PHYSICS AND BEYOND

Encounters and Conversations

 WORLD PERSPECTIVES

Volumes already published

I APPROACHESTo GoD Jacques Maritain

II AccENT ON FoRM Lancelot Law Whyte
III ScoPE OF ToTAL ARcHITECTURE Walter Gropius
IV RECOVERYOF F AITH Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
V WORLD INDIVISIBLE Konrad Adenauer
VI SocIETY AND KNOWLEDGE V. Gordon Childe
VII THE TRANSFORMATIONS oF MAN Lewis Mumford
VIII MAN ANDMATERIALISM Fred Hoyle
IX THE ART oF LoVING Erich Fromm
X DYNAMICSOF FAITH Paul Tillich
XI MATIER, MIND ANDMAN Edmund W. Sinnott
XII MYSTICISM:CHRISTIANANDBUDDHIST
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki
XIII MAN's WESTERNQuEST Denis de Rougemont
XIV AMERICANH UMANISM Howard M umford J ones
XV THE MEETINGoF LovE ANDKNOWLEDGE
Martin C. D' Arcy, S.J.
XVI R1cH LANDSAND PooR Gunnar M yrdal
XVII HINDUISM:ITS MEANINGFORTHE LIBERATION
oF THE SPIRIT Swami N ikhilananda
XVIII CAN PEOPLE LEARN TO LEARN? Brock Chisholm
XIX PHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY Werner Heisenberg
XX ART AND REALITY Joyce Cary
XXI S1GMUNDFREun's Miss10N Erich Fromm
XXII MIRAGEOF HEALTH René Dubos
XXIII IssuEs oF FREEDOM Herbert J. M uller
XXIV HUMANISM Moses Hadas
XXV LIFE: ITs DIMENSioNsANDITs BouNos
Robert M. Maclver
 XXVI CHALLEGE OF PsvcHICALRESEARCHGardner Murphy
XXVII ALFREDN ORTHWHITEHEAD:His REFLECTIONS
ON MAN ANDNATURE Ruth Nanda Anshen
XXVIII THE AGE OF N ATIONALISM Hans Kohn
XXIX V OICESOF MAN Mario Pei
XXX NEw PATHSIN BIOLOGY Adolf Portmann
XXXI MYTH ANDREALITY Mircea Eliade
XXXII H1sTORYASART ANOASScIENCE H. Stuart Hughes
XXXIII REALISMIN ÜUR TIME Georg Lukács
XXXIV THE MEANINGOFTHETWENTIETHCENTURY
Kenneth E. Boulding
XXXV ÜN EcONOMIC KNOWLEDGE Adolph Lowe
XXXVI CALIBANREBORN Wilfrid Mellers
XXXVII THROUGH THE V ANISHING POINT
Marshall McLuhan and Harley Parker
XXXVIII THE REVOLUTION OF HoPE Erich Fromm
XXXIX EMERGENCY ExIT Ignazio Silone
XL MARXISMANOTHE ExISTENTIALISTS Raymond Aron
XLI PHYSICAL CONTROL OF THE MINO
José M. R. Delgado, M.D.
XLII PHYSICSANOBEYONO Werner Heisenberg
 BOARD OF EDITORS

o/
WORLD PERSPECTIVES

LORD KENNETH CLARK

RICHARD CouRANT

WERNER HEISENBERG

IVAN ILLICH

KoNRAD LoRENZ

JosEPH NEEDHAM

I. I. RABI
SARVEPALLI RADHAKRISHNAN

KARL RAHNER, S.J.

ALEXANDER SACHS

C.N.YANG
WORLD PERSPECTIVES Volume Forty-two

Planned and Edited by RUTH NANDA ANSHEN

PHYSICS AND
BEYOND
ENCOUNTERS AND CONVERSATIONS

WERNER HEISENBERG
Translated from the German by A rnold ]. Pomerans

tfj
1817

HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK, EVANSTON, AND LONDON
PHYSICS AND BEYOND: ENCOUNTERS AND CONVERSATIONS. Copyright @ 1971
by Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United
States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address
Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 49 East 33rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10016.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited,
Toronto.
FIRST EDITION

UBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 78-95963

 Contents

WoRLD PERSPECTIVEs-What This Series Means

.
IX
-Ruth Nanda Anshen
Preface
..
xvn
1 First Encounter with the Atomic Concept (1919-1920) 1

2 The Decision to Study Physics (1920) 15

3 "Understanding" in Modern Physics (1920-1922) 27
4 Lessons in Politics and History (1922-1924) 43
5 Quantum Mechanics anda Talk with Einstein
(1925-1926) 58
6 Fresh Fields (1926-1927) 70
7 Science and Religion (1927) 82
8 Atomic Physics and Pragmatism (1929) 93
9 The Relationship between Biology, Physics and
Chemistry (1930-1932) 103
10 Quantum Mechanics and Kantian Philosophy
( 1930- 1934) 117
11 Discussions about Language (1933) 125
12 Revolution and University Life (1933) 141
13 Atomic Power and Elementary Particles (1935-1937) 155
Vlll CONTENTS

14 Individual Behavior in the Face of Political

Disaster (1937-1941) 165
15 Toward a New Beginning (1941-1945) 180
16 The Responsibility of the Scientist (1945-1950) 192
17 Positivism, Metaphysics and Religion (1952) 205
18 Scientific and Political Disputes (1956-1957) 218
19 The Unified Field Theory (1957-1958) 230
20 Elementary Particles and Platonic Philosophy
(1961-1965) 237
 WORLD PERSPECTIVES

W hat T h is Series M eans

I t is the thesis of JtVorld Perspectives that man is in the process of

developing a new consciousness which, in spite of his apparent
spiritual and moral captivity, can eventually lift the human race
above and beyond the fear, ignorance, and isolation which beset
it today. It is to this nascent consciousness, to this concept of man
born out of a universe perceived through a fresh vision of reality,
that World Perspectives is dedicated.
Man has entered a new era of evolutionary history, one in
which rapid change is a dominant consequence. He is contending
with a fundamental change, since he has intervened in the evolu-
tionary process. He must now better appreciate this fact and then
develop the wisdom to direct the process toward his fulfillment
rather than toward his destruction. As he learns to apply his
understanding of the physical world for practica! purposes, he is,
in reality, extending his innate capacity and augmenting his
ability and his need to communicate as well as his ability to
think and to create. And as a result, he is substituting a goal-
directed evolutionary process in his struggle against environ-
mental hardship for the slow, but effective, biological evolution
which produced modern man through mutation and natural
selection. By intelligent intervention in the evolutionary process
man has greatly accelerated and greatly expanded the range of
his possibilities. But he has not changed the basic fact that it
remains a trial and error process, with the danger of taking paths
that lead to sterility of mind and heart, moral apathy and
intellectual inertia; and even producing social dinosaurs unfit to
live in an evolving world.
Only those spiritual and intellectual leaders of our epoch who
have a paternity in this extension of man's horizons are invited
to participate in this Series: those who are aware of the truth that
X WORLD PERSPECTIVES

beyond the divisiveness among men there exists a primordial

unitive power since we are all bound together by a common
humanity more fundamental than any unity of dogma; those
who recognize that the centrifuga! force which has scattered and
atomized mankind must be replaced by an integrating structure
and process capable of bestowing meaning and purpose on
existence; those who realize that science itself, when not in-
hibited by the limitations of its own methodology, when chas-
tened and humbled, commits man to an indeterminate range of
yet undreamed consequences that may flow from it.
Virtually all of our disciplines have relied on conceptions
which are now incompatible with the Cartesian axiom, and with
the static world view we once derived from it. For underlying the
new ideas, including those of modern physics, is a unifying order,
but it is not causality; it is purpose, and not the purpose of the
universe and of man, but the purpose in the universe and in
man. In other words, we seem to inhabit a world of dynamic
process and structure. Therefore we need a calculus of potential-
ity rather than one of probability, a dialectic of polarity, one in
which unity and diversity are redefined as simultaneous and
necessary poles of the same essence.
Our situation is new. No civilization has previously had to
face the challenge of scientific specialization, and our response
must be new. Thus this Series is committed to ensure that the
spiritual and moral needs of man as a human being and the
scientific and intellectual resources at his command for life may
be brought into a productive, meaningful and creative harmony.
In a certain sense we may say that man now has regained his
former geocentric position in the universe. For a picture of the
Earth has been made available from distant space, from the
lunar desert, and the sheer isolation of the Earth has become
plain. This is as new and as powerful an idea in history as any
that has ever been born in man's consciousness. We are all
becoming seriously concerned with our natural environment.
And this concern is not only the result of the warnings given by
biologists, ecologists and conservationists. Rather it is the result
of a deepening awareness that something new has happened, that
the planet Earth is a unique and precious place. lndeed, it may
not be a mere coincidence that this awareness should have been
 WORLD PERSPECTIVES Xl
.
born at the exact moment when man took his first step into outer
space.
This Series endeavors to point to a reality of which scientific
theory has revealed only one aspect. It is the commitment to this
reality that lends universal intent to a scientist's most original
and solitary thought. By acknowledging this frankly we shall
restore science to the great family of human aspirations by which
raen hope to fulfill themselves in the world community as
thinking and sentient beings. For our problem is to discover a
principie of differentiation and yet relationship lucid enough to
justify and to purify scientific, philosophic and all other knowl-
edge, both discursive and intuitive, by accepting their interde-
pendence. This is the crisis in consciousness made articulate
through the crisis in science. This is the new awakening.
Each volume presents the thought and belief of its author and
points to the way in which religion, philosophy, art, science,
economics, politics and history may constitute that form of
human activity which takes the fullest and most precise account
of variousness, possibility, complexity and difficulty. Thus World
Perspectives endeavors to define that ecumenical power of the
mind and heart which enables man through his mysterious great-
ness to re-create his life.
This Series is committed to a re-examination of all those sides
of human endeavor which the specialist was taught to believe he
could safely leave aside. It attempts to show the structural kin-
ship between subject and object; the indwelling of the one in the
other. It interprets present and past events impinging on human
life in our growing World Age and envisages what man may yet
attain when summoned by an unbending inner necessity to the
quest of what is most exalted in him. lts purpose is to offer new
vistas in terms of world and human development while refusing
to betray the intimate correlation between universality and
individuality, dynamics and form, freedom and destiny. Each
author deals with the increasing realization that spirit and
nature are not separate and apart; that intuition and reason
must regain their importance as the means of perceiving and
fusing inner being with outer reality.
World Perspectives endeavors to show that the conception of
wholeness, unity, organism is a higher and more concrete concep-
 ..
Xll WORLD PERSPECTIVES

tion than that of matter and energy. Thus an enlarged meaning

of life, of biology, not as it is revealed in the test tube of the
laboratory but as it is experienced within the organism of life
itself, is attempted in this Series. For the principie of life consists
in the tension which connects spirit with the realm of matter,
symbiotically joined. The element of life is dominant in the very
texture of nature, thus rendering life, biology, a transempirical
science. The laws of life have their origin beyond their mere
physical manifestations and compel us to consider their spiritual
source. In fact, the widening of the conceptual framework has
not only served to restore order within the respective branches of
knowledge, but has also disclosed analogies in man's position
regarding the analysis and synthesis of experience in apparently
separated domains of knowledge, suggesting the possibility of an
ever more embracing objective description of the meaning of
life.
Knowledge, it is shown in these books, no longer consists in a
manipulation of man and nature as opposite forces, nor in the
reduction of data to mere statistical order, but is a means of
liberating mankind from the destructive power of fear, pointing
the way toward the goal of the rehabilitation of the human will
and the rebirth of faith and confidence in the human person.
The works published also endeavor to reveal that the cry for
patterns, systems and authorities is growing less insistent as the
desire grows stronger in both East and West for the recovery of a
dignity, integrity and self-realization which are the inalienable
rights of man who may now guide change by means of conscious
purpose in the light of rational experience.
The volumes in this Series endeavor to demonstrate that only
in a society in which awareness of the problems of science exists
can its discoveries start great waves of change in human culture,
and in such a manner that these discoveries may deepen and not
erode the sense of universal human community. The differences
in the disciplines, their epistemological exclusiveness, the variety
of historical experiences, the differences of traditions, of cultures,
of languages, of the arts, should be protected and preserved. But
the interrelationship and unity of the whole should at the same
time be accepted.
The authors of World Perspectives are of course aware that the
 WORLD PERSPECTIVES XIII

ultimate answers to the hopes and fears which pervade modern

society rest on the moral fibre of man, and on the wisdom and
responsibility of those who promote the course of its develop-
ment. But moral decisions cannot dispense with an insight into
the interplay of the objective elements which offer and limit the
choices made. Therefore an understanding of what the issues are,
though not a sufficient condition, is a necessary prerequisite for
directing action toward constructive solutions.
Other vital questions explored relate to problems of interna-
tional understanding as well as to problems dealing with preju-
dice and the resultant tensions and antagonisms. The growing
perception and responsibility of our World Age point to the new
reality that the individual person and the collective person
supplement and integrate each other; that the thrall of totali-
tarianism of both left and right has been shaken in the universal
desire to recapture the authority of truth and human totality.
Mankind can finally place its trust not in a proletarian authori-
tarianism, not in a secularized h umanism, both of which have
betrayed the spiritual property right of history, but in a sacra-
mental brotherhood and in the unity of knowledge. This new
consciousness has created a widening of human horizons beyond
every parochialism, and a revolution in human thought com-
parable to the basic assumption, among the ancient Greeks, of
the sovereignty of reason; corresponding to the great effulgence
of the moral conscience articulated by the Hebrew prophets;
analogous to the fundamental assertions of Christianity; orto the
beginning of the new scientific era, the era of the science of
dynamics, the experimental foundations of which were laid by
Galileo in the Renaissance.
An important effort of this Series is to re-examine the contra-
dictory meanings and applications which are given today to such
terms as democracy, freedom, justice, love, peace, brotherhood
and God. The purpose of such inquiries is to clear the way for
the foundation of a genuine world history not in terms of nation
or race or culture but in terms of man in relation to God, to
himself, his fellow man and the universe, that reach beyond
immediate self-interest. For the meaning of the World Age con-
sists in respecting man's hopes and dreams which lead to a deeper
understanding of the basic values of all peoples.
xiv WORLD PERSPECTIVES

World Perspectives is planned to gain insight into the mean-

ing of man, who not only is determined by history but who also
determines history. History is to be understood as concerned not
only with the life of man on this planet but as including also
such cosmic influences as interpenetrate our human world. This
generation is discovering that history does not conform to the
social optimism of modern civilization and that the organization
of human communities and the establishment of freedom and
peace are not only intellectual achievements but spiritual and
moral achievements as well, demanding a cherishing of the
wholeness of human personality, the "unmediated wholeness of
feeling and thought," and constituting a never-ending challenge
to man, emerging from the abyss of meaninglessness and suffer-
ing, to be renewed and replenished in the totality of his Iife.
Justice itself, which has been "in a state of pilgrimage and
crucifixion" and now is being slowly liberated from the grip of
social and political demonologies in the East as well as in the
West, begins to question its own premises. The modern revolu-
tionary movements which have challenged the sacred institutions
of society by protesting social injustice in the name of social
justice are here examined and re-evaluated.
In the light of this, we have no choice but to admit that the un-
freedom against which freedom is measured must be retained with
it, namely, that the aspect of truth out of which the night view
appears to emerge, the darkness of our time, is as little abandon-
able as is man's subjective advance. Thus the two sources of
man's consciousness are inseparable, not as dead but as living
and complementary, an aspect of that "principie of complemen-
tarity" through which Niels Bohr has sought to unite the quan-
tum and the wave, both of which constitute the very fabric of
life's radiant energy.
There is in mankind today a counterforce to the sterility and
danger of a quantitative, anonymous mass culture; a new, if
sometimes imperceptible, spiritual sense of convergence toward
human and world unity on the basis of the sacredness of each
human person and respect for the plurality of cultures. There is
a growing awareness that equality may not be evaluated in mere
numerical terms but is proportionate and analogical in its real-
ity. For when equality is equated with interchangeability, indi-
viduality is negated and the human person extinguished.
 WORLD PERSPECTIVES XV

We stand at the brink of an age of a world in which human

life presses forward to actualize new forms. The false separation
of man and nature, of time and space, of freedom and security, is
acknowledged, and we are faced with a new vision of man in his
organic unity and of history offering a richness and diversity of
quality and majesty of scope hitherto unprecedented. In relat-
ing the accumulated wisdom of man's spirit to the new reality of
the World Age, in articulating its thought and belief, World
Perspectives seeks to encourage a renaissance of hope in society
and of pride in man's decision as to what his destiny will be.
World Perspectives is committed to the recognition that all
great changes are preceded by a vigorous intellectual re-evalua-
tion and reorganization. Our authors are aware that the sin of
hubris may be avoided by showing that the creative process itself
is not a free activity if by free we mean arbitrary, or unrelated to
cosmic law. For the creative process in the human mind, the
developmental process in organic nature and the basic laws of
the inorganic realm may be but varied expressions of a universal
formative process. Thus World Perspectives hopes to show that
although the present apocalyptic period is one of exceptional
tensions, there is also at work an exceptional movement toward a
compensating unity which refuses to violate the ultimate moral
power at work in the universe, that very power upon which all
human effort must at last depend. In this way we may come to
understand that there exists an inherent independence of spir-
itual and mental growth which, though conditioned by circum-
stances, is never determined by circumstances. In this way the
great plethora of human knowledge may be correlated with an
insight into the nature of human nature by being attuned to the
wide and deep range of human thought and human experience.
Incoherence is the result of the present disintegrative processes
in education. Thus the need for World Perspectives expresses
itself in the recognition that natural and man-made ecological
systems require as much study as isolated particles and elemen-
tary reactions. For there is a basic correlation of elements in
nature as in man which cannot be separated, which compose each
other and alter each other mutually. Thus we hope to widen
appropriately our conceptual framework of reference. For our
epistemological problem consists in our finding the proper bal-
ance between our lack of an all-embracing principie relevant to
 .
XVI WORLD PERSPECTIVES

our way of evaluating life and in our power to express ourselves

in a logically consistent manner.
Our Judaeo-Christian and Greco-Roman heritage, our Hellenic
tradition, has compelled us to think in exclusive categories. But
our experience challenges us to recognize a totality richer and far
more complex than the average observer could have suspected-
a totality which compels him to think in ways which the logic
of dichotomies denies. We are summoned to revise fundamentally
our ordinary ways of conceiving experience, and thus, by ex-
panding our vision and by accepting those forms of thought
which also include nonexclusive categories, the mind is then
able to grasp what it was incapable of grasping or accepting
before.
In spite of the infinite obligation of men and in spite of their
finite power, in spite of the intransigence of nationalisms, and in
spite of the homelessness of moral passions rendered ineffectual
by the scientific outlook, beneath the apparent turmoil and
upheaval of the present, and out of the transformations of this
dynamic period with the unfolding of a world-consciousness, the
purpose of World Perspectives is to help quicken the "unshaken
heart of well-rounded truth" and interpret the significant ele-
ments of the World Age now taking shape out of the core of that
undimmed continuity of the creative process which restores man
to mankind while deepening and enhancing his communion with
the universe.
RUTH NANDA ANSHEN
 Preface

Now, in what concerns these orations ... I

have found it impossible to remember their
exact wording. Hence I have made each orator
speak as, in my opinion, he would have done in
the circumstances, but keeping as close as I
could to the train of thought that guided his
actual speech.
- THUCYDIDES

Science is made by men, a self-evident fact that is far too often

forgotten. If it is recalled here, it is in the hope of reducing the
gap between the two cultures, between art and science. The
present book deals with the developments of atomic physics dur-
ing the past fifty years, as the author has experienced them.
Science rests on experiments; its results are attained through
talks among those who work in it and who consult one another
about their interpretation of these experiments. Such talks form
the main content of this book. Through them the author hopes
to demonstrate that science is rooted in conversations. N eedless
to say, conversations cannot be reconstructed literally after sev-
era! decades. Nor is the book intended as a collection of memoirs.
Instead, the author has freely condensed and sacrificed certain
details; all he wishes to reconstruct is the broader picture. In
these conversations atomic physics does not invariably play the
most important role-far from it. Human, philosophical or po-
litical problems will crop up time and again, and the author
hopes to show that science is quite inseparable from these more
general questions.
XVlll PHYSICS AND BEYOND

