Physics and Philosophy by Werner Heisenberg

[Neoma]

Anyone read it?

[BlooInBloo]

1. A lifetime ago. The best is to learn the math/physics (lin algebra/functional analysis/etc.)...

And then see what he has to say. And then read people like van Fraassen and the like.

It's of limited utility to read popularizations ignorant of the technical details.

The entire history of the various mathematical formulations of QM is fascinating, though.

[jobendorfer]

2. Yes, I've read it

I read it after taking a modern physics course.
As I'm not the brightest bulb in the pack, sometimes I find myself getting lost in the equations.(*)

I was hoping to come away from Heisenberg's book with a little bit better understanding than what I came to it with,
namely, the 500ft level understanding that the uncertainty principle makes whole classes of questions unanswerable,
so you have to rethink physics in a way that simply doesn't ask those questions. But I was hoping for more.

The course I took briefly mentioned matrix mechanics, stated without evidence or proof that it was mathematically
equivalent to Schrodinger's wave mechanics which we did cover in some detail, and obviously since Heisenberg formulated
the uncertainty principle it must fall naturally out of his mathematics as well. But I'd like to see how!

(*)
And now I'm taking all the math that I should have had the sense to take when I was 20,
( partial differential equations, complex analysis, etc ) and will have another go at QM in a year or two.

What did you think of it?

J.

[Neoma]

3. Just started reading it actually.

I'm on page four. :P

[sfwriter]

4. I'm uncertain...