our conversation. He
immediately jumped to the defense of the youngest member of our circle. "I
consider it marvelous," he said, "that Paul should be so uncompromising in his
defense of all that can be expressed in clear and logical language. He believes
that what can be said at all can be said clearly—or, as Wittgenstein put it, that
'whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.' Whenever Dirac sends
me a manuscript, the writing is so neat and free of corrections that merely looking
at it is an aesthetic pleasure. If I suggest even minor changes, Paul becomes
terribly unhappy and generally changes nothing at all. His work is, in any case,
quite brilliant. Recently the two of us went to an exhibition which included a
glorious gray-blue seascape by Manet. In the foreground was a boat, and beside
it, in the water, a dark gray spot, whose meaning was not quite clear. Dirac said,
'This spot is not admissible.' A strange way of looking at art, but he was probably
quite right. In a good work of art, just as in a good piece of scientific work, every
detail must be laid down quite unequivocally; there can be no room for mere
accident.

"Still, religion is rather a different matter. I feel very much like Dirac: the idea of a
personal God is foreign to me. But we ought to remember that religion uses
language in quite a different way from science. The language of religion is more
closely related to the language of poetry than to the language of science. True,
we are inclined to think that science deals with information about objective facts,
and poetry with subjective feelings. Hence we conclude that if religion does
indeed deal with objective truths, it ought to adopt the same criteria of truth as
science. But I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a
subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have
spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other
ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is
not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective
side won't get us very far.

"That is why I consider those developments in physics during the last decades
which have shown how problematical such concepts as 'objective' and
'subjective' are, a great liberation of thought. The whole thing started with the
theory of relativity. In the past, the statement that two events are simultaneous
was considered an objective assertion, one that could be communicated quite
simply and that was open to verification by any observer. Today we know that
'simultaneity' contains a subjective element, inasmuch as two events that appear
simultaneous to an observer at rest are not necessarily simultaneous to an
observer in motion. However, the relativistic description is also objective
inasmuch as every observer can deduce by calculation what the other observer
will perceive or has perceived. For all that, we have come a long way from the
classical ideal of objective descriptions.

"In quantum mechanics the departure from this ideal has been even more
radical. We can still use the objectifying language of classical physics to make
statements about observable facts. For instance, we can say that a photographic
plate has been blackened, or that cloud droplets have formed. But we can say
nothing about the atoms themselves. And what predictions we base on such
findings depend on the way we pose our experimental question, and here the
observer has freedom of choice. Naturally, it still makes no difference whether
the observer is a man, an animal, or a piece of apparatus, but it is no longer
possible to make predictions without reference to the observer or the means of
observation. To that extent, every physical process may be said to have objective
and subjective features. The objective world of nineteenth-century science was,
as we know today, an ideal, limiting case, but not the whole reality. Admittedly,
even in our future encounters with reality we shall have to distinguish between
the objective and the subjective side, to make a division between the two. But the
location of the separation may depend on the way things are looked at; to a
certain extent it can be chosen at will. Hence I can quite understand why we
cannot speak about the content of religion in an objectifying language. The fact
that different religions try to express this content in quite distinct spiritual forms is
no real objection. Perhaps we ought to look upon these different forms as
complementary descriptions which, though they exclude one another, are
needed to convey the rich possibilities flowing from man's relationship with the
central order."

"If you distinguish so sharply between the languages of religion, science, and
art," I asked, "what meaning do you attach to such apodictic statements as
'There is a living God' or 'There is an immortal soul'? What is the meaning of
'there is' in this type of language? Science, like Dirac, objects to such
formulations. Let me illustrate the epistemological side of the problem by means
of the following analogy:

"Mathematicians, as everyone knows, work with an imaginary unit, the square

root of –1, called i. We know that i does not figure among the natural numbers.
Nevertheless, important branches of mathematics, for instance the theory of

analytical functions, are based on this imaginary unit, that is, on the fact that

-1 exists after all. Would you agree that the statement 'There is a -1' means
nothing else than 'There are important mathematical relations that are most

simply represented by the introduction of the -1 concept'? And yet these

relations would exist even without it. That is precisely why this type of
mathematics is so useful even in science and technology. What is decisive, for
instance, in the theory of functions, is the existence of important mathematical
laws governing the behavior of pairs of continuous variables. These relations are

rendered more comprehensible by the introduction of the abstract concept of

-1, although that concept is not basically needed for our understanding, and
although it has no counterpart among the natural numbers. An equally abstract
concept is that of infinity, which also plays a very important role in modern
mathematics. It, too, has no correlate, and moreover raises grave problems. In
short, mathematics introduces ever higher stages of abstraction that help us
attain a coherent grasp of ever wider realms. To get back to our original question,
is it correct to look upon the religious 'there is' as just another, though different,
attempt to reach ever higher levels of abstraction? An attempt to facilitate our
understanding of universal connections? After all, the connections themselves
are real enough, no matter into what spiritual forms we try to fit them."

"With respect to the epistemological side of the problem, your comparison may
pass," Bohr replied. "But in other respects it is quite inadequate. In mathematics
we can take our inner distance from the content of our statements. In the final
analysis mathematics is a mental game that we can play or not play as we
choose. Religion, on the other hand, deals with ourselves, with our life and death;
its promises are meant to govern our actions and thus, at least indirectly, our
very existence. We cannot just look at them impassively from the outside.
Moreover, our attitude to religious questions cannot be separated from our
attitude to society. Even if religion arose as the spiritual structure of a particular
human society, it is arguable whether it has remained the strongest social
molding force through history, or whether society, once formed, develops new
spiritual structures and adapts them to its particular level of knowledge.
Nowadays, the individual seems to be able to choose the spiritual framework of
his thoughts and actions quite freely, and this freedom reflects the fact that the
boundaries between the various cultures and societies are beginning to become
more fluid. But even when an individual tries to attain the greatest possible
degree of independence, he will still be swayed by the existing spiritual
structures—consciously or unconsciously. For he, too, must be able to speak of
life and death and the human condition to other members of the society in which
he's chosen to live; he must educate his children according to the norms of that
society, fit into its life. Epistemological sophistries cannot possibly help him attain
these ends. Here, too, the relationship between critical thought about the spiritual
content of a given religion and action based on the deliberate acceptance of that
content is complementary. And such acceptance, if consciously arrived at, fills
the individual with strength of purpose, helps him to overcome doubts and, if he
has to suffer, provides him with the kind of solace that only a sense of being
sheltered under an all-embracing roof can grant. In that sense, religion helps to
make social life more harmonious; its most important task is to remind us, in the
language of pictures and parables, of the wider framework within which our life is
set."

From Physics and Beyond, By Werner Heisenberg, (Harper & Row, 1971).
Republished in Physics And Philosophy: The Evolution Of Modern Science by
Werner Heisenberg, (Harper Perrennial, 2007).