Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science is Werner Heisenberg's account of what quantum theory means for our understanding of nature, knowledge and language, set within the history of Western thought from the Greek atomists to the twentieth century. It grew from the Gifford Lectures he gave at the University of St Andrews in the winter of 1955-56 and was published in New York in 1958 by Harper and Brothers in the World Perspectives series, with an introduction by the Yale philosopher F. S. C. Northrop; a German edition, Physik und Philosophie, followed in 1959.
Werner Heisenberg · AuthorPhysics and Philosophy
Author
Werner Heisenberg
About Werner Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) was a German theoretical physicist, born in Würzburg and educated at Munich under Arnold Sommerfeld. Working with Max Born at Göttingen and Niels Bohr at Copenhagen, he created matrix mechanics in 1925 and formulated the uncertainty principle in 1927, and he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1932. During the Second World War he led theoretical work in the German nuclear research program, a role historians have long debated. After the war he directed the Max Planck Institute for Physics, first at Göttingen and from 1958 at Munich, and wrote widely on the philosophy of science.