Day6: Werner Heisenberg

The reason: He teaches what the physics is like and its beyond

He is not only physicist but also thinker. He teaches me Philosophy and Physics. He was Germany theoretical physicist. He is one of key persons of quantum physics. He published the paper about uncertainty principal, on which he built his philosophy and for which he is best known. He was awarded Novel prize in 1932 for the creation of quantum physics.

I love to read his memoir “The part and the whole”.  As far as I know, there is no English version of this book, I know this book was writing in Germany and there is the one translated to Japanese. On this book, he described a lot of discussions with friends, colleges, philosophers, and of course physicists in this book.  The book starts the discussion with friends when they were high school student. That discussion was actually highly intellectual even though they were high school student. They discussed why molecular, such as H2O, CO2, are depicted by pins and balls in the text because he believed that atoms are connected by natural law so then it cannot be given a specific form like pins and balls.

He wanted to be mathematician at first. His father brought him to the famous mathematician when he was high school student because he already was ready to study at college level. He was reading the book “Space, Time, Matter” by Hermann Weyl. The mathematicians said “You can’t be a mathematicians if you read like that kind of books” So the next, he went to the physicist Sommerfeld. The Sommerfeld said by listening to his motivation.  “You expect too much by reading the book. It isn’t always right. You understand easy things when you understand the most difficult thing.  You need to start what you can try now, I will choose right one for when we meet next time” and also said that “You need to choose to either theorist or experimentalist” This is very physicist like. As for me, my Ph.D. adviser said to me “You can’t be theorist how hard you try because the smartest person would be the theorist. You are good at calculation but not the best in the country, you should be experimentalist then you will survive. ”

Under Sommerfeld, Heisenberg met the Wolfgang Ernst Pauli. He is a brilliant physicist. But he usually went to bar evening and he came to University at night, and spent all night there to study, and went home without taking lectures. Heisenberg, on the other hand, he works in the morning and afternoon like regular person. Since the scientists are given “autonomy” to study, actually this happened to scientist. Actually, I am like regular person, I did not like the way of living as night person though, but the interest in science can make friendship even though the styles of living are different.

One thing I strongly memorized discussion is his discussion with Einstein.

Einstein said “You shouldn’t always believe theories of physics only would be made by observables.”

Heisenberg said “sir? But, you did emphasize we shouldn’t discuss absolute time because it is not the observable on the relatively theory?”

Einstein said, “Even though, in principal, the approach to make the theory by only using observables should be wrong. Because the truth is reverse, the people can know what to be observed by the theory”

This discussion is very important as experimental physicist. The experimental physicist of course use model to explain the data, but the model depends on the parameters, what we could do is basically the least squire method trying to find the best parameters can explain the data by using our model. So we are doing trying to explain what we don’t know by using the model which is what we know. The theory, as a point of our views, determines what would be observed. And also more importantly, our views are sometimes limited by the theory. We should exactly know what we can prove and what we cannot prove.

I also like his political point of view. During the World War II, many scientists had left Germany but he stayed. He focused on the rebuilding Germany when the country lost.  And he was assigned the team to make nuclear bomb at the almost end of World War II. Of course, only America could make atomic bomb at that time. This is very serious matter for physicists. Our work can contribute to peace or war. Even if the invention might be used bad purpose, should we still discover anyways?

We now are too busy to think seriously. We can access a lot more information compare with 10 years ago and also IQ we have is increasing, which means we can process a lot more information. However the processing information won’t give us the answer. For example, what is life, why are we living, how scientists can help people to have better life?

These discussions are very important for me to read, it tells me how the physics should be, what the intellectual life is. Wherever our society is going, there are systems from politic to science. We have to keep discussing what is right or long. The system fails not because the system is wrong, but because human do mistake. So, we will need to keep being back to here “Philosophy and Physics” in the future.