Many of the dramatis personae are referred to by first name,

partly because they are not known to the general public, and
partly because the author's relationship to them is best conveyed
in that way. Moreover, this should help to avoid the impression
that the author is presenting a verbatim report, true in every
detail. For that reason there has been no attempt to draw a more
precise picture of these personalities; they can, as it were, be
recognized only from their manner of speech. Careful attention,
however, has been paid to the precise atmosphere in which the
conversations took place. For in it the creative process of science
is made manifest; it helps to explain how the cooperation of
different people may culminate in scientific results of the utmost
importance. The author will be most happy, if, in this way, he
can convey even to those remote from atomic physics sorne idea of
the mental processes that have gone into the genesis and develop-
ment of that science, and this despite the fact that he has been
obliged to introduce sorne highly abstract and complex mathe-
matical relations.
And finally, by recalling these conversations, the author has
tried to pursue an even wider objective. Modern atomic physics
has thrown fresh light on basic philosophical, ethical and politi-
cal problems. Perhaps it is not too much to hope that this book
may help to draw the largest possible circle of people into this
vital discussion.
 1
First Encounter with the
Atomic Concept (1919-1920)

It must have been in the spring of 1920. The end of the First
World v\Tar had thrown Germany's youth into a great turmoil.
The reins of power had fallen from the hands of a deeply disillu-
sioned older generation, and the younger one drew together in
an attempt to blaze new paths, or at least to discover a new star
by which they could guide their steps in the prevailing darkness.
And so, one bright spring morning, sorne ten to twenty of us,
most of them younger than myself, set out on a ramble which, if I
remember correctly, took us through the hills above the western
shore of Lake Starnberg. Through gaps in the dense emerald
screen of beech we caught occasional glimpses of the lake be-
neath, and of tall mountains in the far distance. It was here that
I had my first conversation about that world of atoms which was
to play so important a part in my subsequent life. To explain
why a group of young nature lovers, enraptured by the glorious
spring landscape, should have engaged in such conversations in
the first place, I ought perhaps to point out that the cocoon in
which home and school protect the young in more peaceful
periods had burst open in the confusion of the times, and that,
by way of a substitute, we had discovered a new sense of freedom
and did not think twice about offering views on even such sub-
jects as called for much more basic information than any of us
possessed.
Just a few steps in front of me walked a fair, tall boy whose
parents had once asked me to help him with his homework. A
2 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

year earlier, at the age of fifteen, this hoy had been dragging up
ammunition for his father, who was manning a machine gun
behind the Wittelsbach Fountain. Those were the days of the
Soviet Republic in Munich. Others, including myself, had been
working as farm laborers in the Bavarian Highlands. And so a
rough life was not entirely alien to us; and we were not afraid to
form opinions on the most abstruse topics.
Our talk probably turned to atoms because I was preparing for
my matriculation in the summer, and hence liked to discuss
scientific subjects with my friend Kurt, who shared my interests
and hoped to become an engineer. Kurt carne from a Protestant
officer's family; he was a good sportsman and an excellent com-
rade. The year before, when M unich had been surrounded by
governmen t troops and our families had long since ea ten their
last piece of bread, he, my brother and I had gone on a foraging
expedition to Garching, right through the front lines, and had
returned with a rucksack full of bread, butter and bacon. Such
shared experiences make for trust and happy understanding. I
now told Kurt that I had come across an illustration in my
physics book that made no sense to me at all. It was meant to
depict the basic chemical process of two uniform substances
combining into a third uniform substance, i.e., into a chemical
compound. The processes involved, so the book contended, were
best explained by the assumption that the smallest particles, or
atoms, of either element, combined into small groups of atoms,
called molecules. A carbon dioxide molecule, for instance, was
said to consist of an atom of carbon and two atoms of oxygen. It
was this process which our book tried to illustrate. And in order
to explain why it was that precisely one atom of carbon and two
atoms of oxygen formed a carbon dioxide molecule, the artist
had furnished the atoms with hooks and eyes, by which they
could hang together. I found this approach wholly unacceptable.
To my mind, hooks and eyes were quite arbitrary structures
whose shape could be altered at will to adapt them to different
technical tasks, whereas atoms and their combination into mole-
cules were supposed to be governed by strict natural laws. This, I
felt, left no room for such human inventions as hooks and eyes.
"lf you do not hold with hooks and eyes-and I think them
fairly suspect myself-you should nevertheless try to get at the
particular experiences which persuaded the artist to use this type
 FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE ATOMIC CONCEPT 3
of representation," Kurt contended. "For modern science starts
from experience and not from philosophical speculation. Experi-
ence is all we have to go by, provided only we have gathered it
with due care. As far as I know, chemists have shown that the
elementary particles of a chemical compound are always repre-
sented in a fixed ratio by weight. That is remarkable in itself.
For even if one believes in the existence of atoms, i.e., the char-
acteristic particles of every chemical element, forces of the kind
we normally encounter in nature would hardly suflice to explain
why a carbon atom invariably and exclusively attracts two oxy-
gen atoms and binds them to itself. Even if we grant the
existence of sorne kind of attractive force between the two types
of atom, how can we explain why a carbon atom should never
combine with three instead of the usual two oxygen atoms?"
"Perhaps the carbon and oxygen atoms have such shapes that
the combination of three is impossible for spatial reasons alone."
''If you assume that, and it seems a plausible enough idea, then
you are back with much the same things as the hooks and eyes of
your textbook. Perhaps the artist wanted to express just that, for
he, too, had no idea what atoms really look like. He simply drew
hooks and eyes in order to drive home the point that there are
forms which lend themselves to the union of two but never of
three oxygen atoms with one of carbon."
"Very well, the hooks and eyes have no real meaning. But you
claim that the natural laws responsible for the existence of atoms
also endow them with just the form that will ensure the right
kind of combination. Unfortunately, neither of us is familiar
with that form, nor, for that matter, was the illustrator of the
textbook. The only thing we can say is that it is thanks to this
form that one carbon atom combines with two rather than three
oxygen atoms. The chemists, as the book tells us, have invented
the concept of 'valence' for this very purpose. But it remains to
be seen whether 'valence' is justa word ora truly useful concept."
"It is probably more than just a word; for in the case of the
carbon atom the four valence bonds it is said to have-pairs of
which are assumed to join up with the two bonds of each oxygen
atom-must somehow be related to its tetrahedral form. There is
little doubt, therefore, that the valence concept is based on em-
pirical fact, much more so than we can grasp at the moment."
At this point, Robert joined our conversation; he had been
4 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

walking silently beside us, but had obviously been listening.

Robert had a thin but strong face, framed by dark hair, and at
first sight looked rather withdrawn. He rarely joined in the sort
of flighty conversations we were wont to have on our walks, but
at night, whenever readings were held in the tent, or at meal-
times when we liked to listen to poetry, we would invariably turn
to him, for none of us knew more about German poetry, or,
indeed, about the philosophers, than he did. Whenever he
recited a poem, he would do so without the least kind of pathos,
without any strain, and yet the message of the poet would filter
through to even the most sober among us. The quiet way in
which he formulated his thoughts, his great composure, forced
everyone to listen, and what he said struck us as eminently worth
listening to. He had obviously been dissatisfied with our con-
versation about atoras.
"You science worshipers," he said, "speak ever so glibly about
experience, and all of you believe that it leads straight to the
truth. But if you really think about it, if you really consider what
happens during an 'experience,' you will surely have to revise
your opinion. Whatever we say is based on thoughts; only our
thoughts are directly known to us. But thoughts are not things.
We cannot grasp things directly, we must first transform them
into ideas, and then shape these into concepts. What reaches us
from the outside is a fairly incoherent mixture of odd sense
impressions, and these are by no means directly related to the
forras or qualities we perceive a posteriori. If, for instance, we
look at a square drawn on a piece of paper, neither our retina
nor the nerve cells in our brain register anything like a square.
To arrive at that, we must first arrange our sense impressions by
an unconscious process that helps to transform them into a co-
herent, 'meaningful' picture. Only through this transformation,
through this fitting together of individual impressions into a
'comprehensible' whole, can we claim to have perceived any-
thing. Hence we ought to inquire more closely into the origin of
the pictures on which our ideas are based, determine how they
can be grasped by concepts, and how they are related to things.
Only then can we make authoritative judgments about the
meaning of experience. For ideas are obviously prior to experi-
ence; indeed, they are the prerequisite of all experiencel"
 FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE ATOMIC CONCEPT 5
"But surely the very ideas you are so anxious to distinguish
from the objects of perception must spring from experience in
their turn? Perhaps not as directly as one might naively believe,
but indirectly, for instance by means of frequent repetitions of
similar groups of sense impressions or by linking the evidence of
the different senses?"
"That seems far from certain, and not even particularly con-
vincing. I have recently been reading Malebranche, and I was
struck by a reference to this very problem. Malebranche examines
three possible ways in which ideas can originate. One you have
just mentioned yourself: as they impinge on our senses, objects
produce concepts directly in our mind. Now this is a possibility
Malebranche rejects, on the grounds that sense impressions differ
qualitatively both from things and also from ideas. The second
possibility is that the human mind has ideas from the outset, or
at least has the power to forra these ideas by itself. In that case,
sense impressions merely remind us of ideas already present or
else impel the mind to forra them. There is a third possibility-
and this is the one that Malebranche plumps for: that the human
mind participates in divine reason. It is linked to God, and it is
from God that it derives its conceptual power, the images or
ideas with which it can arrange the wealth of sense impressions
and articulate them conceptually.''
"You philosophers are always quick to introduce theology,"
Kurt objected. "As soon as things get difficult, you produce the
great unknown to get you out of your rut. I, for one, refuse to be
put off in this way. Since you yourself have posed the question,
just tell me how precisely the human mind gets hold of ideas, in
this world, not in the next. For the mind and ideas both exist in
this world, do they not? If you refuse to admit that ideas origi-
nate in experience, then it is up to you to explain how else they
come to be part of the human mind. Are you really suggesting
that ideas, or at least the ability to forra ideas-through which
even a child experiences the world-are inborn? If you do, you
must believe that our ideas spring from the experiences of earlier
generations. Well, as far as I am concerned, it matters little
whether present experiences or those of past generations are
responsible.''
"No," Robert replied, "that was not at ali what I meant. On
6 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

the one hand, it is extremely doubtful whether learning, which is

the result of experience, can be handed down by hereditary
processes. On the other hand, Malebranche's view can be ex-
pressed without theological overtones, and so be brought into
closer line with modern science. I shall try to do so. Malebranche
might easily have said that the same tendencies that provide for
visible order in the world, for the existence of chemical elements
and their properties, for the formation of crystals, for the crea-
tion of life and everything else, may also have been at work in
the creation of man's mind. It is these tendencies which cause
ideas to correspond to things and which ensure the articulation
of concepts. They are responsible for all those real structures that
only become split into an objective factor-the thing-and a
subjective factor-the idea-when we contemplate them from
our human standpoint, when we fix them in our thoughts.
Malebranche's thesis has this in common with your conviction
that all ideas are based on experience: it grants that the ability
to form ideas may well have originated in the course of evolu-
tion, in the wake of contacts between living organisms and the
externa! world. However, Malebranche went on to stress that
these links cannot be explained away by a chain of causally
determined, individual processes. In other words, he argues that
here-as in the genesis of crystals or living creatures-we come
up against higher morphological structures that elude all at-
tempts to contain them in the conceptual couple: cause and
effect. The question whether experience is antecedent to ideas or
vice versa is probably no more relevant than the old question
about the hen and the egg.
"For the rest, I have no wish to interfere in your conversation.
I only wanted to warn you against talking too glibly about
experience when dealing with atoms, for it might well turn out
that your atoms-which, after all, elude direct observation-are
not just things but parts of more fundamental structures which
cannot be meaningfully divided into idea and object. I agree, of
course, that the hooks and eyes in your textbook must not be
taken too literally, or for that matter any of those pictures of
atoms that abound in popular writings. Such pictures, which
claim to facilitate our understanding, only serve to obscure the
real problem. But I think that when you speak about 'atomic
 FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE ATOMIC CONCEPT 7
forms,' as you did just now, you have to be extremely careful.
Only if you give the word 'form' a very wide connotation, use it
in more than a purely spatial sense, only if you employ it as
loosely as, for instance, I myself have just spoken of 'structure,'
can I follow you at least part of the way."
I was suddenly reminded of a fascinating book I had read with
keen interest a year earlier, though parts of it had completely
eluded me. That book was Plato's Timaeus. It, too, contains a
philosophical discussion of the smallest particles of matter. Rob-
ert's words had just given me my first, vague inkling that it was
indeed possible to come to grips with these strange mental con-
structs. Not that these constructs, which I had previously found
quite absurd, had suddenly become plausible-it was just that I
had glimpsed a path that might lead to them.
To explain why I was so strongly reminded of the Timaeus at
just that moment, I must briefly recall the circumstances under
which I had read the book. In the spring of 1919, Munich was in
a state of utter confusion. On the streets people were shooting at
one another, and no one could tell precisely who the contestants
were. Political power fluctuated between persons and institutions
few of us could have named. Pillage and robbery (I was burgled
myself) caused the term "Soviet Republic" to become a synonym
of lawlessness, and when, at long last, a new Bavarian govern-
ment was formed outside Munich, and sent its troops into the
city, we were all of us hoping for a speedy return to more orderly
conditions. The father of the hoy whom I had been coaching
took command of a company of volunteers, anxious to play their
part in the recapture of the city. He asked his son's friends, all of
whom were familiar with the locality, to act as guides to the
advancing troops. And so we were assigned to Cavalry Rifle
Command No. 11, with headquarters in the Theological Train-
ing College opposite the university. Here I did my military
service, or rather here all of us led a fairly wild and adventurous
life. There were no lessons, as so often before, and many of us
were anxious to use this freedom to take a fresh look at the
world. Most of the boys with whom I later went hiking around
Lake Starnberg were somehow or other engaged in the fighting.
Our adventures were over after a few weeks; then the shooting
died down and military service became increasingly monotonous.
8 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

Quite often it happened that, after spending the whole night on

guard in the telephone exchange, I was free for a day, and in
order to catch up with my neglected school work I would retire
to the roof of the Training College with a Greek school edition
of Plato's Dialogues. There, lying in the wide gutter, and
warmed by the rays of the early morning sun, I could pursue my
studies in peace, and from time to time watch the quickening life
in the Ludwigstrasse below.
One such morning, when the light of the sun was already
flooding across the university buildings and the fountain, I carne
to the Timaeus, or rather to those passages in which Plato dis-
cusses the smallest particles of matter. Perhaps that section cap-
tured my imagination only because it was so hard to translate
into German, or because it dealt with mathematical matters,
which had always interested me. In any case, I worked my way
laboriously through the text, even though what I read seemed
completely nonsensical. The smallest particles of matter were
said to be right-angled triangles which, after combining in pairs
into isosceles triangles or squares, joined together into the regu-
lar bodies of solid geometry: cubes, tetrahedrons, octahedrons
and icosahedrons. These four bodies were said to be the building
blocks of the four elements, earth, fire, air and water. I could not
make out whether these regular bodies were associated with the
elements merely as symbols-for instance, the cube with the ele-
ment earth so as to represent the solidity and balance of that
element-or whether the smallest parts of the earth were actually
supposed to be cube-shaped. In either case, the whole thing
seemed to be wild speculation, pardonable perhaps on the
ground that the Greeks lacked the necessary empirical knowl-
edge. Nevertheless, it saddened me to find a philosopher of
Plato's critica! acumen succumbing to such fancies. I looked for a
principie that might help me to find sorne justification for Plato's
speculation, but, try though I might, I could discover none. Even
so, I was enthralled by the idea that the smallest particles of
rnatter rnust reduce to sorne mathematical form. After all, any
attempt to unravel the dense skein of natural phenomena is
dependent upon the discovery of mathematical forms, but why
Plato should have chosen the regular bodies of solid geometry, of
all things, rernained a complete rnystery to me. They seemed to
 FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE ATOMIC CONCEPT 9
have no explanatory value at all. If I nevertheless continued
reading the Dialogues, it was simply to brush up on my Greek.
Yet I remained perturbed. The most important result of it all,
perhaps, was the conviction that, in order to interpret the
material world we need to know something about its smallest
parts. Moreover, I knew from textbooks and popular writing that
modern science was also inquiring into atoms. Perhaps, later in
my studies, I myself might enter this strange world. But the time
was not yet.
Meanwhile, my uneasiness continued, though perhaps it was
only part of the general disquiet that had seized all German
youth. I kept wondering why a great philosopher like Plato
should have thought he could recognize order in natural phe-
nomena when we ourselves could not. What precisely was the
meaning of that term? Are order and our understanding of it
purely time-bound? We had all of us grown up in a world that
had seemed well ordered enough, and our parents had taught us
the bourgeois virtues underpinning that order. The Greeks and
the Romans had known that, at times, it may become necessary
to sacrifice one's life for the sake of maintaining an orderly way
of life, and the death of many of our own friends and relatives
had shown us that such was the way of the world even now. That
was only to be expected. But there were many who now claimed
that the war had been a crime, a crime, moreover, committed by
the very men who had been responsible for maintaining the old
European order, who had tried to defend it come what may. The
old structure of Europe had been shattered by our defeat. That,
too, was nothing special. Wherever there are wars there must also
be losers. But did that mean that all the old structures had to be
discarded? Was it not far better to build a new and more solid
order on the old? Or were those right who, in the streets of
M unich, had sacrificed their lives to prevent a restoration of the
old ways and who proclaimed a new order, not just for a single
nation, but for all mankind, even though the majority of man-
kind might have no wish to build such an order? Our heads
were full of such questions, and our elders were unable to pro-
vide the answers.
After my reading of the Timaeus and before our walk on the
hills around Lake Starnberg I had another experience which was
10 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

to affect my later thoughts profoundly, and which I shall report

before returning to our discussion of the atomic problem. A few
months after they had captured Munich, the government troops
pulled out again, and we returned to school. One afternoon, I
was buttonholed by an unknown boy on Leopoldstrasse: "Have
you heard about the Youth Assembly in Prunn Castle next
week?" he asked. "All of us intend to be there, and we want you
to come as well. The more the merrier. We want to find out for
ourselves what sort of future we should build!" His voice had the
kind of edge I had not heard before. And so I decided to go to
Prunn Castle, and asked Kurt to join me.
It took the train, which was running somewhat sporadically,
severa! hours to bring us to the Lower Altmühl Valley. In early
geological times it must have been the floor of the Danube; here
the river Altmühl has twisted and bored its way through the
Jura Mountains, and the picturesque valley is crowned with old
castles reminiscent of the Rhenish scene. We had to cover the last
few miles to the castle on foot, and could see large crowds making
for the heights from all sides.
Prunn Castle stands sheer on a rock at the edge of the valley.
The courtyard, with its central well, was teeming with people.
Most of them were schoolboys, but there was a sprinkling of older
boys who had suffered all the horrors of war at the front and had
returned to a completely changed world. There were many
speeches that day, full of the kind of pathos that would ring
quite false today. We argued passionately about whether the fate
of our own nation mattered more than that of all mankind;
whether the death of those who had fallen for their country had
become meaningless through defeat; whether youth had the right
to fashion life according to its own values; whether inner truth
was more important than all the old forms that had been shaping
human life for centuries.
I myself was m uch too unsure to join in the debates, bu t I
listened and once again thought a great deal about the meaning
of "order." From the remarks of the speakers it was clear that
different orders, however sincerely upheld, could clash, and that
the result was the very opposite of order. This, I felt, was only
possible because all these types of order were partial, mere frag-
ments that had split off from the central order; they might not
 FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE ATOMIC CONCEPT 11

