Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Scientific knowledge only covers a small portion of reality, while the unknown remains infinite.
In plain terms
Science explains little of reality compared to what we still do not know.
What can you take from it?
Acknowledge the vast limits of current scientific understanding.

Where it applies

  • scientific research
  • philosophical inquiry
  • learning

Putting it to work

  • study humility in science
  • explore unknown fields

Questions to consider

  • What part of reality do you think is knowable?
  • How does knowing limits change your approach to learning?

Another view

It underestimates how much reality can be modeled by expanding concepts.

More from Werner Heisenberg

  1. In the philosophy of Democritus the atoms are eternal and indestructible units of matter, they can never be transformed into each other. With regard to this qu…

    Permalink to quote #12
  2. Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word 'understandi…

    Permalink to quote #14
  3. We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

    Permalink to quote #11

Related quotes

  1. Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality. They are more or less isomorphic to transfo…

    Jean PiagetJean Piaget quote #2
  2. There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.

    William ThomsonWilliam Thomson quote #6
  3. There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics …

    Niels BohrNiels Bohr quote #8