Werner Heisenberg

126 p. ; 23 cm

A digest of technical thought and an atlas to the growth of modern understanding, it exposes the reader to the perspectives that are behind styles of 'knowing' about things. Beginning with the discoveries of Keppler, the procession through Descartes to the quantum paradox of observation itself provides an orientation regarding how things stand. Things, in the most elementary sense of the word, are fascinating. The book provides a quite fascinating outline of how the modern ideas of relativity and quantum physics influence our perception (or at least, scientists' perception) of the world around us, by radically modifying the fundamental principles of causality and determinism.Written for the layman but including some arcane writings from the 16th century to the present in excerpt, the chosen passages serve Heisenberg's pedagogical approach.

A series of symposia held in the years 1941 and 1942 in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut for Physics.