have lost their creative force, but they were no longer directed
toward a unifying center. lts absence was brought home to me
with increasingly painful intensity the longer I listened. I was
suffering almost physically, but I was quite unable to discover a
way toward the center through the thicket of conflicting opin-
ions. Thus the hours ticked by, while more speeches were de-
livered and more disputes were born. The shadows in the
courtyard grew longer, and finally the hot day gave way to slate-
gray dusk anda moonlit night. The talk was still going on when,
quite suddenly, a young violinist appeared on a balcony above
the courtyard. There was a hush as, high above us, he struck up
the first great D minor chords of Bach's Chaconne. All at once,
and with utter certainty, I had found my link with the center.
The moonlit Altmühl Valley below would have been reason
enough for a romantic transfiguration; but that was not it. The
clear phrases of the Chaconne touched me like a cool wind,
breaking through the mist and revealing the towering structures
beyond. There had always been a path to the central order in the
language of music, in philosophy and in religion, today no less
than in Plato's day and in Bach's. That I now knew from my
own expenence.
We spent the rest of the night around campfires and in our
tents on a meadow above the castle, giving full rein to our
romantic and poetic sentiments. The young musician, himself a
student, sat near our group and played minuets by Mozart and
Beethoven interspersed with old folk songs; I tried to accompany
him on my guitar. Otherwise, he proved a very gay young fellow
and was reluctant to discuss his solemn rendering of the Cha-
conne. When pressed, he carne back at us with "Do you know the
key of the trumpets of Jericho?" "No." "D minor [d-moll] also,
of course." "Why?" "Because they d-moll-ished the wallsl" He
escaped our wrath only by taking to his heels.
That night had slipped into the twilight of memories by the
time I went hiking across the hills round Lake Starnberg, and
talked about atoms. Robert's references to Malebranche had
convinced me that our experience of atoms can only be indirect:
atoms are not things. This was probably what Plato had tried to
say in his Timaeus, and, seen in this light, his speculations about
regular bodies were beginning to make more sense to me. When
12 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

modern scientists speak about the form of atoms, they must be

using the word "form" in its widest sense, i.e., they must be
referring to the atom's structure in time and space, to the
symmetrical properties of its forces, to its ability to form com-
pounds with other atoms. In ali probability, such structures will
forever elude our powers of graphic description, if only because
they are notan obvious part of the objective world of things. But
perhaps they are nonetheless open to mathematical treatment.
At once I wanted to learn more about the philosophical aspects
of the atomic problem, and to that end I mentioned Plato's
Timaeus to Robert. I asked him if he was in general agreement
with Plato's belief that ali material things consist of small units,
that there must be ultimate particles into which ali matter can
be divided. I gained the impression that he took a rather skepti-
cal view of the whole question.
He confirmed this when he said: "Your whole manner of
posing the problem, of going so far beyond the world of direct
experience, is quite foreign to me. I feel much closer to the world
of human beings, to lakes and forests, than Ido to atoms. I know
that we can ask what happens if we keep dividing and subdivid-
ing matter, just as we can ask whether the distant stars and their
planets are inhabited by living beings. But I myself can't say I
have much interest in such questions. Perhaps I don't even want
to know the answers. I believe we have far more im portant tasks
than that."
"I don't wish to argue with you about the relative importance
of our respective tasks," I told him. "I myself have always been
fascinated by science, and I know that many serious people are
anxious to learn more about nature and her laws. Who knows
but that their work may not prove of the utmost importance for
the whole of mankind? But that is not what matters to me at the
moment. What worries me is this: it looks very much as if-and
Kurt has been saying just that-modern developments in science
and technology have brought us very close to the point where we
can see individual atoms, or at least their effects, where we can
start to experiment with them. Admittedly, we ourselves still
know very little about the subject, siinply because our studies
have not taken us far enough. But, if my prognosis is correct,
what would you, as a disciple of Malebranche, say about it?"
"I should expect that atoms would, in any case, behave quite
 FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE ATOMIC CONCEPT 13
differently from the objects of everyday experience. I could
imagine that attempts to divide matter even further might lead
us to fluctuations and discontinuities from which it would be
quite possible to conclude that matter has a grainy structure. But
I also believe that the new structures will elude all our attempts
to construct tangible images, that they will prove to be abstract
expressions of natural laws rather than things."
"But what if we could see them?"
"We shall never be able to see atoms themselves, only their
effects."
"That's a poor excuse of an answer. For the same remark
applies to things in general. In the case of a cat, too, all you can
see is the reflection of light rays, i.e., the effects of the cat, and
not the cat itself. And when you stroke its fur, the situation is
much the same!"
"I'm afraid I can't agree with you. I can see a cat directly, for
when I look at it, I can-indeed, 1 must-transform my sense
impressions into a coherent idea. In the case of the cat we come
face to face with two aspects: an objective and a subjective one-
the cat as a thing and as a notion. But atoms are quite a different
matter. Here notion and thing can no longer be separated,
simply because the atom is neither the one nor the other."
Kurt joined in the discussion once again. "The two of you are
much too learned for me; you make free with philosophical
speculations, when, in fact, you should be consulting experience.
Perhaps our studies may one day introduce us to experiments
about or with atoms, and then we shall know what atoms really
are. We shall probably discover that they are just as real as all
other things which lend themselves to experiment. For if it is
true that ali material things consist of atoms, then it follows that
atoms must be just as real as material things."
"No," replied Robert, "I think your conclusion is highly
questionable. You might just as well say that, because all living
beings are made up of atoms, atoms are fully alive. Clearly, that
is nonsense. Only the combination of a great many atoms into
larger structures endows these structures with their characteristic
qualities or properties."
"And so you think that atoms don't actually exist, that they
are not real?"
"You exaggerate again. Perhaps what we are arguing about is
14 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

not so much our knowledge of atoms as the meaning of the words

'actually' or 'real.' You have mentioned the Timaeus and told us
that Plato identifies the smallest particles of matter with mathe-
matical forms, with regular bodies. Even if he was wrong in
fact-and Plato had no experience with atoms-he could have
been right in principie. Would you call such mathematical forms
'actual' or 'real'? If they express natural laws, that is the central
order inherent in material processes, then you must also call
them 'actual,' for they act, they produce tangible effects, but you
cannot call them 'real,' because they cannot be described as res,
as things. In short, we do not know what words we should use,
and this is bound to happen once we leave the realm of direct
experience, the realm in which our language was formed in pre-
historie times."
Kurt remained unconvinced. "I should like to leave even this
decision to experiment. I cannot believe that the human imagi-
nation can tell us anything about the smallest particles of matter
before crucial experiments have familiarized us with them. Only
careful investigations, conducted without any preconceptions,
can help us here. That is precisely why I am so skeptical about
philosophical generalizations on so difficult a subject. They
merely cement mental prejudices and hinder rather than foster
true understanding. I sincerely hope that scientists will come to
grips with atoms long before you philosophers have."
By now, the rest of the party had lost patience with us. "For
God's sake, can't you ever stop your bickering?" one of them
pleaded. "If you want to bone up for your examinations, please
do so at home. How about a song?" We began to sing, and the
bright sound of young voices, the colors of the blossoming
meadows, were suddenly much more real than ali our thoughts
about atoros, and dispelled the fancies to which we had sur-
rendered.
 2
The Decision
to Study Physics (1920)

From school I did not go straight on to the university; there was

a sharp break in my life. After my matriculation, I went on a
walking tour through Franconia with the same grou p of friends,
and then I fell seriously ill and had to stay in bed for many
weeks. During my long recuperation, too, I was locked away with
my books. In these critica! months I carne across a work that I
found extremely fascinating, though I was unable to understand
it fully. The author was the famous mathematician, Hermann
Weyl, and the book was entitled Space, Time and Matter. It was
meant to provide a mathematical account of Einstein's relativity
theory. The difficult mathematical arguments and the abstract
thought underlying that theory both excited and disturbed me,
and, in addition, confirmed me in my earlier decision to study
mathematics at the University of Munich.
During the first days of my studies, however, a strange and,
to me, most surprising event took place, which I should like to
report in brief. My father, who taught Middle and Modern Greek
at the University of Munich, had arranged an interview with
Ferdinand von Lindemann, the professor of mathematics, famous
for his solution of the ancient problem of squaring the circle. I
intended to ask permission to attend his seminars, for which I
imagined my spare-time studies of mathematics had fully prepared
me; but when I called on the great man, in his gloomy first-floor
oflice furnished in rather formal, old-fashioned style, I felt an
almost immediate sense of oppression. Before I could utter a
16 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

word of greeting to the professor, who rose from his chair very
slowly, I noticed a little black dog cowering on the desk, and was
forcefully reminded of the poodle in Faust's study. The little
beast looked at me with undisguised animosity; I was an unwel-
come intruder about to disturb his master's peace of mind. I was
so taken aback that I began to stammer, and even as I spoke it
dawned on me that my request was excessively immodest. Linde-
mann, a tired-looking old gentleman with a white beard, ob-
viously felt the same way about it, and his slight irritation may
have been the reason why the small dog now set up a horrible
barking. His master tried to calm him down, but the little beast
only grew more hysterical, so that we could barely hear each
other speak. Lindemann asked me what books I had recently
been reading, and I mentioned Weyl's Space, Time and Matter.
As the tiny monster kept up his yapping, Lindemann closed the
conversation with "In that case you are completely lost to mathe-
matics." And that was that.
Clearly mathematics was not for me. A somewhat wearing
consultation with my father ended with the advice that I ought
to try my hand at theoretical physics. Accordingly, he made an
appointment with his old friend Arnold Sommerfeld, then head
of the Faculty of Theoretical Physics at the University of Munich
and generally considered one of the most brilliant teachers there.
Sommerfeld received me in a bright study with windows over-
looking a courtyard where I could see a crowd of students on
benches beneath a large acacia. The small squat man with his
martial dark mustache looked rather austere to me. But his very
first sentences revealed his benevolence, his genuine concern for
young people, and in particular for the hoy who had come to ask
his guidance and advice. Once again the conversation turned to
the mathematical studies I had pursued as a hobby while still at
school, and to Weyl's Space, Time and Matter. Sommerfeld's
reaction was completely different from Lindemann's.
"You are much too demanding," he said. "You can't possibly
start with the most difficult part and hope that the rest will
automatically fall into your lap. I gather that you are fascinated
by relativity theory and atomic problems. But remember that
this is not the only field in which modern physics challenges basic
philosophical attitudes, in which extremely exciting ideas are
 THE DECISION TO STUDY PHYSICS

being forged. To reach them is much more diflicult than you

seem to imagine. You must start with a modest but painstaking
study of traditional physics. And if you want to study science at
all, you must first make up your mind whether you want to
concentrate on experimental or theoretical research. From what
you have told me, I take it that you are much keener on theory.
But didn't you do experiments and dabble with instruments at
school?"
I said that I used to like building small engines, motors and
induction coils. But, ali in ali, I had never been really at home in
the world of instruments, and the care needed in making rela-
tively unimportant measurements had struck me as being sheer
drudgery.
"Still, even if you study theory, you will have to pay particular
attention to what may appear trivial little tasks. Even those who
deal with the larger issues, issues with profound philosophical
implications-for instance, with Einstein's relativity theory or
with Planck's quantum theory-have to tackle a great many
petty problems. Only by solving these can they hope to get
an over-all picture of the new realms they have opened up."
"Even so, I am much more interested in the underlying philo-
sophical ideas than in the rest," I said rather bashfully.
But Sommerfeld would have none of this. "You must remem-
ber what Schiller said about Kant and his interpreters: 'When
kings go a-building, wagoners have more work.' At first, none of
usare anything but wagoners. But you will see that you, too, will
get pleasure from performing minor tasks carefully and con-
scientiously and, let's hope, from achieving decent results."
Sommerfeld then gave me a few more hints about my pre-
liminary studies, and said that he might well come up with a
little problem connected with recent developments in atomic
theory on which I could try my mettle. And it was decided that I
would join his classes for the next few years.
This, my first conversation with a scholar who really knew his
way about in modern physics, who had personally made impor-
tant discoveries in a field impinging on both relativity and
quantum theory, had a lasting effect upon me. Though his call
for care in small details struck me as eminently reasonable-I
had heard it often enough from my own father-1 felt dejected at
18 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

the thought that I was still such a long way from the field that
really interested me. No wonder that this interview became the
subject of many discussions with my friends. I remember one of
these particularly well: it bore on modern physics and the cul-
ture of our time.
That autumn, I saw a great deal of the hoy who had played
Bach's Chaconne so magnificently in Prunn Castle. We would
meet in the house of our mutual friend, Walter, himself a fine
cellist, and practice for a private recital of Schubert's B Major
Trio. Walter's father had died at an early age, and his mother
had been left to care for her two sons in a large and very
elegantly furnished house in Elisabeth Strasse, just a few min-
utes' walk from my parents' house in Hohenzollern Strasse. The
magnificent Bechstein grand in the living room was an added
reason for our frequent visits. After we had finished playing, we
would often talk deep into the night, and it was on one such
occasion that the conversation carne round to my proposed
studies. Walter's mother wondered why I had not decided to
make music my career.
"From the way you play and speak about music, I get the
impression that you are much more at home with art than with
science and technology, that you prefer the muses to scientific
instruments, formulae and machinery. If I am right, why ever
have you chosen natural science? After all, the future of the
world will be decided by you young people. lf youth chooses
beauty, then there will be more beauty; if it chooses utility, then
there will be more useful things. The decision of each individual
is of importance not only to himself but to the whole of man-
kind."
"I can't really believe that we are faced with that sort of
choice," I said rather defensively. "Quite apart from the fact that
I probably wouldn't make a very good musician, the question
remains in which field one can contribute most. Now I have the
clear impression that in recent years music has lost much of its
earlier force. In the seventeenth century music was still deeply
steeped in the religious way of life; in the eighteenth century
carne the conquest of the world of individual emotions; in the
nineteenth century romantic music plumbed the innermost
depths of the human soul. But in the last few years music seems
 THE DECISION TO STUDY PHYSICS

to have quite deliberately entered a strange, disturbed and

rather feeble stage of experimentation, in which theoretical
notions take precedence over the desire for progress along estab-
lished paths. In science, and particularly in physics, things are
quite different. Here the pursuit of clear objectives along fixed
paths-the same paths that led to the understanding of certain
electromagnetic phenomena twenty years ago-has quite auto-
matically thrown up problems that challenge the whole philo-
sophical basis of science, the structure of space and time, and
even the validity of causal laws. Here we are on terra incognita,
and it will probably take severa! generations of physicists to dis-
cover the final answers. And I frankly confess that I am highly
tempted to play sorne part in all this."
My friend Rolf, the violinist, demurred. "As far as I can see,
your remarks about modern physics apply equally well to mod-
ern music. Here, too, the path seems to be clearly mapped. The
old tonal barriers are colla psing and we find ourselves on promis-
ing virgin soil, with almost complete freedom to choose what
sounds and rhythms we like. Hence the musician has every
chance of discovering as many riches as the scientist."
Walter now raised severa! objections of his own. "I don't really
know whether 'freedom of expression' and 'promising virgin soil'
are necessarily the same thing. At first sight it admittedly looks as
if greater freedom must necessarily mean enrichment, wider
possibilities; but this I know to be untrue in art, with which I am
more familiar than with science. I would think that progress in
art takes place in the following way: First a slow historical pro-
cess transforms the life of men in spite of themselves, and thereby
throws up fresh ideas. A few talented artists then try to give these
ideas a visible or audible form by wresting new possibilities of
expression from the material with which they work-from colors
or musical instruments. This interplay or, if you like, this
struggle between the expressive content and the limitations of the
expressive medium is, I think, a sine qua non of the emergence of
real art. If the limitations of the expressive medium were taken
away-if in music, for instance, we could produce any sounds we
liked-then the struggle would be over, and the artist's effort
would reach into a void. For that reason I am skeptical about too
much freedom.
20 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

"In science," Walter continued, "a continuous flow of new

experiments is made possible by new techniques; there are new
experiences and as a result new contents may be produced. Here
the means of expression are the concepts by which the new ideas
are grasped and made explicit. For instance, I have read that
Einstein's relativity theory, which interests you so much, was
born from the failure of certain experiments designed to demon-
strate the motion of the earth through space by means of the
interference of light rays. When this demonstration misfired, it
became clear that the new results, or, what amounts to the same
thing, the new ideas, called for an extension of the means of
expression, i.e., of the conceptual system proper to physics. Quite
likely, no one anticipated that this would demand radical
changes in such fundamental concepts as space and time. It was
Einstein's great achievement to appreciate before anyone else
that the ideas of space and time were not only susceptible to
change but, in fact, had to be changed.
"What you have said about recent developments in physics
could reasonably be compared with developments in music in the
middle of the eighteenth century. At that time, a gradual his-
torical process had led to a growing awareness of the emotional
world of the individual-as ali of us know from Rousseau and
later from Goethe's Werther-and it was then that the great
classicists-Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert-succeeded
in extending the means of expression and so discovered the
musical language needed for depicting this emotional world. In
modern music, on the other hand, the new contents appear to be
highly obscure and implausible, and the plethora of possible
expressions fills me with deep forebodings. The path of modern
music seems to be determined by a purely negative postulate: the
old tonality has to be discarded because we believe that its
powers have been exhausted, and not because there are new and
more force ful ideas which it is incapable of expressing. M usicians
are entirely in the dark about the next step; at best they grope
their way forward. In modern science the questions are clearly
posed, and the task is to find the right answers. In modern art,
however, even the questions are uncertain. But perhaps you had
best tell us a bit more about the new fields you intend to explore
in the world of physics."
 THE DECISION TO STUDY PHYSICS 21

I tried to convey what little bits of knowledge I had gleaned

during my illness, mainly from popular books on atomic physics.
"In relativity theory," I told Walter, "the experiments you
have mentioned, together with other experiments, caused Ein-
stein to discard the prevailing concept of simultaneity. That in
itself was exciting enough. Every one of us thinks that he knows
precisely what the word 'simultaneous' means, even if it refers
to events that take place at great distances. But we are mis-
taken. For if we ask how one determines whether two such
events are, in fact, simultaneous and then evaluates the various
means of verification by their results, nature herself informs us
that the answers are not at ali clear-cut but depend on the ob-
server's state of motion. Space and time are therefore not inde-
pendent of each other, as we previously believed. Einstein was
able to express the 'new' structure of space and time by means of
a simple and coherent mathematical formula. While I was ill, I
tried to probe into this mathematical world, which, as I have
since learned from Sommerfeld, has already been opened up
fairly extensively and has therefore ceased to be unexplored
territory.
"The most interesting problems now lie in a different field, in
atomic physics. Here we come face to face with the fundamental
question why the material world manifests ever-recurring forms
and qualities-why, for example, water with all its characteristic
properties is invariably reproduced during the melting of ice, the
condensation of steam or the combustion of hydrogen. This has
been taken for granted in physics, but has never been fully ex-
plained. Let us suppose that material bodies-in our case, water
-are composed of atoms. Chemistry has long made successful use
of this idea. Now, the Newtonian laws we were taught at school
cannot tell us why the motions of the particles involved should
be as stable as they, in fact, are. Only quite different natural laws
can help us to explain why atoms should invariably rearrange
themselves and move in such a way as to produce the same sub-
stances with the same stable properties. We first caught a glimpse
of these laws twenty years ago, in Planck's quantum theory. Since
then, the Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, has combined Planck's
theory with Lord Rutherford's atomic model. In so doing, he was
the first to throw light on the curious stability of atoms which I
22 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

have just mentioned. But Sommerfeld believes that in this sphere

we are still a long way from a clear understanding of the ways of
nature. Here we have a vast unexplored field, in which new
relationships may be discovered for decades to come. By the ap-
propriate reformulation of natural laws and with correct new
concepts we might, for instance, be able to reduce the whole of
chemistry to atomic physics. In short, I firmly believe that in
atomic physics we are on the track of far more important rela-
tions, far more important structures, than in music. But I freely
admit that 150 years ago things were the other way round."
"In other words," Walter asked, ''you believe that anyone con-
cerned with cultural progress must necessarily make use of the
historical possibilities of the age in which he lives? That, if
Mozart had been born in our day, he, too, would be writing
atonal and experimental music?"
"Yes, I suspect just that. lf Einstein had lived in the twelfth
century, he would not have been able to make important scien-
tific discoveries.''
"Perhaps it is wrong to keep bringing up such great men as
Mozart and Einstein," Walter's mother said. "Few individuals
get the chance to play such decisive roles. Most of us must con-
tent ourselves with working quietly in a small circle, and ought
to ask simply whether playing Schubert's B Major Trio is not
more satisfactory than building instruments or writing mathe-
matical formulae."
I agreed that I myself had quite a few qualms and mentioned
Sommerfeld's quotation from Schiller: "When kings go a-build-
ing, wagoners have more work."
"We all feel the same way about it," Rolf declared. "Those of
us who want to become musicians have to take infinite pains to
master their instruments, and even then can only hope to play
pieces that hundreds of better musicians have played much more
proficiently. And you yourself will have to spend long hours with
instruments that others have built much more competently, or
retrace the mathematical thoughts of the masters. True, when all
this has been done, the musical wagoners among us are left with
no small sense of achievement: constant intercourse with glorious
music and the occasional delight of a particularly successful
interpretation. Likewise, you scientists will occasionally manage
 THE DECISION TO STUDY PHYSICS

