Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the complexities of the universe surpass our understanding and imagination.
Werner Heisenberg's quote highlights the limitations of human thought in comprehending the vastness and intricacies of the universe. It implies that the reality of existence is far more complicated than our current understanding and even our ability to conceive of it, encouraging a sense of humility regarding our knowledge of the cosmos.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the limits of human understanding in a science class.
Although the theory of relativity makes the greatest of demands on the ability for abstract thought, still it fulfills the traditional requirements of science insofar as it permits a division of the world into subject and object (observer and observed) and, hence, a clear formulation of the law of causality.
It was about three o'clock at night when the final result of the calculation [which gave birth to quantum mechanics] lay before me ... At first I was deeply shaken ... I was so excited that I could not think of sleep. So I left the house ... and awaited the sunrise on top of a rock.
It is generally believed that our science is empirical and that we draw our concepts and our mathematical constructs from the empirical data. If this were the whole truth, we should, when entering into a new field, introduce only such quantities as can directly be observed, and formulate natural laws only by means of these quantities.
When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity ? And why turbulence ? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.
The end of the First World War had thrown Germany's youth into great turmoil. The reins of power had fallen from the hands of a deeply disillusioned older generation, and the younger ones drew together in larger and smaller groups to blaze new paths or, at least, to discover a new star to steer by.
The Same organizing forces that have shaped nature in all her forms are also responsible for the structure of our minds.
Sometime Iβll lay down my wrath, As I lay my body down Between the ache of breath and breath, Golden slumber in the bone.
All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless; it must be done by the Spirit.
I didn't knowingly meet a conservative until, to my shame, I was 60 years old and sat down and said, 'Wow, I don't understand what this guy's talking about, but he has a great civility about him. Perhaps I better investigate this thing.'
It is the responsibility of every Christ-centred follower to carve out a satisfying life under the loving rule of God or else sin will start to look good.
There's a notion I'd like to see buried: the ordinary person. Ridiculous. There is no ordinary person.
You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape β the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes β we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.
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