Uber den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik
“Even in principle, we cannot know the present in all detail. For that reason everything observed is a selection from a plenitude of possibilities and a limitation on what is possible in the future.... The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.” -Heisenberg
FIRST EDITION of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, one of the most important and celebrated findings in modern physics.
“In 1927, the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, a theorist, showed that quantum physics and the wave-particle duality of nature forbid the precise measurement of the initial conditions of a particle, or anything else. If the initial conditions cannot be measures precisely, then the future conditions cannot be predicted precisely. Heisenberg’s result is not a statement about the inability to construct good measuring devices. It is a statement about an intrinsic property of nature... Nature has an essential indeterminacy. Nature can be pinned down only so far and no farther. Heisenberg’s result, called the uncertainty principle, is one of the most important and famous discoveries of all science” (Lightman, Great Ideas in Physics, 210).
In Zeitschrift fur Physik, pp. 172-198, volume 43 (the whole volume offered). Berlin: Julius Springer, 1927. Octavo, contemporary half cloth over marbled boards. Institutional stamp on the verso of title from the prestigious Gmelin Institute (after 1996, part of the Max Planck Institute). Fading to spine, some rubbing to boards; text clean. RARE.
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