to interpret a relationship just that little bit better than anyone

before you, or determine a particular process more accurately
than your predecessors. But none of us ought to count on the fact
that he will be doing trail-blazing work, that he will make deci-
sive discoveries. Not even when he works in a field where a great
deal of territory has still to be opened up."
Walter's mother, who had been listening attentively, now said
something, more to herself than to us, as if she were trying to
formula te her though ts as she spoke:
"The parable of the kings and the wagoners may have quite a
different import. Of course, superficially it looks as if the glory is
entirely the kings', as if the wagoners' work were purely sub-
sidiary and unimportant. But perhaps the very opposite is true.
Perhaps the kings' glory rests on the work of the wagoners, on the
fact that the wagoners have put in many years of laborious
effort, reaping joy and success. Perhaps men like Bach or Mozart
are kings of music only because, for two long centuries, they have
offered so many lesser musicians the chance of reinterpreting
their thoughts with love and conscientious attention to detail.
And even the audience participates in this careful work as it
hears the message of the great musicians.
"If you look at historical developments-in the arts no less
than in the sciences-you will find that every discipline has long
periods of quiescence or of slow growth. Even during these
periods, however, the important thing is careful work, attention
to detail. Everything that is not done with utter devotion falls
into oblivion and, in fact, does not deserve to be remembered.
And then, quite suddenly, this slow process, in which general
historical developments introduce changes in the contents of a
particular discipline, opens up new possibilities, quite unex-
pected contents. Talented men feel an almost magical attraction
for the process of growth they can sense at work here, and so it
happens that, within a few decades, a relatively small region of
the world will produce major works of art or scientific discoveries
of the greatest importance. In the late eighteenth century, for
instance, classical music poured forth from Vienna; in the fif-
teenth and sixteenth centuries painting had its heyday in the
Netherlands. True, great men are needed to express the new
spiritual contents, to create the forms in which further develop-
24 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

ments can be molded, but they do not actually produce these new
contents.
"Of course, it is quite possible that we are on the threshold of
an exceptionally fruitful scientific epoch, in which case it would
be wrong to dissuade any young man from participating in it. It
seems unlikely that important developments will take place in
more than one branch of art or science at one time; we ought to
be grateful enough if it happens in any one area, if we can share
in its glory either as bystanders oras active participants. It would
be foolish to expect more. That is precisely why I find popular
attacks on modern art-be it painting or music-so unjust. Once
music and the plastic arts had solved the great problems posed to
them in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there just had
to be a more restful period, in which much of the old could be
preserved and new things were tested by trial and error. To
compare modern compositions with the finest achievements of
the great epoch of classical music seems utterly unfair. Perhaps
we ought to finish the evening with the slow movement of
Schubert's B Major Trio. Let's see how well you can play it."
We did as we were asked, and from the way in which Rolf
played the somewhat melancholic C major figures in the second
part of the movement, I could sense how sad he was at the
thought that the great epoch of European music might be gone
forever.
A few days later, when I walked into the hall where Sommer-
feld usually gave his lectures, I spotted a dark-haired student
with a somewhat secretive face in the third row. Sommerfeld had
introduced us during my first visit and had then told me that he
considered this hoy to be one of his most talented students, one
from whom I could learn a great <leal. His name was Wolfgang
Pauli, and for the rest of his life he was to be a good friend,
though often a very severe critic. I sat down beside him and
asked him if, after the lecture, I might consult him about my
preparatory studies. Sommerfeld now entered the hall, and as
soon as he started to address us Wolfgang whispered in my ear:
"Doesn't he look the typical old Hussar officer?" After the lec-
ture, we went back to the Institute of Theoretical Physics, where
I asked Wolfgang two questions. I wanted to know how much
experimental work had to be done by someone interested chiefly
 THE DECISION TO STUDY PHYSICS 25
in theory, and what he thought of the respective importance of
relativity and atomic theory.
"I know,'' Wolfgang told me in reply to my first question,
"that Sommerfeld lays great stress on experimental studies, but I
myself am not cut out for them; I hate the whole business of
handling instruments. I quite agree that physics is based on
experimental results, but once these results have been obtained,
physics, at least modern physics, becomes much too difficult a
subject for most experimental physicists. This is probably so
because the sophisticated instruments of modern physics take us
into realms of nature that cannot be adequately described with
everyday concepts. We are forced to employ an abstract kind of
mathematical language and one that presupposes a considerable
amount of training in modern mathematics. It is a sad fact but
true that we all have to specialize. I find abstract mathematical
language quite easy, and hope to put it to good use in my work.
Needless to say, I realize that sorne knowledge of the experimental
side is absolutely essential. The pure mathematician, however
good, understands nothing at all about physics."
I then repeated my conversation with old Lindemann, and
told Wolfgang about his black lap dog and his reaction to my
reading Weyl's Space, Time and Matter. My report obviously
caused Wolfgang the greatest amusement.
"That's just what I would have expected," he said. "Weyl
really does know a lot about relativity theory, and for Linde-
mann such knowledge is enough to disqualify anyone from
bearing the title of serious mathematician."
As to the respective importance of relativity and atomic
theory, Wolfgang had this to say: "The so-called special theory of
relativity is now a closed chapter; you simply have to learn it and
use it like any other theory in physics. Nor is it of particular
interest to anyone anxious to make new discoveries. However, the
general theory of relativity, or, what comes to much the same
thing, Einstein's theory of gravitation, is still wide-open. But it
is rather unsatisfying in that, for each experiment, it will give
you a hundred pages of theory with the most complicated
mathematical derivations. No one can really say whether the
whole thing is correct. Nevertheless it opens up new possibilities
of thought, and for that reason must be taken seriously. I have
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

recently written a fairly lengthy article on the general theory of

relativity; perhaps that is one of the reasons why I find atomic
theory so m uch more interesting.
"In atomic physics we still have a wealth of uninterpreted
experimental results: nature's evidence in one place seems to
contradict that in another, and so far it has not been possible to
draw an even halfway coherent picture of the relationship in-
volved. True, N iels Bohr has succeeded in associating the
strange stability of atoms with Planck's quantum hypothesis-
which has not yet been properly interpreted either-and more
recently Bohr is said to have given a qualitative explanation of
the periodic system of the elements and of their chemical prop-
erties. But I can't for the life of me see how he could have done
so, seeing that he, too, is unable to get rid of the contradictions I
have mentioned. In other words, everyone is still groping about
in a thick mist, and it will probably be quite a few years before it
lifts. Sommerfeld hopes that experiments will help us to find
sorne of the new laws. He believes in numerical links, almost in a
kind of number mysticism of the kind the Pythagoreans applied
to the harmony of vibrating strings. That's why many of us have
called this side of his science 'atomysticism,' though, as far as I
can tell, no one has been able to suggest anything better. Perhaps
it's much easier to find one's way if one isn't too familiar with the
magnificent unity of classical physics. You have a decided advan-
tage there," Wolfgang added with a malicious grin, "but then
lack of knowledge is no guarantee of success."
Despite this little broadside, Wolfgang had confirmed every-
thing I myself had been thinking before I decided to make
physics my career. I was very glad not to have tried my hand at
pure mathematics, and I looked back on Lindemann's little dog
as "part of that power which still produceth good, whilst ever
scheming ill."
 3
"U nderstanding"
•
lil Modern Physics (1920-922)

My first two years at Munich University were spent in two quite

different worlds: among my friends of the Youth Movement and
in the abstract realm of theoretical physics. Both worlds were so
filled with intense activity that I was often in a state of great
agitation, the more so as I found it rather diffi.cult to shuttle
between the two. In Sommerfeld's seminar, talks with Wolfgang
Pauli constituted the most important part of my studies. But
Wolfgang's way of life was almost diametrically opposed to my
own. While I loved the daylight and spent as much of my free
time as I could mountain-walking, swimming or cooking simple
meals on the shore of one of the Bavarian lakes, Wolfgang was a
typical night bird. He preferred the town, liked to spend his
evenings in sorne old bar or café, and would then work on his
physics through much of the night with great concentration and
success. Quite naturally, and to Sommerfeld's dismay, he would
rarely attend morning lectures; it was not until noon that he
generally turned up. This difference in our styles of living was
the subject of quite a bit of ribbing, but did not otherwise mar
our friendship-our common interest in physics saw to that.
When I think back on the summer of 1921, and try to compress
my many memories into a single picture, my mind's eye conjures
up a camp that stood on the edge of a forest. Below, still in the
gray light of dawn, lay the lake in which we had swum the day
before, and across it, in the distance, the broad crest of the
Benedictine Ridge. My comrades would still be asleep when I left
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

my tent and took the footpath for an hour's walk to the nearest
railway station. From there, the early-morning train would carry
me to Munich in time to attend Sommerfeld's g A.M. lecture. The
footpath led down to the lake through marshy ground, then on to
a moraine with a view over the Alpine chain, from the Benedic•
tine Ridge as far as the Zugspitze. On the blossoming meadows, I
could see the first mowing machines, and I was sorry that I was
no longer a farm worker on the Grossthalerhof in Miesbach.
Three years earlier, using a pair of oxen, I would have done my
best to cut the meadow so straight that no strip of grass, or, as the
farmer called it, no "pig," was left behind. And so, my thoughts
filled with a colorful medley of everyday impressions from my
farming days, with the beauty of the landscape, and with Som-
merfeld's coming lecture, I was convinced I was the happiest
mortal on earth.
An hour or two after the end of Sommerfeld's lecture, Wolf-
gang would appear in the seminar, and our conversation would
go something like this:
Wolfgang: "Good morning. If it isn't our prophet of nature!
You look for all the world as if you have been living by the
principies of St. Jean-Jacques. Wasn't it he who said, 'Back to
nature, up into the trees, you apes'?"
"The second part of the quotation is not from Rousseau," I
would explain, "and none of us goes in for climbing trees. In any
case, it isn't morning; it's twelve o'clock, if my watch is correct.
One day you simply must introduce me to one of your nightly
haunts so that I, too, can get a whiff of your physical inspiration."
"That wouldn't help you in the least. Still, you might perhaps
care to tell me what you have managed to find out about
Kramers' work, on which you're supposed to lecture our class."
And so our talk would change quickly from good-humored
insults to more pressing matters. When we talked about physics,
we were often joined by our friend, Otto Laporte, whose sober,
pragmatic approach made him an excellent mediator between
Wolfgang and myself. He and Sommerfeld were later to publish
important papers on the multiplet structure of atomic spectra.
lt was probably due to him that the three of us-Wolfgang,
Otto and 1-decided to go on a bicycle tour that took us from
Benediktbauern across the Kesselberg to Lake Walchen and
 "UNDERSTANDING" IN MODERN PHYSICS 29
on into the Loisach Valley. This was probably the only time
Wolfgang dared to enter my world-with the most beneficia!
results for myself: the talks we began during that tour and con-
tinued in Munich were to have a lasting effect.
Meanwhile we spent a few happy days on the road. Once we
had reached the saddle of the Kesselberg, laboring uphill with
our bicycles, we could ride effortlessly along a road boldly cut
into the mountain slope past the steep western shore of Lake
Walchen-at the time I had no idea how important this little
spot of earth was to become for me one day. We passed the very
place where an old man and his daughter had once joined
Goethe's coach en route to Italy, she the model of his future
Mignon, he of the old harpist in Wilhelm Meister! Across this
dark lake, Goethe caught his first glimpse of the snow-covered
Alps. And while we, too, delighted in the glorious landscape, our
conversation kept returning to our studies and to science in
general.
Thus Wolfgang asked me-1 think it was one evening at an
inn in Grainau-whether I at long last understood Einstein's
relativity theory, on which Sommerfeld laid so much stress. I could
only say that I did not really know what was meant by "under-
standing" in physics. The mathematical framework of relativity
theory caused me no difficulties, but that did not necessarily
mean that I had "understood" why a moving observer means
something different by "time" than an observer at rest. The
whole thing baffied me, and struck me as being quite "incompre-
hensible."
"But once you have grasped the mathematical framework,"
Wolfgang objected, "you can surely predict what an observer at
rest and a moving observer ought to observe or measure. And we
have good reason to assume that a real experiment will bear out
these predictions. What more can you ask?"
"That is precisely my problem," I replied, "that I don't know
what more I can ask. I feel somewhat cheated by the logic of the
new mathematical framework. You might even say that I have
grasped the theory with my brain, but not yet with my heart. I
think that I don't have to study physics to know what 'time' is;
after all, our every thought and action presupposes a naive time
concept. Perhaps I could put it like this: our thought depends on
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

the fact that this time concept works, that we can operate with it.
But if our na1ve time concept has to be changed, then we can no
longer tell whether our language and thought remain useful
working tools. In saying this, I am not trying to hark back to
Kant, for whom time and space were a priori forms of the intui-
tion. In other words, to Kant, as to the earlier physicists, time
and space were absolutes. I only want to stress the fact that our
language and thought become vague whenever we try to change
such basic concepts, and uncertainty goes ill with true under-
standing."
Otto found my scruples quite unnecessary.
"That's how it may look in the schoolmen's philosophy," he
said, "but if they ascribed definite, immutable meanings to the
concepts of time and space, that only goes to show that their
philosophy was false. I can't do anything with beautiful phrases
about the 'essence' of space and time. You've probably read more
philosophy than is good for you. Remember this splendid defini-
tion: 'Philosophy is the systematic misuse of nomenclature spe-
cially invented for the purpose.' All absolute claims must be
rejected a priori. We ought only to use such words and concepts
as can be directly related to sense perception, with this proviso,
of course, that we may substitute complex physical observations
for direct perception. lt is precisely this return to observable
phenomena that is Einstein's great merit. In his relativity theory,
he quite rightly started with the commonplace assumption that
time is what you read off a dock. If you keep to this common-
place meaning, you will have few problems with relativity the-
ory. As soon as a theory allows us to predict the results of an
observation, it gives us all the understanding we need."
Wolfgang now brought up a number of objections: "What you
say is true only under certain conditions, and these ought to be
stated. To begin with, you have to be certain that your theoreti-
cal predictions are unambiguous and self-consistent. In the case
of relativity theory, this is probably guaranteed by the simple
mathematical framework. Next it must be quite clear from the
conceptual structure of a theory to which particular phenomena
it applies and to which it does not. In the absence of this
qualification every theory can be refuted at once, simply because
no theory can predict all the phenomena in the world. But even
 "UNDERSTANDING" IN MODERN PHYSlCS 31
if all these conditions are met, I am still not altogether certain
whether the a bili ty to predict phenomena in a particular area
entitles one to claim full understanding. Conversely, it may be
quite possible to understand a particular realm of experience
completely without being able to predict all the results of future
observa tions."
I now tried to show that correct predictions were not neces-
sarily a sign of true understanding by quoting an historical
example. "You know, of course, that the Greek astronomer,
Aristarchus, considered the possibility that the sun might occupy
the center of our planetary system. This view was rejected by
Hipparchus, and then fell into oblivion. Ptolemy started with
the assumption that the earth was the central body, and he
treated the orbits of the planets as superimposed cycles and
epicycles. This enabled him to predict eclipses of the sun and the
moon very precisely, so precisely that for fifteen hundred years
his doctrine was considered the certain foundation of astronomy.
But did Ptolemy really understand the planetary system? Was it
not Newton who, knowing the law of inertia, and introducing
force as the cause of changes of momentum, was the first to give a
proper explanation of planetary motions in terms of gravitation?
Was he not the first to have really understood this type of
motion? This, to me, is a crucial question.
"Or let us take an example from the more recent history of
physics. At the end of the eighteenth century, when electrical
phenomena became better known, physicists were able to make
very precise calculations of the electrostatic forces governing the
behavior of charged bodies, treating them as centers of force in
the manner of Newtonian mechanics. That much at least I gath-
ered from Sommerfeld. But it was only when Faraday changed
the entire problem and inquired into fields of force, i.e., into the
distribution of forces in time and space, that he provided a true
understanding of electromagnetic phenomena, and laid the foun-
dations on which Maxwell could later base his mathematical
formulae."
Otto did not find my examples particularly convincing. "I can
see only differences in degree, but no basic distinction. Ptolemy's
astronomy must have been very good, else it would not have
lasted for fifteen hundred years. Newton's didn't seem much
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

better at first; it took quite sorne time before astronomers carne to

appreciate that it led to more accurate predictions of the motions
of the planets than Ptolemy's cycles and epicycles. I cannot really
grant you that Newton did something fundamentally better than
Ptolemy. He merely gave a different account of planetary mo-
tions, one that happened to prove more successful in the long
run."
Wolfgang found this argument too one-sided and much too
positivistic. "l, for one, see a basic distinction between Newton's
astronomy and Ptolemy's," he said. "To begin with, Newton
posed the whole problem quite differently: he inquired into the
causes of planetary motions and not into the motions themselves.
These causes, he discovered, were forces, and in our planetary
system they happen to be much simpler than the motions. He
described them by means of his law of gravitation. lf we say that
Newton helped us to understand the motion of the planets, we
only mean that more precise observations have shown that it is
possible to reduce the complicated motions of the planets to
something very simple, namely, to gravitational forces, and to
explain them in that way. Admittedly, Ptolemy could describe all
the complicated motions of the planets by the superposition of
cycles and epicycles, but he had to treat them as empirical facts.
Moreover, Newton was also able to show that the motions of the
planets are governed by the same laws as those that determine
the motion of a projectile, the oscillation of a pendulum or the
spinning of a top. The mere fact that Newton's mechanics
reduced all these different phenomena to a simple principie~
namely, 'mass X acceleration = force,' shows that his planetary
system is vastly superior to Ptolemy's."
Otto still refused to admit defeat. "The word 'cause' and the
assertion that force is the cause of motion ali sound very well, but
in fact only take us a slight step forward. For we are then com-
pelled to ask the next question: What are the causes of forces in
general and of gravitation in particular? In other words, accord-
ing to your own philosophy, we can only claim 'real' understand-
ing of planetary motions once we know the cause of gravitation~
and so on ad infinitum.1'
Wolfgang objected strongly to this argument. "Of course we
can keep on asking questions," he said, "but isn't that the basis
 ''UNDERSTANDING" IN MODERN PHYSICS 33
of all science? Your argument is not relevant to the point under
discussion. 'Understanding' nature surely means taking a close
look at its connections, being certain of its inner workings. Such
knowledge cannot be gained by understanding an isolated phe-
nomenon or a single grou p of phenomena, even if one discovers
sorne order in them. It comes from the recognition that a wealth
of experiential facts are interconnected and can therefore be
reduced to a common principie. In that case, certainty rests
precisely on this wealth of facts. The danger of making mistakes
is the smaller, the richer and more com plex the phenomena are,
and the simpler is the common principie to which they can ali be
brought back. The fact that still wider connections may yet be
discovered makes no difference at ali."
"And so you think," I asked, "that we can trust in relativity
theory on the grounds that it helps us to combine under a
common heading, or reduce to a common root, a great wealth of
phenomena, for instance in electrodynamics? If I understand you
correctly, you are maintaining that, since in this case a uniform
connection is readily established and can be shown to be mathe-
matically transparent, we get the feeling that we have 'under-
stood' relativity, even though we are forced to give the words
'space' and 'time' a new, or let us saya changed, meaning.''
"Yes, I do mean something like that. The decisive steps of
Newton and of Faraday were, in each case, their new way of
asking questions and of formulating concepts by which the
correct answers could be obtained. 'U nderstanding' probably
means nothing more than having whatever ideas and concepts
are needed to recognize that a great many different phenomena
are part of a coherent whole. Our mind becomes less puzzled
once we have recognized that a special, apparently confused
situation is merely a special case of something wider, that as a
result it can be formulated much more simply. The reduction of
a colorful variety of phenomena to a general and simple prin-
cipie, or, as the Greeks would have put it, the reduction of the
many to the one, is precisely what we mean by 'understanding.'
The ability to predict is often the consequence of understanding,
of having the right concepts, but is not identical with under-
standing."
Otto murmured: "'The systematic misuse of nomenclature
34 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

specially invented for the purpose.' I cannot for the life of me see
why it is necessary to speak in such complicated ways about
simple things. If we use language to refer to direct sense impres-
sions, then few misunderstandings can arise-every word has a
precise meaning, and if a theory sticks to that limitation, it will
always be comprehensible, even without a lot of philosophizing."
But Wolfgang refused to accept this. "Your suggestion, which
sounds so terribly plausible, has already been made, by Mach
and others. It has even been said that Einstein arrived at his
theory of relativity s:mply by sticking to Mach's doctrine. But
this strikes me as a crude oversimplification. It is well known that
Mach did not believe in the existence of atoms, on the grounds
that they cannot be observed. For ali that, atoms were needed to
explain a host of physical and chemical phenomena that had
eluded scientists in the past. Mach himself was obviously led
astray by the very princi ple you defend, and, as far as I am
concerned, this was not by chance."
"Everybody can make mistakes," Otto said, trying to calm us
down. "But mistakes are no excuse for making things more
complicated than they are. The theory of relativity is so simple
that anyone can grasp it. But when it comes to atomic theory,
things are very much more obscure."
This brought us to our second theme, which kept us busy long
after our bicycle tour was over. It was to become the source of
keen arguments in our Munich seminar, often in Sommerfeld's
presence.
The central subject of Sommerfeld's seminar was Bohr's atomic
theory. Basing his ideas on decisive experiments by Rutherford,
Bohr had depicted the atom as a tiny planetary system with a
central nucleus which, though considerably smaller than the
atom, carried most of its mass. About this nucleus, a number of
extremely lightweight electrons revolved like so many planets.
However, while the orbits of planets were determined by known
forces and the past history of the system, and hence subject to
perturbations, the orbits of electrons were said to call for
additional postulates of a special kind, postulates that helped to
explain the peculiar stability of matter when exposed to externa!
influences. Ever since Planck had published his famous work in
1900, these additional postulates were known as quantum con-
 "UNDERSTANDING" IN MODERN PHYSICS 35
ditions, and it was they which had introduced into atomic physics
that strange element of number mysticism to which I referred
earlier. Certain magnitudes that could be computed from an
orbit were said to be integral multiples of a basic unit, namely,
Planck's quantum of action. Such rules were highly reminiscent
of Pythagorean ideas, according to which two vibrating strings
were in harmony if, with equal tension, their lengths were in
simple proportion. But what <lid the orbits of electrons have to
do with vibrating strings? Even more confusing was the new ex-
planation of light emission by atoms. In this process, a radiating
electron was said to jump from one quantum orbit to the next,
and to emit the energy thus liberated as a whole packet, or light
quantum. Such ideas would never have been taken seriously had
they not helped to explain a whole range of experiments with
great accuracy.
This peculiar mixture of incomprehensible mumbo jumbo and
empirical success quite naturally exerted a great fascination on
us young students. Soon after the beginning of my studies,
Sommerfeld set me a test: from the observations which an experi-
mental physicist of his acquaintance had communicated to him, I
was to deduce the electron orbits and quantum numbers in-
volved. The task itself was not difficult, but the results proved
extremely perplexing; apart from integral quantum numbers, I
was also forced to admit halves, and this ran counter to the spirit
of quantum theory and of Sommerfeld's number mysticism.
Wolfgang suggested that I would soon have to introduce quarters
and eighths as well, until finally the whole quantum theory would
crumble to dust in my capable hands. And try as I might, I could
not get rid of the embarrassing fraction.
Wolfgang had set himself a more difficult task. He wanted to
find out whether in a more complicated system, one that could
only be determined by astronomical computations, Bohr's theory
and the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantum conditions would still lead
to experimentally valid results. In fact, during our Munich dis-
cussions, sorne of us had begun to feel that the earlier successes of
the theory might have been due to the use of particularly simple
systems, and that the theory would break down in a slightly more
complicated one.
In this connection, Wolfgang asked me one day: "Do you
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

honestly believe that such things as electron orbits really exist

inside the atom?"
My answer may have sounded a little labored. "To begin
with," I told him, "we can observe the path of an electron in a
cloud chamber: it leaves a clear trail of fog where it has passed.
And sin ce there is such a thing as an electron tra jectory in the
cloud chamber, we may take it that it will occur in the atom as
well. But I have sorne reservations on that score. For while we
determine the path itself by classical Newtonian methods, we use
quantum conditions to account for its stability, thus flying in the
face of Newtonian mechanics. And when it comes to electrons
jumping from one orbit into the next-as the theory demands-
we are careful not to specify whether they make high jumps, long
jumps or sorne other sorts of jump. It all makes me think that
something is radically wrong with the whole idea of electron
orbits. But what is the alternative?"
Wolfgang nodded. "The whole thing seems a myth. If there
really were such a thing as an electron orbit, the electron would
obviously have to revolve periodically, with a given frequency.
Now, we know from electrodynamics that if an electrical charge
is set in periodic motion, it must emit electrical vibrations, i.e.,
radiate light of a characteristic frequency. But this is not sup-
posed to happen with the electron; instead, the frequency of
vibration of the emitted light is said to lie somewhere between
the orbital frequency before the mysterious jump and the orbital
frequency after the jump. Ali this is sheer madness."
" 'Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't,' " I
quoted.
"Yes, perhaps. Niels Bohr claims that he can tell the electron
orbits of every atom in the periodic system, and the two of us do
not even believe in the existence of such orbits. Sommerfeld
perhaps disagrees with us. And, in fact, anyone can see electronic
orbits in a cloud chamber. Quite likely N iels Bohr is right in a
sense, though we cannot tell precisely in what sense."
Unlike Wolfgang, I felt optimistic about the issue, and I may
have said something like this: "I find Bohr's physics most fasci-
nating, difficulties and ali. Bohr must surely know that he starts
from contradictory assumptions which cannot be correct in their
present form. But he has an unerring instinct for using these very
 "UNDERSTANDING" IN MODERN PHYSICS 37
assumptions to construct fairly convincing models of atomic
processes. Bohr uses classical mechanics or quantum theory JUSt
as a painter uses his brushes and colors. Brushes do not deter-
mine the picture, and color is never the full reality; but if he
keeps the picture before his mind's eye, the artist can use his
brush to convey, however inadequately, his own mental picture
to others. Bohr knows precisely how atoms behave during light
emission, in chemical processes and in many other phenomena,
and this has helped him to form an intuitive picture of the
structure of different atoms; a picture he can only convey to
other physicists by such inadequate means as electron orbits and
quantum conditions. It is not at ali certain that Bohr himself
believes that electrons revolve inside the atom. But he is con-
vinced of the correctness of his picture. The fact that he cannot
yet express it by adequate linguistic or mathematical techniques
is no disaster. On the contrary, it is a great challenge."
Wolfgang remained skeptical. "I must first of ali find out
whether the Bohr-Sommerfeld assumptions will lead to reason-
able results in the case of my problem. If not-and I almost sus-
pect that I shall discover just that-1 shall at least know what
does not work, and that, too, is a great step forward." Then he
added reflectively: "Bohr's pictures may be right after ali. But
what are we to make of them, and what laws do they express?"
Sorne time later, Sommerfeld asked me rather unexpectedly,
after a long talk about atomic theory: "Would you like to meet
Niels Bohr? He is about to give a series of lectures in Gottingen.
I have been invited, and I should like to take you along." I
hesitated for a moment-the fare to Gottingen and return was
quite beyond my financia! resources. Perhaps Sommerfeld saw
the shadow Hit across my face. In any case, he quickly added that
he would see to my expenses, whereupon I accepted with grati-
tude and alacrity.
In the early summer of 1922 Gottingen, that friendly little
town of villas and gardens on the slopes of the Hain Mountain,
was a mass of blooming shrubs, rose gardens and flower beds.
Nature herself seemed to approve the name we later gave those
wonderful days: the Gottingen Bohr Festival. I shall never
forget the first lecture. The hall was filled to capacity. The great
Danish physicist, whose very stature proclaimed him a Scandi-
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

navian, stood on the platform, his head slightly inclined, and a

friendly but somewhat embarrassed smile on his lips. Summer
light flooded in through the wide-open windows. Bohr spoke
fairly softly, with a slight Danish accent. When he explained the
individual assumptions of his theory, he chose his words very care-
fully, much more carefully than Sommerfeld usually did. And
each one of his carefully formulated sentences revealed a long
chain of underlying thoughts, of philosophical reflections, hinted
at but never fully expressed. I found this approach highly excit-
ing; what he said seemed both new and not quite new at the
same time. We had all of us learned Bohes theory from Sommer-
feld, and knew what it was about, but it all sounded quite
different from Bohr's own lips. We could clearly sense that he
had reached his results not so much by calculation and demon-
stration as by intuition and inspiration, and that he found it
difficult to justify his findings before Gottingen's famous school
of mathematics. Each lecture was followed by long discussions,
and at the end of the third lecture I myself dared to make a
critica! remark.
Bohr had been talking about Kramers' contribution-the sub-
ject on which I had been asked to speak in Sommerfeld's seminar
-and he concluded that, although the basis of Kramers' theory
was still unexplained, it seemed certain that the results were
correct and would one day be confirmed by experiment. I then
rose and advanced objections to Kramers' theory based on our
M unich discussions.
Bohr must have gathered that my remarks sprang from pro-
found interest in his atomic theory. He replied hesitantly, as
though he were slightly worried by my objection, and at the end
of the discussion he carne over to me and asked me to join him
that afternoon on a walk over the Hain Mountain. There we
might go more deeply into the whole problem.
This walk was to have profound repercussions on my scientific
career, or perhaps it is more correct to say that my real scientific
career only began that afternoon. A well-tended mountain path
took us past a popular coffeehouse, Zum Rohns, to a sunlit
height, from which we looked down on the small university town,
dominated by the spires of the old churches of St. John and St.
Jacob and, beyond, across the Leine Valley.
 "UNDERSTANDING" IN MODERN PHYSICS 39
Bohr opened the conversation. "This morning," he said, "you
expressed sorne reservations about Kramers' work. I must tell you
at once that I fully understand the nature of your doubts. Per-
haps I ought to explain where I stand myself. Basically, I agree
with you much more than you might think; I realize full well
how cautious one has to be with assertions about the structure
of atoras. I had best begin by telling you a little about the history
of this theory. My starting point was not at ali the idea that an
atora is a small-scale planetary system and as such governed by
the laws of astronomy. I never took things as literally as that. My
starting point was rather the stability of matter, a pure miracle
when considered from the standpoint of classical physics.
"By 'stability' I mean that the same substances always have the
same properties, that the same crystals recur, the same chemical
compounds, etc. In other words, even after a host of changes due
to externa! influences, an iron atora will always remain an iron
atom, with exactly the same properties as before. This cannot be
explained by the principies of classical mechanics, certainly not if
the atora resembles a planetary system. Nature clearly has a
tendency to produce certain forms-1 use the word 'forras' in the
most general sense-and to recreate these forras even when they
are disturbed or destroyed. You may even think of biology: the
stability of living organisms, the propagation of the most compli-
cated forras which, after ali, can exist only in their entirety. But
in biology we are dealing with highly complex structures, subject
to characteristic, temporary transformations of a kind that need
not detain us here. Let us rather stick to the simpler forms we
study in physics and chemistry. The existence of uniform sub-
stances, of solid bodies, depends on the stability of atoras; that is
precisely why an electron tube filled with a certain gas will
always emit light of the same color, a spectrum with exactly
the same lines. All this, far from being self-evident, is quite
inexplicable in terms of the basic principie of Newtonian physics,
according to which all effects have precisely determined causes,
and according to which the present state of a phenomenon or
process is fully determined by the one that immediately preceded
it. This fact used to disturb me a great deal when I first began to
look into atomic physics.
"The miracle of the stability of matter might have gone un-
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

noticed even longer had experiments during the past few decades
not thrown fresh light on the whole subject. Planck, as you know,
discovered that the energy of an atomic system changes discon-
tinuously; that when such a system emits energy, it passes
through certain states with selected energy values. I myself later
coined the term 'stationary states' for them. Next carne Ruther-
ford's crucial studies of the structure of the atom. It was in
Rutherford's Manchester laboratory that I first became ac-
quainted with the problems involved. At the time, I was barely
older than you are today, and I kept plying Rutherford with
long questions. Physicists had just begun to take a closer look at
luminous phenomena and were busily determining the character-
istic spectral lines of the various chemical elements; needless to
say, chemists, too, produced a wealth of information on the
behavior of atoms. These developments, which I was privileged
to witness at close quarters, naturally made me wonder how all
these things hung together. The theory I tried to put forward was
meant to do no more than establish that connection.
"Now, this was really a hopeless task, quite different from
those physicists normally tackle. For in all previous physics, or in
any other branch of science, you could always try to explain a
new phenomenon by reducing it to known phenomena or laws.
In atomic physics, however, all previous concepts have proved
inadequate. We know from the stability of matter that New-
tonian physics does not apply to the interior of the atom; at best
it can occasionally offer usa guideline. It follows that there can be
no descriptive account of the structure of the atom; all such
accounts must necessarily be based on classical concepts which, as
we saw, no longer apply. You see that anyone trying to develop
such a theory is really trying the impossible. For we intend to say
something about the structure of the atom but lack a language in
which we can make ourselves understood. We are in much the
same position as a sailor, marooned on a remote island where
conditions differ radically from anything he has ever known and
where, to make things worse, the natives speak a completely alien
tongue. He simply must make himself understood, but has no
means of doing so. In that sort of situation a theory cannot
'explain' anything in the usual strict scientific sense of the word.
All it can hope to do is to reveal connections and, for the rest,
 "UNDERSTANDING" IN MODERN PHYSICS 41
leave us to grope as best we can. That is precisely what Kramers'
calculations were intended to do; perhaps I failed to stress this
sufficiently at my lecture. And to do more than that is quite
beyond our present means."
From Bohr's remarks it was quite obvious that he was familiar
with ali the doubts we ourselves had been expressing. But to
make doubly sure that I had understood him, I asked: "If that is
all we can do, what is the point of ali those atomic models you
produced and justified during the past few lectures? What ex-
actly did you try to prove with them?"
"These models," Bohr replied, "have been deduced, or if you
prefer guessed, from experiments, not from theoretical calcula-
tions. I hope that they describe the structure of the atoras as well,
but only as well, as is possible in the descriptive language of
classical physics. We must be clear that, when it comes to atoras,
language can be used only as in poetry. ·rhe poet, too, is not
nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images
and establishing mental connections."
"But in that case how are we ever to make progress? After ali,
physics is supposed to be an exact science."
"It seems likely that the paradoxes of quantum theory, those
incomprehensible features reflecting the stability of matter, will
become sharper with every new experiment. If that happens, we
can only hope that, in due course, new concepts will emerge
which may somehow help us to grasp these inexpressible proc ..
esses in the atora. But we are still a long way from that."
Bohr's remark reminded me of Robert's comment, during our
walk near Lake Starnberg, that atoras were not things. For
although Bohr believed that he knew a great many details about
the inner structure of atoras, he did not look upon the electrons
in the atomic shell as "things," in any case not as things in the
sense of classical physics, which worked with such concepts as
position, velocity, energy and extension. I therefore asked him:
"If the inner structure of the atora is as closed to descriptive
accounts as you say, if we really lack a language for dealing with
it, how can we ever hope to understand atoras?"
Bohr hesitated for a moment, and then said: "I think we may
yet be able to do so. But in the process we may have to learn
what the word 'understanding' really means."
42 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

Our little walk had taken us to the peak of the Hain Mountain,
to the famous Kehr lnn, so called because since olden times peo-
ple used to turn back here [umkehren]. We, too, now made for the
lowland, this time in a southerly direction, and looked down
over the hills, woods and villages of the Leine Valley, long since
incorporated into Gottingen town.
"We have talked about so many difficult subjects,,, Bohr con-
tinued, "and I have told you how I myself first got into this
whole business; but I know nothing at ali about you. You look
very young. From your questions, it almost seems as if you started
with atomic theory first, and then went on to take a look at
urthodox physics. Sommerfeld must have introduced you to this
adventurous world of atoms at a very early age. Do tell me about
it and also about what you did in the war."
I confessed that, being twenty, I was only in my fourth term at
the university, and that I knew very little indeed about general
physics. I went on to tell him about Sommerfeld's class, where I
had been especially attracted by the mysterious, inexplicable
features of quantum theory. I added that I had been too young
to serve in the army, but that my father had fought in France as
a reserve officer and I had been very anxious about him. He was
wounded in 1916 and was sent back home. During the last year
of the war, I worked as a farm laborer in the Lower Bavarian
Alps, to keep body and soul together. Otherwise I had been
spared by the war.
"I should like to hear a lot more from you," Bohr said, "and to
learn more about conditions in your country, of which I know so
little. And about the Youth Movement, of which I have heard so
much from my colleagues in Gottingen. You must pay us a visit
in Copenhagen; perhaps you could stay with us for a term, and
we might do sorne physics together. And then I'll show you round
our small country and tell you about its history."
As we approached the edge of the town, the conversation
turned to Gottingen's leading physicists and mathematicians-
Max Born, James Franck, Richard Courant and David Hilbert,
ali of whom I had only just met. Bohr suggested that I might do
part of my studies under them. Suddenly the future looked full
of hope and new possibilities, which, after seeing Bohr home, I
painted to myself in the most glorious colors ali the way back to
my lodgings.
 4
Lessons in Politics
and History (1922-1924)

The summer of 1922 ended on what, forme, was a rather sadden-

ing note. My teacher, Sommerfeld, had suggested that I attend
the Congress of German Scientists and Physicians in Leipzig,
where Einstein, one of the chief speakers, would lecture on the
general theory of relativity. My father had bought me the return-
tri p ticket from M unich, and I was looking forward greatly to
this chance of hearing the discoverer of relativity theory in
person. Once in Leipzig, I moved into one of the cheapest inns in
the poorest quarter of the city-1 could afford nothing better.
Then I made for the meeting hall, where I found a number of
the younger physicists whose acquaintance I had made in Got-
tingen during the "Bohr Festival," and asked them about Ein-
stein's lecture, scheduled within a few hours. I noticed a certain
tension all around me, which struck me as being rather odd, but
then Leipzig was not Gottingen. I filled in the waiting time with
a walk to the Memorial (to the great Battle of Leipzig), where,
hungry and exhausted by the overnight railway journey, I lay
down on the grass and a t once fell aslee p. I was wakened by a
young girl who had decided to pelt me with plums. She sat down
beside me, and made her peace with me with generous offerings
of fruit from her ample basket.
The lecture theater was a large hall with doors on all sides. As
I was about to enter, a young man-1 learned later that he was
an assistant or pupil of a well-known professor of physics in a
South German university-pressed a red handbill into my hand,
warning me against Einstein and relativity. The whole theory
44 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

was said to be nothing but wild speculation, blown up by the

Jewish press and entirely alien to the German spirit. At first I
thought the whole thing was the work of sorne lunatic, · for
madmen are wont to turn up at ali big meetings. However, when
I was told that the author was a man renowned for his experi-
mental work, to whom Sommerfeld had often referred in his
lectures, I felt as if part of my world were collapsing. Ali along, I
had been firmly convinced that science at least was above the
kind of poli tical strife that had led to the civil war in M unich,
and of which I wished to have no further part. And now I made
the sad discovery that men of weak or pathological character can
inject their twisted political passions even into scientific life.
Needless to say, my immediate reaction was to drop any reserva-
tions I may have had with regard to Einstein's theory, or rather
to what I knew about it from Wolfgang's occasional explana-
tions. For if I had learned one thing from my experiences during
the civil war, it was that one must never judge a political
movement by the aims it so loudly proclaims and perhaps
genuinely strives to attain, but only by the means it uses to
achieve them. The choice of bad means simply proves that those
responsible have lost faith in the persuasive force of their origi-
nal arguments. In this instance, the means applied by a leading
physicist in his attempt to refute the theory of relativity were so
bad and insubstantial that they could signify only one thing: the
man had abandoned ali hope of ever refuting the theory with
scientific arguments.
Still, so upset was I by this spectacle that I failed to pay proper
attention to Einstein himself, and, at the end of the lecture,
forgot to avail myself of Sommerfeld's offer to introduce me to
the speaker. Instead, I returned somberly to my inn, only to
discover that ali my possessions-rucksack, linen, socks and sec-
ond suit-had been stolen. Luckily I still had my return ticket. I
went to the station and took the next train to Munich. I was in
utter despair because I knew that my father would find it
extremely hard to make up my loss. And so, upon discovering
that my parents were out of the city, I took a job as a woodman
in Forstenried Park, south of the town. 'The pines there had
been attacked by bark beetles, anda large number of trees had to
be felled and their bark burncd. Only when I had earned enough
 LESSONS IN POLITICS AND HISTORY 45
money to replenish my meager wardrobe did I return to my
studies.
I have mentioned this whole unhappy episode, not to resurrect
events that are best forgotten, but because it later cropped up in
my conversations with Niels Bohr and affected my behavior in
the dangerous no-man's land between science and politics. At
first, the Leipzig experience left me with a deep sense of disap-
pointment and with doubts about the validity of science in
general. For if science, too, was more concerned with private
feuds than with discovering the truth, was it really worth bother-
ing with? Luckily, in the end, memories of my walk with Niels
Bohr prevailed over ali such pessimistic thoughts, and I was
hopeful that I might one day avail myself of Bohr's generous
invitation and have many more talks with him in Copenhagen.
As it happened, a year and a half were to go by before this
carne to pass. Meanwhile I spent a term at Gottingen, submitted
a thesis on the stability of laminar flow in fluids, sat for my
examination in Munich and, for another term, served as Max
Born's assistant in Gottingen. During the Easter vacation of 1924
I finally boarded the Warnemünde ferry for Denmark. Through-
out the trip I feasted my eyes on a host of colorful boats,
including four-masters in full rig. At the end of the First World
War, a large part of the world's merchant fleet had ended up at
the bottom of the sea, with the result that the old sailing boats
had to be brought out again, and the seascape looked ali the
brighter for it-much as it had done a hundred years before.
When I eventually disembarked, I had sorne trouble with cus-
toms-1 knew no Danish and could not account for myself
properly. However, as soon as it became clear that I was about to
work in Professor Bohr's Institute, ali difficulties were swept
out of the way and ali doors were opened to me. And so from
the very outset I felt safe under the protection of one of the
greatest personalities in this small but friendly country.
Not that my first few days in the Institute were particularly
easy forme. I suddenly carne face to face with a large number of
brilliant young men from every part of the world, all of them
greatly superior to me, not only in linguistic prowess and world-
liness, but also in their knowledge of physics. I saw very little of
Bohr himself; he obviously had his hands full with administra-
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

tive tasks, and I obviously had no right to make greater claims on

his time than had other members of the Institute. But after a few
days, he carne into my room and asked me to join him for a few
days' walking tour through the island of Zealand. In the Insti-
tute itself, he said, there was little chance for lengthy talks, and
he wanted to get to know me better.
And so the two of us set out with our rucksacks. First we took
the trolley to the northern edge of the city, and from there we
walked through the Deer Park, once a hunting preserve. We
admired the beautiful little Hermitage Castle right in its center,
and watched large herds of deer graze in the clearings. Then we
made for the north, sometimes hugging the coast, sometimes
walking through forests and past peaceful lakes, studded with
summer houses still sleeping behind closed shutters-it was early
spring and the trees were only just putting out their first tender
shoots. Our talk turned to conditions in Germany, and Bohr
asked what I remembered about the outbreak of war, ten years
before.
"I have heard a great deal about those days," he told me.
"Friends of ours who traveled through Germany early in August
1914 spoke of a great wave of enthusiasm that gripped not only
the whole German nation but even outsiders, whose emotions,
however, were tempered with horror. Isn't it odd that a whole
people should have gone into war in a flush of war fever, when
they ought to have known how many friends and enemies alike
that war would swallow up, how many injustices would be
comn1itted by both sides? Can you explain any of this?"
"I was only twelve at the time," I replied, "and obviously my
opinions were based on what I picked up from conversations
between my parents and grandparents. Still, I don't think the
words 'war fever' quite describe the situation. No one I knew was
happy about what lay before us, and no one was pleased that the
war had started. If you ask me to describe what happened, I
would say we suddenly realized that things had become serious.
We felt that we had all been living in a world of dreams, and
that this beautiful world had suddenly been shattered by the
murder of the heir to the Austrian crown. Suddenly we were face
to face with reality, with a call none of us could refuse, a call we
had to answer come what may-with heavy hearts, but with all
our hearts nonetheless. N eedless to say, we were all convinced of
 LESSONS IN POLITICS AND HISTORY 47
the justice of the German cause, for Germany and Austria were
like one country, and the murder of the Archduke Francis Ferdi-
nand and his wife by members of a secret Serbian society struck
us as a crime against us ali. So we had to defend ourselves, and,
as I have said, most Germans decided to do so wholeheartedly.
"Now, such popular decisions have something highly seductive
about them, something quite uncanny and irrational-even I
could feel that in August 1914. I was traveling with my parents
from Munich to Osnabrück, where my father, who was a captain
in the Reserves, had to report for duty. All the railway stations
were filled with shouting crowds of excited people; freight cars,
decorated with flowers and branches, were packed with soldiers
and guns. Young women and children stood alongside them;
there was much crying and singing until the train left the
station. You could address any stranger you wanted to as if you
were old friends; everyone helped everyone else-we had all
become brothers in fate. I should not like to eradicate this day
from my memory. And yet this incredible, this unimaginable
day, a day no one who witnessed it could forget, had nothing to
do with what is commonly called war fever. I think that the
whole thing was distorted after the event."
"You must realize," Bohr said, "that we, in our small country,
take quite a different view of such matters. Look at it historically.
Perhaps Germany's expansion during the last century proved just
a little too easy. There was first of all the war against our country
in 1864, which caused so much bitterness among us, then your
victory over Austria in 1866 and over France in 1870. To Ger-
mans, it must have looked as if a great Central European Empire
could be built almost overnight. But things aren't ever that
simple. To found empires one must first win the hearts of the
people. This the Prussians, for all their efficiency, obviously failed
to do; perhaps because their way of life was too hard, or perhaps
because their ideas of discipline did not appeal to others. By the
time Germany carne to realize that, it was too late. In any case, the
German attack on the small country of Belgium struck the out-
side world as an act of blatant aggression, in no way justified
even by the assassination of the Austrian heir. After all, Belgium
had nothing to do with the assassination, nor was it a party to
any alliance against Germany."
"Certainlv we Germans committed a great many wrongs in
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

that war," I had to admit, "just as our opponents did. Btit then
war is bound to lead to wrongs. And I must also admit that the
only tribunal competent to decide the issue-world history-has
found against us. Otherwise, I am probably much too young to
judge which politicians made the right or wrong decisions in
which places. But there are two things that have always bothered
me, and I should Iike to know what you think about them.
"I told you that when war was declared, the whole world
seemed completely changed. All petty, everyday cares suddenly
disappeared. Personal and family relationships, once the very
center of our lives, gave way to the broader solidarity of a whole
nation sharing a common fate. Houses, streets, forests-every-
thing looked quite different, or, as Jakob Burckhardt has put it,
'Heaven itself took on a fresh hue.' My best friend, a cousin
from Osnabrück, who was a few years older than I, became a
soldier. Ido not know whether he was conscripted or whether he
volunteered. Such questions were never even asked. The great
decision had been made, everyone who was physically fit joined
the army. My cousin would never have had the least wish to
make war on anyone, or to fight for German conquests, though
he was certain of our victory. So much I gathered from our last
conversation just befare he left. All we knew was that he was
expected to offer his life, like all the rest. He may for a
moment have been deeply frightened, but still he said yes like
everyone else. Had I been a few years older, I would probably
have done the same thing. M y cousin died in France. Do you
think he ought to have told himself that the whole war was
nonsense, a fever, mass suggestion, and have refused this call on
his life? Who has the right to decide? A young man who could
not possibly hope to see through the machinations of world
politics, who knew no more than a few facts, difficult enough to
grasp in themselves: a murder in Sarajevo or our invasion of
Belgium?''
"What you tell me makes me very sad," Bohr replied, "for I
think I can see what you are getting at. Perhaps what these
young men felt as they went to war, certain of their cause, is part
of the greatest happiness men can experience. But surely that is a
terrible truth. When men go to war, don't you feel that they some-
how resemble migratory birds who flock together in the autumn
 LESSONS IN POLITICS AND HISTORY 49
before heading south? None of these birds knows which has
decided on the flight or even why they must migrate, but each is
gripped by the same prevailing agitation, the same wish to join
in, even if the flight leads to death. In human beings, the re-
markable fact is that, on the one hand, the reaction is as ele-
mental and as uncontrollable as, for instance, a forest fire or any
other natural phenomenon, while, on the other hand, it releases
a sense of almost boundless individual freedom. The young man
who goes to war has thrown off the burden of his daily cares and
worries. When life or death is at stake, petty reservations, all
those qualms that normally restrict our lives, are cast to the winds.
We have only one aim-victory-and life seems simple and clear
as never before. There is probably no more beautiful description
of this unique situation in the life of a young man than the
trooper's song in Schiller's Wallenstein. You must know the last
lines: 'Who would share life must risk it, and none who refuse
the hazard shall gain it-who risks it may lose!' This is probably
quite true. Yet for ali that, we must say no, must make every
effort to avoid wars, indeed ali international conflicts from which
wars arise. Our walk through Denmark may be a small step in
that direction."
"I should like to put my second question, if I may," I con-
tinued. "You have spoken of the Prussian sense of discipline, and
have told me that it does not appeal to other people. I myself
grew up in southern Germany, and our tradition is such that we
think somewhat differently from people born between Magde-
burg and Konigsberg. Yet the principies of Prussian life-the
subordination of individual ambition to the common cause,
modesty in private life, honesty and incorruptibility, gallantry
and punctuality-have always attracted me. Even though these
principies have been misused by politicians, I cannot really
despise them. Why do you Danes, for instance, feel so differ-
ently?"
"I believe," Bohr said, "that we do appreciate the virtues of
this Prussian attitude. But we prefer to give greater scope to the
individual, to his dreams and plans, than the Prussian principie
permits. We wish to be part of a community of free people, each
of whom fully recognizes the rights of all the others. Freedom
and individual independence are more im portant to us than
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

strength derived from externa! discipline. It is very strange, isn't

it, that our ideas of the good life should so often be molded by
historical models, which have survived only in myths or legends,
and yet retain their hold on us. The Prussian, I believe, models
himself on the Teutonic knight, who swore the monk's vow of
poverty, chastity and obedience, who spread the Christian light,
sword in hand. We in Denmark prefer the heroes of the Icelandic
sagas, the poet Egill, son of Skallagrim, who at the tender age of
three defied his father, fetched himself a horse and followed
Skallagrim on his long ride. Or the wise Njáll, who was better
versed in the law than all men on the island, and whose advice
was sought in all disputes. These men, or their ancestors, had
gone to Iceland because they did not want to bend to the will of
the mighty Norwegian kings. They refused to serve masters who
could order them into a war that was the king's and not their
own. They were all of them brave warriors and I am afraid lived
chiefly on piracy. When you read these sagas, you will probably
be horrified by all the talk of fighting and killing. But these men
wanted above all to be free, and they respected the right of
others to be as free as they were themselves. They fought over
possessions or honor, but not for power over others.
"N aturally, we cannot tell to what extent these sagas are based
on historical fact. But within these terse chronicles of life in
Iceland we can sense a great poetic force, so that it is not surpris-
ing that they should have continued to mold our ideas of
freedom to this day. Life in Britain, also, where the Normans
were once so prominent, has been stamped by this spirit of
independence. The British form of democracy, the Englishman's
sense of fairness and respect for the ideas and interests of others,
his high regard for justice and law, may well derive from the
same source. No doubt, that is why the British were able to build
up a great empire. Admittedly, they, too, wei·e guilty of acts of
violence, much as the old Vikings were."
It was afternoon now, and we were walking close to the shore,
through small fishermen's villages. Across the Oresund we could
see the Swedish coast a few miles away bathed in the setting sun.
When we reached Helsingor, it was getting dark, but we decided
to take a quick walk through the precincts of Kronborg Castle,
which dominates the narrowest part of the Oresund, and whose
 LESSONS IN POLITICS AND HISTORY 51
ramparts still bristle with old guns, symbols of a power long since
gone. Bohr began to tell me about the history of this castle.
Frederick II of Denmark had it built toward the end of the
sixteenth century, in the Dutch Renaissance style. The walls no
less than the bastion jutting out far into the óresund serve as
reminders of its military past. In the seventeenth century Swedish
prisoners of war were still locked up in its casements. But now, as
we stood next to the old guns in the dusk looking alternately
across at the sailing boats on the óresund and the tall Renais-
sance building behind us, we clearly sensed the harmony of a
spot in which struggle had long since ceased. True, you still feel
the pull of forces that once drove men against one another,
destroying ships, raising críes of victories and screams of despair,
but you also know that they no longer shape people's lives. One
gets a direct, almost physical sense of peace ali around.
Kronborg Castle, or rather the spot on which 1t stands, is
connected with the legend of Hamlet, the Danish Prince who
went mador shammed madness to escape the machinations of his
murderous uncle. Bohr mentioned the legend and went on to
say: "Isn't it strange how this castle changes as soon as one
imagines that Hamlet lived here? As scientists we believe that a
castle consists only of stones, and admire the way the architect
put them together. The stones, the green roof with its patina, the
wood carvings in the church, constitute the whole castle. None of
this should be changed by the fact that Hamlet Iived here, and
yet it is changed completely. Suddenly the walls and the ram-
parts speak a quite different language. The courtyard becomes an
entire world, a dark corner reminds us of the darkness in the
human soul, we hear Hamlet's 'To be or not to be.' Yet ali we
really know about Hamlet is that his name appears in a thir-
teenth-century chronicle. No one can prove that he really lived,
let alone that he lived here. But everyone knows the questions
Shakespeare had him ask, the human depths he was made to
reveal, and so, he, too, had to be found a place on earth, here in
Kronborg. And once we know that, Kronborg becomes quite a
different castle for us."
While we were talking, dusk had turned almost into night; a
cold wind was blowing across the óresund and forced us to leave.
By next morning, the wind had freshened considerably. The
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

sky was swept clean, and across the bright blue Baltic we could
see the Swedish coast as far as Kullen Peninsula in the north. We
walked westward along the northern shore of Zealand, sorne
seventy to a hundred feet above sea level and here and there
sheer above the waves. Looking across to Kullen, Bohr said: "You
grew up in Munich close to the mountains, and you have told me
a great deal about your mountain walks. I know that mountain-
dwellers must find Denmark terribly flat and boring. Perhaps you
will never be able to like my country. But to us the sea is all-
important. As we look across it, we think that part of infinity lies
within our grasp."
"I can sense that," I replied, "and I noticed it particularly in
the faces of the fishermen we met yesterday on the beach-people
here have a distant, serene Iook. In the mountains things are
quite different. There the eye passes from the nearby detail over
rather complicated rock formations or icy peaks straight up to
the sky. Perhaps that is why our people are so gay."
"We have only one mountain in Denmark," Bohr explained.
"It is just over five hundred feet high and strikes us as so mag-
nificent that we call it the Heavenly Peak. It is said that,
when one of our compatriots tried to impress a Norwegian friend
with this splendid phenomenon, the visitor looked at it disdain-
fully and said, 'That's what we call a dump in Norway.' I hope
you won't be so hard on our landscape. But please tell me some-
thing about your own mountain walks with friends from the
Youth Movement."
"We often set out for severa! weeks at a time. Last summer we
went from Würzburg across the Rhon Mountains as far as the
southern edge of the Harz Mountains, and from there by way of
Jena and Weimar back into the Thuringian Forest and on to
Bamberg. When it's warm enough, we usually sleep out in the
open, but more often we sleep in a tent, or, if the weather is too
bad, in a farmer's hay barn. Sometimes to pay for our shelter, we
help with the harvest, and occasionally, if we make ourselves
particularly useful, we get all sorts of wonderful farm fare as
well. Otherwise we cook for ourselves, generally over a campfire
in the forest, and in the evenings we read stories by the light of
the logs or we sing or play music. Members of the Youth Move-
 LESSONS IN POLITICS AND HISTORY 53
ment have collected many old folk songs and have arranged them
for parts with violin and flute accompaniment. Such music-
making gives us all a great deal of pleasure, even though we
often play it badly rather than well.
''Perhaps we sometimes imagine ourselves in the medieval role
of traveling scholars, and compare the catastrophe of the last war
and the subsequent political strife with the hopeless confusion of
the Thirty Years' War, which in spite of its horrors is said to have
inspired many of these songs. A feeling of kinship with that age
seems to have seized young people all over Germany. I remember
being stopped in the street by an unknown hoy, who asked me to
join a mass meeting of young people in an ancient castle. And,
indeed, when I got there, seores of young people were already
streaming toward the place, which stands in a most picturesque
spot in the Swabian Jura and looks down from an almost vertical
rock into the Altmühl Valley. I was quite overcome by the forces
generated at this spontaneous gathering, muchas I was on the first
of August, 1914. Otherwise, our Youth Movement has very little
to do with political issues."
"The life you describe seems highly romantic, and I would be
quite tempted to share it. Moreover, I can see that you are
swayed by the chivalrous ideals of which we spoke yesterday. But
you don't have to take an oath, do you, before you join, as the
Freemasons do?"
"No, there is no written or even unwritten rule to which we
have to adhere. Most of us are far too skeptical for any such
rituals. But perhaps I ought to add that we do observe certain
rules, although no one orders us to. For instance, we don't smoke>
we drink very little, we dress far too simply for our parents>
liking, and I don't think any of us are very interested in night
life or in bars-but there is no written code."
"And what happens if one of you breaks these rules?"
"I don't know, perhaps we simply laugh at him. But it just
doesn't happen."
"Isn't it uncanny, or perhaps I should say marvelous," said
Bohr, "how much magical power the old images retain? That
after so many centuries they should still affect people, without
written laws or externa! coercion? We spoke yesterday of monas-
54 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

tic vows, and the monk's first two rules are highly commendable.
Nowadays they amount to modesty anda willingness to adopt a
somewhat harder, more continent life. But I hope you won't
stress the third rule, obedience, too soon, or else there may be
dangerous political consequences. You know that I think far
more highly of the two Icelanders, Egill and Njáll, than of the
masters of your Prussian orders.
"But you have told me that you were present during the civil
war in Munich. You must surely have wondered about such
general questions as the role of the state in the life of society.
What bearing does all this have on your life in the Youth
Movement?"
"During the civil war," I replied, "I sided with the govern-
ment because the whole fight seemed quite senseless to me, and I
hoped that it would end more quickly that way. But I must
admit that I hada rather bad conscience toward our opponents.
Ordinary Germans, and particularly the workers, had fought
wholeheartedly for our victory in the war, had made the same
sacrifices as everyone else. Their criticism of the ruling classes was
absolutely justified, for our rulers had confronted the German
people with an insoluble problem. Hence I felt that it was abso-
lutely essential to make friendly contacts with the workers as
soon as the civil war was over. That was also the view of a great
many members of the Youth Movement.
"Four years ago, for instance, we helped run extracurricular
classes in Munich, and I myself was rash enough to give a series
of lectures on astronomy, pointing out the various constellations
to sorne hundreds of workers and their wives, describing the
motions of the planets and their distances from each other, and
trying to interest them in the structure of our Milky Way. With a
young lady, I also helped give a course of lectures on the German
opera. She sang arias and I accom panied her on the piano; and
afterward she would give brief summaries of the history and
structure of the various operas. The whole thing was amateurish
in the extreme, but I do believe that the audience appreciated
our good intentions and that they enjoyed our recitals as muchas
we did. This was also the time when many young people in the
Youth Movement tumed to elementary school teaching, as a
result of which I imagine that many of our elementary schools
 LESSONS IN POLITICS AND HISTORY 55
have much better teachers than quite a few of our so-called high
schools.
"I quite understand why people abroad might look upon our
Youth Movement as too romantic and idealistic, and why they
are afraid it might be diverted into the wrong political channels.
But I have no fears on that score, certainly not in the immediate
present-after ali, a great deal of good has already come out of
the movement. I am thinking particularly of the revival of
interest in old music-in Bach, plain song and ballads-of at-
tempts to revive the old handicrafts, to bring beauty into the
homes of even the very poor, and of ali the efforts to awaken
interest in the arts through amateur dramatic or music groups."
"I'm glad to see that you're so optimistic," Bohr said. "But
now and then our papers also tell us about more ominous, anti-
Semitic, trends in Germany, obviously fostered by demagogues.
Have you come across any of that yourself?"
"Yes, in Munich such groups have begun to make quite a bit
of a noise. They enjoy the support of sorne of the old officers
who've been unable to come to terms with Germany's defeat. But
we don't take these groups very seriously. After ali, you can't base
rational politics on resentment alone. What is far worse is that
reputable scientists should see fit to repeat all this stuff like so
many parrots."
And I told him of my experiences in Lei pzig, where relativity
theory had been the subject of political slanders. At the time
neither of us had the least idea just what terrible consequences
would one day spring from these apparently unimportant politi-
cal aberrations, but more of this later. At the time Bohr's reply
was directed at the resentful old officers as much as at the physi-
cist who refused to come to terms with relativity theory.
"You see, once again I prefer the English attitude to the
German. The English try to play the game, but they also try to
be good losers. Prussians, on the other hand, think that losing is a
disgrace, though they, too, preach magnanimity in victory,
and that I find highly creditable. But the English go one step
further: they expect the vanquished to be magnanimous to the
victor, to accept their defeat and to bear no grudges. If they can,
they have achieved the next best thing to victory. They are free
men among free people. I am ren1inded of the old Vikings again.
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

Perhaps that makes me a romantic in your eyes, but I take the

whole thing much more seriously than you may perhaps believe."
"Oh, no, I see how serious you are," I told him.
We had meanwhile reached Gilleleje, on the northern tip of
Zealand. The beach, which in summer is crowded with happy
holiday makers, was utterly deserted on this cold day. We picked
up a few flat stones and tried our skill at making them skim the
water, or aimed them at old fishermen's baskets or bits of drift-
wood. Bohr told me that, shortly after the war, he had visited
this beach with Kramers, and that they had spotted a German
mine with its detonator sticking up above the waves. They had
tried to throw stones at the detonator but had merely kept hit-
ting the mine itself-until they realized that if either of them
had scored a bull's-eye, there would have been no one to tell the
tale.
On the rest of our walk, too, Bohr and I amused ourselves by
flinging stones at distant objects. On one occasion this activity
again gave rise to a conversation about the powers of the imagi-
nation. I happened to see a telegraph pole quite a long distance
away, almost too far to be reached with a stone. When the
improbable nevertheless happened, and I hit it on my first
attempt, Bohr became reflective: "If you had thought first about
your aim, or about the correct angle of your arm and wrist, you
wouldn't have had the least chance of scoring a hit. But since you
were unreasonable enough to imagine that you could hit the
target without special effort, why, you did it." We then had a
lengthy discussion about the role of images and concepts in
atomic physics. But more of this in another chapter.
We spent the night in a lonely inn at the edge of a forest in the
northwestern part of the island. Next morning Bohr showed me
around his country house in Tisvilde, in which we were later to
have so many conversations about atomic physics. At this time of
the year, the house was not yet ready to receive guests. Then we
made our way back to Copenhagen and stopped briefly in
Hillerod, catching a glimpse of Frederiksborg Castle, a splendid
Renaissance building in the Dutch style. lt was surrounded by a
lake and parklands and had obviously once served as a royal
hunting lodge. I could sense that Bohr hada much greater liking
 LESSONS IN POLITICS AND HISTORY 57
for Hamlet's castle in Kronborg than for this rather trivial
monument to the courtly life. No wonder, therefore, that the
conversation turned back to atomic physics, a subject that was to
fill so many of our future thoughts and perhaps the most impor-
tant part of our lives.
 5
Quantum Mechanics and
a Talk with Einstein (1925-1926)

During these critica! years, atomic physics developed much as

Niels Bohr had predicted it would during our walk over the
Rain Mountain. The difficulties and inner contradictions that
stood in the way of a true understanding of atoms and their
stability seemed unlikely to be removed or even reduced-on the
contrary, they became still more acute. All attempts to surmount
them with the conceptual tools of the older physics appeared
doomed to failure.
There was, for instance, the discovery by the American physi-
cist, Arthur Holly Compton, that light (or more precisely X-
rays) changes its wavelength when radiation is scattered by free
electrons. This result could be explained by Einstein's hypothesis
that light consists of small corpuscles or packets of energy, mov-
ing through space with great velocity and occasionally-e.g.,
during the process of scattering-colliding with an electron. On
the other hand, there was a great deal of experimental evidence
to suggest that the only basic difference between light and radio
waves was that the former are of shorter length; in other words,
that a light ray is a wave and nota stream of particles. Moreover,
attempts by the Dutch physicist, Ornstein, to determine the
intensity ratio of spectral lines in a so-called multi plet had pro-
d uced very strange results. These ratios can be determined with
the help of Bohr's theory. Now it appeared that, although the
formulae derived from Bohr's theory were incorrect, a 1ninor
modification produced new formulae that fitted the experimental
 QUANTUM MECHANICS AND A TALK WITH EINSTEIN 59
results. And so physicists gradually learned to adapt themselves
to a host of diffi.culties. They became used to the fact that the
concepts and models of classical physics were not rigorously
applicable to processes on the atomic scale. On the other hand,
they had come to appreciate that, by skillful use of the resulting
freedom, they could, on occasion, guess the correct mathematical
formulation of sorne of the details.
In the seminars run by Max Born in Gottingen during the
summer of 1924, we had begun to speak of a new quantum
mechanics that would one day oust the old Newtonian
mechanics, and whose vague outlines could already be discerned
here and there. Even during the subsequent winter term, which I
once again spent in Copenhagen, trying to develop Kramers'
theory of dispersion phenomena, our efforts were devoted not so
much to deriving the correct mathematical relationships as to
guessing them from similarities with the formulae of classical
theory.
If I think back on the state of atomic theory in those months, I
always remember a mountain walk with sorne friends from the
Youth Movement, probably in the late autumn of 1924. It took
us from Kreuth to Lake Achen. In the valley the weather was
poor, and the mountains were veiled in clouds. During the
climb, the mist had begun to close in upon us, and, after a
time, we found ourselves in a confused jumble of rocks and
undergrowth with no signs of a track. We decided to keep
climbing, though we felt rather anxious about getting down
again if anything went wrong. All at once the mist became so
dense that we lost sight of one another completely, and could
keep in touch only by shouting. At the same time it grew
brighter overhead, and the light suddenly changed color. We
were obviously under a patch of moving fog. Then, quite sud-
denly, we could see the edge of a steep rock face, straight ahead
of us, bathed in bright sunlight. The next moment the fog had
closed u p again, but we had seen enough to take our bearings
from the map. After a further ten minutes of hard climbing we
were standing in the sun-at saddle height above the sea of fog.
To the south we could see the peaks of the Sonnwend Mountains
and beyond them the snowy tops of the Central Alps, and we all
breathed a sigh of relief.
60 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

In atomic physics, likewise, the winter of 1924-1925 had obvi-

ously brought us to a realm where the fog was thick but where
sorne light had begun to filter through and held out the promise
of exciting new vistas.
In the summer term of 1925, when I resumed my research work
at the University of Gottingen-since July 1924 I had been
Privatdozent at that university-1 made a first attempt to guess
what formulae would enable one to express the line intensities of
the hydrogen spectrum, using more or less the same methods that
had proved so fruitful in my work with Kramers in Copenhagen.
This attempt led to a dead end-I found myself in an impene-
trable morass of complicated mathematical equations, with no
way out. But the work helped to convince me of one thing: that
one ought to ignore the problem of electron orbits inside the
atom, and treat the frequencies and amplitudes associated with
the line intensities as perfectly good substitutes. In any case, these
magnitudes could be observed directly, andas my friend Otto had
pointed out when expounding on Einstein's theory during our
bicycle tour round Lake Walchensee, physicists must consider
none but observable magnitudes when trying to solve the atomic
puzzle. My attempt to apply this scheme to the hydrogen atom
had come to grief on the com plications of this particular problem.
Accordingly, I looked for a simpler mathematical system and
found it in the pendulum, whose oscillations could serve as a
model for the molecular vibrations treated by atomic physics. My
work along these lines was advanced rather than retarded by an
unfortunate personal setback.
Toward the end of May 1925, I fell so ill with hay fever that I
had to ask Born for fourteen days' leave of absence. I made
straight for Heligoland, where I hoped to recover quickly in the
bracing sea air, far from blossoms and meadows. On my arrival I
must have looked quite a sight with my swollen face; in any case,
my landlady took one look at me, concluded that I had been in a
fight and promised to nurse me through the aftereffects. My room
was on the second floor, and since the house was built high up on
the southern edge of the rocky island, I had a glorious view over
the village, and the dunes and the sea beyond. As I sat on my
balcony, I had ample opportunity to reflect on Bohr's remark
that part of infinity seems to lie within the grasp of those who
look across the sea.
 QUANTUM MECHANICS ANDA TALK WITH EINSTEIN 61
Apart from daily walks and long swims, there was nothing in
Heligoland to distract me from my problem, and so I made much
swifter progress than I would have done in Gottingen. A few
days were enough to jettison all the mathematical ballast that
invariably encumbers the beginning of such attempts, and to
arrive ata simple formulation of my problem. Within a few days
more, it had become clear to me what precisely had to take the
place of the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantum conditions in an atomic
physics working with none but observable magnitudes. It also
became obvious that with this additional assumption I had
introduced a crucial restriction into the theory. Then I noticed
that there was no guarantee that the new mathematical scheme
could be put into operation without contradictions. In particu-
lar, it was completely uncertain whether the principie of the
conservation of energy would still apply, and I knew only too
well that my scheme stood or fell by that principie.
Other than that, however, several calculations showed that the
scheme seemed quite self-consistent. Hence I concentrated on
demonstrating that the conservation law held, and one evening I
reached the point where I was ready to determine the individual
terms in the energy table, or, as we put it today, in the energy
matrix, by what would now be considered an extremely clumsy
series of calculations. When the first terms seemed to accord with
the energy principie, I became rather excited, and I began to
make countless arithmetical errors. As a result, it was almost
three o'clock in the morning before the final result of 1ny compu-
tations lay before me. The energy principie had held for all the
terms, and I could no longer doubt the mathematical consistency
and coherence of the kind of quantum mechanics to which my
calculations pointed. At first, I was deeply alarmed. I had the
feeling that, through the surface of atomic phenomena, I was
looking at a strangely beautiful interior, and felt almost giddy at
the thought that I now had to probe this wealth of mathematical
structures nature had so generously spread out before me. I was
far too excited to sleep, and so, as a new day dawned, I made for
the southern tip of the island, where I had been longing to climb
a rock jutting out into the sea. I now did so without too much
trouble, and waited for the sun to rise.
What I saw during that night in Heligoland was admittedly
not very much more than the sunlit rock edge I had glimpsed in
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

the autumn of 1924, but when I reported my results to Wolfgang

Pauli, generally my severest critic, he warmly encouraged me to
continue along the path I had taken. In Gottingen, Max Born
and Pascual Jordan took stock of the new possibilities, and in
Cambridge the young English mathematician Paul Dirac devel-
oped his own methods for solving the problems involved, and
after only a few months the concentrated efforts of these men led
to the emergence of a coherent mathematical framework, one
that promised to embrace all the multifarious aspects of atomic
physics. Of the extremely intensive work which kept us breathless
for a few months I shall say nothing here; instead, I shall report
my talk with Albert Einstein following a lecture on the new
quantum mechanics in Berlin.
At the time, the University of Berlin was considered the strong-
hold of physics in Germany, with such renowned figures as
Planck, Einstein, von Laue and Nernst. It was here that Planck
had discovered quantum theory and that Rubens had confirmed
it by special measurements of thermal radiation; it was here that
Einstein had formulated his general theory of relativity and his
theory of gravitation in 1916. At the center of scientific life was
the so-called physics colloquium, which probably went back to
the time of Helmholtz and which was generally attended by the
entire staff of the physics department. In the spring of 1926, I was
invited to address this distinguished body on the new quantum
mechanics, and since this was my first chance to meet so
many famous men, I took good careto give a clear account of the
concepts and mathematical foundations of what was then a most
unconventional theory. I apparently managed to arouse Ein-
stein's interest, for he invited me to walk home with him so that
we might discuss the new ideas at greater length.
On the way, he asked about my studies and previous research.
As soon as we were indoors, he opened the conversation with a
question that bore on the philosophical background of my recent
work. "What you have told us sounds extremely strange. You
assume the existence of electrons inside the atom, and you are
probably quite right to do so. But you refuse to consider their
orbi ts, even though we can observe electron tracks in a cloud
chamber. I should very much like to hear more about your
reasons for making such strange assumptions."
 QUANTUM MECHANICS ANDA TALK WITH EINSTEIN 63
"We cannot observe electron orbits inside the atom," I must
have replied, "but the radiation which an atom emits during
discharges enables us to deduce the frequencies and correspond-
ing amplitudes of its electrons. After all, even in the older physics
wave numbers and amplitudes could be considered substitutes
for electron orbits. Now, since a good theory must be based on
directly observable magnitudes, I thought it more fitting to re-
strict myself to these, treating them, as it were, as representatives
of the electron orbits."
"But you don't seriously believe," Einstein protested, "that
none but observable magnitudes must go into a physical theory?"
"Isn't that precisely what you have done with relativity?" I
asked in sorne surprise. "After all, you did stress the fact that it is
impermissible to speak of absolute time, simply because absolute
time cannot be observed; that only dock readings, be it in the
moving reference system or the system at rest, are relevant to the
determination of time."
"Possibly I did use this kind of reasoning," Einstein ad-
mitted, "but it is nonsense all the same. Perhaps I could put it
more diplomatically by saying that it may be heuristically useful
to keep in mind what one has actually observed. But on prin-
cipie, it is quite wrong to try founding a theory on observable
magnitudes alone. In reality the very opposite happens. It is the
theory which decides what we can observe. You must appreciate
that observation is a very complicated process. The phenomenon
under observation produces certain events in our measuring
apparatus. As a result, further processes take place in the appa-
ratus, which eventually and by complicated paths produce sense
impressions and help us to fix the effects in our consciousness.
Along this whole path-from the phenomenon to its fixation in
our consciousness-we must be able to tell how nature functions,
must know the natural laws at least in practica} terms, before we
can claim to have observed anything at all. Only theory, that is,
knowledge of natural laws, enables us to deduce the underlying
phenomena from our sense impressions. When we claim that we
can observe something new, we ought really to be saying that,
although we are about to formulate new natural laws that do not
agree with the old ones, we nevertheless assume that the existing
laws-covering the whole path from the phenomenon to our
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

consciousness-function in such a way that we can rely upon

them and hence speak of 'observations.'
"In the theory of relativity, for instance, we presuppose that,
even in the moving reference system, the light rays traveling from
the dock to the observer's eye behave more or less as we have
always expected them to behave. And in your theory, you quite
obviously assume that the whole mechanism of light transmission
from the vibrating atom to the spectroscope or to the eye works
justas one has always supposed it does, that is, essentially accord-
ing to Maxwell's laws. If that were no longer the case, you could
not possibly observe any of the magnitudes you call observable.
Your claim that you are introducing none but observable mag-
nitudes is therefore an assumption about a property of the theory
that you are trying to formulate. You are, in fact, assuming
that your theory does not clash with the old description of radia-
tion phenomena in the essential points. You may well be right, of
course, but you cannot be certain."
I was completely taken aback by Einstein's attitude, though I
found his arguments convincing. Hence I said: "The idea that a
good theory is no more than a condensation of observations in
accordance with the principie of thought economy surely goes
back to Mach, and it has, in fact, been said that your relativity
theory makes decisive use of Machian concepts. But what you
have just told me seems to indicate the very opposite. What am I
to make of all this, or rather what do you yourself think about
it?"
"It's a very long story, but we can go into it if you like.
Mach's concept of thought economy probably contains part of
the truth, but strikes me as being just a bit too trivial. Let me
first of all produce a few arguments in its favor. We obviously
grasp the world by way of our senses. Even when small children
learn to speak and to think, they do so by recognizing the possi-
bility of describing highly complicated but somehow related
sense impressions with a single word, for instance, the word 'ball.'
They learn it from adults and get the satisfaction that they can
make themselves understood. In other words, we may argue
that the formation of the word, and hence of the concept, 'hall' is
a kind of thought economy enabling the child to combine very
complicated sense impressions in a simple way. Here Mach does
 QUANTUM MECHANICS ANDA TALK WITH EINSTEIN 65
not even enter into the question which mental or physical
predispositions must be satisfied in man-or the small child-
before the process of communication can be initiated. With
animals, this process works considerably less effectively, as every-
one knows, but we shan't talk about that now. Now Mach also
thinks that the formation of scientific theories, however complex,
takes place in a similar way. We try to order the phenomena, to
reduce them to a simple form, until we can describe what may be
a large number of them with the aid of a few simple concepts.
"All this sounds very reasonable, but we must nevertheless ask
ourselves in what sense the principie of mental economy is being
applied here. Are we thinking of psychological or of logical econ-
omy, or, again, are we dealing with the subjective or the objec-
tive side of the phenomena? When the child forms the concept
'hall,' does he introduce a purely psychological simplification in
that he combines complicated sense impressions by means of this
concept, or does this hall really exist? Mach would probably
answer that the two statements express one and the same fact.
But he would be quite wrong to do so. To begin with, the asser-
tion 'The hall really exists' also contains a number of statements
about possible sense impressions that may occur in the future.
Now future possibilities and expectations make up a very impor-
tant part of our reality, and must not be simply forgotten.
Moreover, we ought to remember that inferring concepts and
things from sense impressions is one of the basic presuppositions
of all our thought. Hence, if we wanted to speak of nothing but
sense impressions, we should have to rid ourselves of our lan-
guage and thought. In other words, Mach rather neglects the fact
that the world really exists, that our sense impressions are based
on something objective.
"I have no wish to appear as an advocate of a naYve form of
realism; I know that these are very difficult questions, but then I
consider Mach's concept of observation also much too naive. He
pretends that we know perfectly well what the word 'observe'
means, and thinks this exem pts him from having to discrimina te
between 'objective' and 'subjective' phenomena. No wonder his
principie has so suspiciously commercial a name: 'thought econ-
omy.' His idea of simplicity is much too subjective for me. In
reality, the simplicity of natural laws is an objective fact as well,
66 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

and the correct conceptual scheme must balance the subjective

side of this simplicity with the objective. But that is a very diffi-
cult task. Let us rather return to your lecture.
"I have a strong suspicion that, precisely because of the
problems we have just been discussing, your theory will one day
get you into hot water. I should like to explain this in greater
detail. When it comes to observation, you behave as if everything
can be left as it was, that is, as if you could use the old descriptive
language. In that case, however, you will also have to say: in a
cloud chamber we can observe the path of the electrons. At the
same time, you claim that there are no electron paths inside the
atom. This is obvious nonsense, for you cannot possibly get rid of
the path simply by restricting the space in which the electron
moves."
I tried to come to the defense of the new quantum mechanics.
"For the time being, we have no idea in what language we must
speak about processes inside the atom. True, we have a mathe-
ma tical language, tha t is, a ma thema tical scheme for determining
the stationary states of the atom or the transition probabilities
from one state to another, but we do not know-at least not in
general-how this language is related to that of classical physics.
And, of course, we need this connection if we are to apply this
theory to experiments in the first place. For when it comes to
experiments, we invariably speak in the traditional language.
Hence I cannot really claim that we have 'understood' quantum
mechanics. I assume that the mathematical scheme works, but no
link with the traditional language has been established so far.
And until that has been done, we cannot hope to speak of the
path of the electron in the cloud chamber without inner contra-
dictions. Hence it is probably much too early to solve the diffi-
culties you have mentioned."
"Very well, I will accept that," Einstein said. "We shall talk
about it again in a few years' time. But perhaps I may put
another question to you. Quantum theory as you have ex-
pounded it in your lecture has two distinct faces. On the one
hand, as Bohr himself has rightly stressed, it explains the stability
of the atom; it causes the same forms to reappear time and again.
On the other hand, it explains that strange discontinuity or
inconstancy of nature which we observe quite clearly when we
 QUANTUM MECHANICS AND A TALK WITH EINSTEIN 67
watch flashes of light on a scintillation screen. These two aspects
are obviously connected. In your quantum mechanics you will
have to take both into account, for instance when you speak of
the emission of light by atoms. You can calculate the discrete
energy values of the stationary states. Your theory can thus
account for the stability of certain forms that cannot merge con-
tinuously into one another, but must differ by finite amounts
and seem capable of permanent re-formation. But what happens
during the emission of light? As you know, I suggested that,
when an atom drops suddenly from one stationary energy value
to the next, it emits the energy difference as an energy packet, a
so-called light quantum. In that case, we have a particularly clear
example of discontinuity. Do you think that my conception is
correct? Or can you describe the transition from one stationary
state to another in a more precise way?"
In my reply, I must have said something like this: "Bohr has
taught me that one cannot describe this process by means of the
traditional concepts, i.e., as a process in time and space. With
that, of course, we have said very little, no more, in fact, than
that we do not know. Whether or not I should believe in light
quanta, I cannot say at this stage. Radiation quite obviously
involves the discontinuous elements to which you refer as light
quanta. On the other hand, there is a continuous element, which
appears, for instance, in interference phenomena, and which is
much more simply described by the wave theory of light. But you
are of course quite right to ask whether quantum mechanics has
anything new to say on these terribly difficult problems. I believe
that we may at least hope that it will one day.
"I could, for instance, imagine that we should obtain an inter-
esting answer if we considered the energy fluctuations of an atom
during reactions with other atoms or with the radiation field. If
the energy should change discontinuously, as we expect from
your theory of light quanta, then the fluctuation, or, in more
precise mathematical terms, the mean square fluctuation, would
be greater than if the energy changed continuously. I am in-
clined to believe that quantum mechanics would lead to the
greater value, and so establish the discontinuity. On the other
hand, the continuous element, which appears in interference
experiments, must also be taken into account. Perhaps one must
68 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

imagine the transitions from one stationary state to the next as so

many fade-outs in a film. The change is not sudden-one picture
gradually fades while the next comes into focus so that, for a
time, both pictures beco me conf u sed and one does not know
which is which. Similarly, there may well be an intermediate state
in which we cannot tell whether an atom is in the upper or the
lower state."
"You are moving on very thin ice," Einstein warned me. "For
you are suddenly speaking of what we know about nature and no
longer about what nature really does. In science we ought to be
concerned solely with what nature does. It might very well be
that you and I know quite different things about nature. But
who would be interested in that? Perhaps you and I alone. To
everyone else it is a matter of complete indifference. In other
words, if your theory is right, you will have to tell me sooner or
later what the atom does when it passes from one stationary state
to the next."
"Perhaps," I may have answered. "But it seems to me that you
are using language a little too strictly. Still, I do admit that
everything that I might now say may sound like a cheap excuse.
So let's wait and see how atomic theory develops."
Einstein gave me a skeptical look. "How can you really have so
much faith in your theory when so many crucial problems
remain completely unsolved?"
I must certainly have thought for a long time before I pro-
duced my answer. "I believe, just like you, that the simplicity of
natural laws has an objective character, that it is not just the
result of thought economy. If nature leads us to mathematical
forms of great simplicity and beauty-by forms I am referring to
coherent systems of hypotheses, axioms, etc.-to forms that no
one has previously encountered, we cannot help thinking that
they are 'true,' that they revea} a genuine feature of nature. It
may be that these forms also cover our subjective relationship to
nature, that they reflect elements of our own thought economy.
But the mere fact that we could never have arrived at these forms
by ourselves, that they were revealed to us by nature, suggests
strongly that they must be part of reality itself, not just of our
thoughts about reality.
"You may object that by speaking of simplicity and beauty I
 QUANTUM MECHANICS ANDA TALK WITH EINSTEIN 69
am introducing aesthetic criteria of truth, and I frankly admit
that I am strongly attracted by the simplicity and beauty of the
mathematical schemes with which nature presents us. You must
have felt this, too: the almost frightening simplicity and whole-
ness of the relationships which nature suddenly spreads out
before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared.
And this feeling is something completely different from the joy
we feel when we have done a set task particularly well. That is
one reason why I hope that the problems we have been discussing
will be solved in one way or another. In the present case, the
simplicity of the mathematical scheme has the further conse-
quence that it ought to be possible to think up many experi-
ments whose results can be predicted from the theory. And if the
actual experiments should bear out the predictions, there is little
doubt but that the theory reflects nature accurately in this par-
ticular realm.''
"Control by experiment," Einstein agreed, "is, of course, an
essential prerequisite of the validity of any theory. But one can't
possibly test everything. That is why I am so interested in your
remarks about simplicity. Still, I should never claim that I really
understood what is meant by the simplicity of natural laws."
After talking about the role of truth criteria in physics for
quite a bit longer, I took my leave. I next met Einstein a year
and a half later, at the Solvay Congress in Brussels, where the
epistemological and philosophical bases of quantum theory once
again formed the subject of the most exciting discussions.
 6
Fresh Fields (1926-1927)

lf I were asked what was Christopher Columbus' greatest

achievement in discovering America, my answer would not be
that he took advantage of the spherical shape of the earth to get
to India by the western route-this idea had occurred to others
before him-or that he prepared his expedition meticulously and
rigged his ships most expertly-that, too, others could have done
equally well. His most remarkable feat was the decision to leave
the known regions of the world and to sail westward, far beyond
the point from which his provisions could have got him back
home again.
In science, too, it is impossible to open up new territory unless
one is prepared to leave the safe anchorage of established doc-
trine and run the risk of a hazardous leap forward. With his
relativity theory, Einstein had abandoned the concept of simul-
taneity, which was part of the solid ground of traditional physics,
and, in so doing, outraged many leading physicists and philoso-
phers and turned them into bitter opponents. In general, scientific
progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration
of new ideas-and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed.
However, when it comes to entering new territory, the very struc-
ture of scientific thought may have to be changed, and that is far
more than most men are prepared to do. How great their reluc-
tance could be had been brought home to me at the Leipzig Con-
gress, and I fully expected that similar obstacles would be placed
in the path of atomic physics.
During the first few months of 1926, at about the same time
that I delivered my lecture in Berlin, Gottingen first became
 FRESH FIELDS

familiar with the work of the Viennese physicist, Erwin Schro-

dinger, who was approaching atomic theory from an entirely
fresh side. The year before, Louis de Broglie in France had
drawn attention to the fact that the strange wave-particle dual-
ism which, at the time, seemed to prevent a rational explanation
of light phenomena might be equally involved in the behavior of
matter, for instance of electrons. Schrodinger developed this idea
further and, by means of a new wave equation, formulated the
law governing the propagation of material waves under the in-
fluence of an electromagnetic field. In Schrodinger's model, the
stationary states of an atomic shell are compared with the sta-
tionary vibrations of a system, for instance of a vibrating string,
except that all the magnitudes normally considered as energies
of the stationary states are treated as frequencies of the sta-
tionary vibrations. The results Schrodinger obtained in this
way fitted in very well with the new quantum mechanics, and
Schrodinger quickly succeeded in proving that his own wave
mechanics was mathematically equivalent to quantum mechan-
ics; in other words, that the two were but different mathematical
formulations of the same structures. Needless to say, we were
delighted by this new development, for it greatly strengthened
our confidence in the correctness of the new mathematical formu-
lation. Moreover, Schrodinger's procedure lent itself readily to
the simplification of calculations that had severely strained the
powers of quantum mechanics.
Unfortunately, however, the physical interpretation of the
mathematical scheme presented us with grave problems. Schro-
dinger believed that, by associating particles with material waves,
he had found a way of clearing the obstacles that had so long
blocked the path of quantum theory. According to him, these
material waves were fully comparable to such processes in space
and time as electromagnetic or sound waves. Such obscure ideas
as quantum jumps would completely disappear. I had no faith in
a theory that ran completely counter to our Copenhagen concep-
tion and was disturbed to see that so many physicists greeted
precisely this part of Schrodinger's doctrine with a sense of
liberation. The many talks I had had with Niels Bohr, Wolfgang
Pauli and many others over the years had convinced me that it
was i1npossible to build up a descriptive time-space model of
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

interatomic processes-the discontinuous element Einstein had

mentioned to me in Berlin as a characteristic feature of atomic
phenomena saw to that. Admittedly, this was no more than a
negative feature, and we were still a long way from a complete
physical interpretation of quantum mechanics, yet we were cer-
tain that we must get away from the idea of objective processes in
time and space.
Now Schrodinger's interpretation-and this was its great novelty
-simply denied the existence of these discontinuities. Thus
when an atom passes from one stationary state to the next, it
was no longer said to change its energy suddenly and to radiate
the difference in the form of an Einsteinian light quanta. Radia-
tion was the result of quite a different process, namely, of the
simultaneous excitation of two stationary material vibrations
whose interference gives rise to the emission of electromagnetic
waves, e.g., light. This hypothesis seemed to me too good to be
true, and I mustered what arguments I could to show that dis-
continuities were a fact of life, however inconvenient. The
simplest argument was, of course, Planck's radiation formula,
whose empirical correctness no one could doubt and which, after
all, had led Planck to his discrete energy quanta.
Toward the end of the 1926 summer term, Sommerfeld invited
Schrodinger to address the Munich seminar. I had been working
in Copenhagen once again and had familiarized myself with
Schrodinger's methods by applying them to the study of the
helium atom. I had finished the work while taking a brief
holiday on Lake Mjosa in Norway, had stuffed the manuscript
into my rucksack and had set out on unmade paths from
Gudbrandsdal, across severa} mountain chains, to Sogne Fjord.
After a short stay in Copenhagen, I finally went on to Munich,
where I intended to spend the rest of the vacation with my
parents-and so I could be present at Schrodinger's lecture, and
discuss his theory with him in person. The audience included the
director of the Institute for Experimental Physics in the Univer-
sity of Munich, Wilhelm Wien, who was extremely skeptical of
Sommerfeld's "atomysticism."
Schrodinger first of all explained the mathematical principles
of wave mechanics by using the hydrogen atom as an illustration.
All of us were delighted to see his elegant and simple solution by
 FRESH FIELDS 73
conventional methods of a problem that Wolfgang Pauli had
been able to solve only with great difficulty using quantum
mechanics. Unfortunately, Schrodinger went on to discuss his
own intepretation of wave mechanics, and his arguments left me
quite unconvinced. During the subsequent discussion, I therefore
raised a number of objections, and, in particular, pointed out
that Schrodinger's conception would not even help explain
Planck's radiation law. For this I was taken to task by Wilhelm
Wien, who told me rather sharply that while he understood my
regrets that quantum mechanics was finished, and with it ali such
nonsense as quantum jumps, etc., the difficulties I had mentioned
would undoubtedly be solved by Schrodinger in the very near
future. Schrodinger himself was not quite so certain in his own
reply, but he, too, remained convinced that it was only a ques-
tion of time before my objections would be removed. My argu-
ments had clearly failed to impress anyone-even Sommerfeld,
who felt most kindly toward me, succumbed to the persuasive
force of Schrodinger's mathematics.
And so I went home rather sadly. It must have been that same
evening that I wrote to Niels Bohr about the unhappy outcome
of the discussion. Perhaps it was as a result of this letter that he
invited Schrodinger to spend part of September in Copenhagen.
Schrodinger agreed, and I, too, sped back to Denmark.
Bohr's discussions with Schrodinger began at the railway sta-
tion and were continued daily from early morning until late at
night. Schrodinger stayed in Bohr's house so that nothing would
interrupt the conversations. And although Bohr was normally
most considerate and friendly in his dealings with people, he
now struck me asan almost remorseless fanatic, one who was not
prepared to make the least concession or grant that he could
ever be mistaken. It is hardly possible to convey just how
passionate the discussions were, just how deeply rooted the
convictions of each, a fact that marked their every utterance.
Ali I can hope to do here is to produce a very pale copy of
conversations in which two men were fighting for their particular
interpretation of the new mathematical scheme with ali the
powers at their command.
Schrodinger: "Surely you realize that the whole idea of quan-
tum jumps is bound to end in nonsense. You claim first of ali
74 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

that if an atom is in a stationary state, the electron revolves

periodically but does not emit light, when, according to Max-
well's theory, it must. Next, the electron is said to jump from one
orbit to the next and to emit radiation. Is this jump supposed to
be gradual or sudden? If it is gradual, the orbital frequency and
energy of the electron must change gradually as well. But in that
case, how do you explain the persistence of fine spectral lines? On
the other hand, if the jump is sudden, Einstein's idea of light
quanta will admittedly lead us to the right wave number, but
then we must ask ourselves how precisely the electron behaves
during the jump. Why does it not emit a continuous spectrum, as
electromagnetic theory demands? And what laws govern its mo-
tion during the jump? In other words, the whole idea of quan-
tum jumps is sheer fantasy."
Bohr: "What you say is absolutely correct. But it does not
prove that there are no quantum jumps. It only proves that we
cannot imagine them, that the representational concepts with
which we describe events in daily life and experiments in classi-
cal physics are inadequate when it comes to describing quantum
jumps. Nor should we be surprised to find it so, seeing that the
processes involved are not the objects of direct experience."
Schrodinger: "I don't wish to enter into long arguments about
the formation of concepts; I prefer to leave that to the philos-
ophers. I wish only to know what happens inside an atom. I don't
really mind what language you choose to discuss it. If there are
electrons in the atom, and if these are particles-as all of us
believe-then they must surely move in sorne way. Right now I
am not concerned with a precise description of this motion, but
it ought to be possible to determine in principie how they behave
in the stationary state or during the transition from one state to
the next. But from the mathematical form of wave or quantum
mechanics alone it is clear that we cannot expect reasonable
answers to these questions. The moment, however, that we
change the picture and say that there are no discrete electrons,
only electron waves or waves of matter, then everything looks
quite different. We no longer wonder about the fine lines. The
emission of light is as easily explained as the transmission of
radio waves through the aerial of the transmitter, and what
seemed to be insoluble contradictions have suddenly disap-
peared.''
 FRESH FIELDS 75
Bohr: "I beg to disagree. The contradictions do not disappear;
they are simply pushed to one side. You speak of the emission of
light by the atom or more generally of the interaction between
the atom and the surrounding radiation field, and you think that
all the problems are solved once we assume that there are mate-
rial waves but no quantum jumps. But just take the case of
thermodynamic equilibrium between the atom and the radiation
field-remember, for instance, the Einsteinian derivation of
Planck's radiation law. This derivation demands that the energy
of the atom should assume discrete values and change discon-
tinuously from time to time; discrete values for the frequencies
cannot help us here. You can't seriously be trying to cast doubt
on the whole basis of quantum theory!"
Schrodinger: "I don't for a moment claim that ali these rela-
tionships have been fully explained. But then you, too, have so
far failed to discover a satisfactory physical interpretation of
quantum mechanics. There is no reason why the application of
thermodynamics to the theory of material waves should not yield
a satisfactory explanation of Planck's formula as well-an ex-
planation that will admittedly look somewhat different from ali
previous ones."
Bohr: "No, there is no hope of that at ali. We have known
what Planck's formula means for the past twenty-five years. And,
quite apart from that, we can see the inconstancies, the sudden
jumps in atomic phenomena quite directly, for instance when we
watch sudden flashes of light on a scintillation screen or the
sudden rush of an electron through a cloud chamber. You cannot
simply ignore these observations and behave as if they did not
exist at all."
Schrodinger: "If all this damned quantum jumping were
really here to stay, I should be sorry I ever got involved with
quantum theory."
Bohr: "But the rest of us are extremely grateful that you did;
your wave mechanics has contributed so much to mathematical
clarity and simplicity that it represents a gigantic advance over
ali previous forros of quantum mechanics."
And so the discussions continued day and night. After a few
days Schrodinger fell ill, perhaps as a result of his enormous
effort; in any case, he was forced to keep to his bed with a
feverish cold. While Mrs. Bohr nursed him and brought in tea
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

and cake, Niels Bohr kept sitting on the edge of the bed talking
at Schrodinger: "But you must surely admit that ... " No real
understanding could be expected since, at the time, neither side
was able to offer a complete and coherent interpretation of
quantum mechanics. For all that, we in Copenhagen felt con-
vinced toward the end of Schrodinger's visit that we were on the
right track, though we fully realized how difficult it would be to
convince even leading physicists that they must abandon all
attempts to construct perceptual models of atomic processes.
During the next few months the physical interpretation of
quantum mechanics was the central theme of all conversations
between Bohr and myself. I was then living on the top floor of
the lnstitute, in a cozy little attic flat with slanting walls and
windows overlooking the trees at the entrance to Faelled Park.
Bohr would often come into my attic late at night, and we con-
structed all sorts of imaginary experiments to see whether we had
really grasped the theory. In so doing, we discovered that the two
of us were trying to resolve the difficulties in rather different
ways. Bohr was trying to allow for the simultaneous existence of
both particle and wave concepts, holding that, though the two
were mutually exclusive, both together were needed for a com-
plete description of atomic processes. I disliked this approach. I
wanted to start from the fact that quantum mechanics as we then
knew it already imposed a unique physical interpretation of
sorne magnitudes occurring in it-for instance, the time averages
of energy, momentum, fluctuations, etc.-so that it looked very
much as if we no longer had any freedom with respect to that
interpretation. lnstead, we would have to try to derive the cor-
rect general interpretation by strict logic from the ready-to-hand,
more special interpretation.
For that reason I was-certainly quite wrongly-rather un-
happy about a brilliant piece of work Max Born had done in
Gottingen. In it, he had treated collisions by Schrodinger's
method and assumed that the square of the Schrodinger wave
function measures, in each point of space and at every instant,
the probability of finding an electron in this point at that in-
stant. I fully agreed with Born's thesis as such, but disliked the
fact that it looked as if we still had sorne freedom of interpreta-
tion: I was firmly convinced that Born's thesis itself was the
 FRESH FIELDS 77
necessary consequence of the fixed interpretation of special mag-
nitudes in quantum mechanics. This conviction was strength-
ened further by two highly informative mathematical studies by
Dirac and Jordan.
Luckily, at the end of our talks, Bohr and I would generally
come to the same conclusions about particular physical experi-
ments, so that there was good reason to think that our divergent
efforts might yet lead to the same result. On the other hand,
neither of us could tell how so simple a phenomenon as the
tra jectory of an electron in a cloud chamber could be reconciled
with the mathematical formulations of quantum or wave
mechanics. Such concepts as tra jectories or orbits did not figure
in quantum mechanics, and wave mechanics could only be
reconciled with the existence of a densely packed beam of matter
if the beam spread over areas much larger than the diameter of
an electron.
Since our talks often continued till long after midnight, and
did not produce a satisfactory conclusion despite protracted
efforts over severa! months, both of us became utterly exhausted
and rather tense. Hence Bohr decided in February 1927 to go
skiing in Norway, and I was quite glad to be left behind in
Copenhagen, where I could think about these hopelessly compli-
cated problems undisturbed. I now concentrated ali my efforts on
the mathematical representation of the electron path in the
cloud chamber, and when I realized fairly soon that the obstacles
before me were quite insurmountable, I began to wonder
whether we might not have been asking the wrong sort of ques-
tion ali along. But where had we gone wrong? The path of the
electron through the cloud chamber obviously existed; one could
easily observe it. The mathematical framework of quantum
mechanics existed as well, and was much too convincing to allow
for any changes. Hence it ought to be possible to establish a
connection between the two, hard though it appeared to be.
It must have been one evening after midnight when I suddenly
remembered my conversation with Einstein and particularly his
statement, "It is the theory which decides what we can observe."
I was immediately convinced that the key to the gate that had
been closed for so long must be sought right here. I decided to go
on a nocturnal walk through Faelled Park and to think further
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

about the matter. We had always said so glibly that the path of
the electron in the cloud chamber could be observed. But per-
haps what we really observed was something much less. Perhaps
we merely saw a series of discrete and ill-defined spots through
which the electron had passed. In fact, all we do see in the cloud
chamber are individual water droplets which must certainly be
much larger than the electron. The right question should there-
fore be: Can quantum mechanics represent the fact that an elec-
tron finds itself approximately in a given place and that it moves
approximately with a given velocity, and can we make these
approximations so close that they do not cause experimental
difficul ties?
A brief calculation after my return to the Institute showed
that one could indeed represent such situations mathematically,
and that the approximations are governed by what would later
be called the uncertainty principie of quantum mechanics: the
product of the uncertainties in the measured values of the posi-
tion and momentum (i.e., the product of mass and velocity)
cannot be smaller than Planck's constant. This formulation, I
felt, established the much-needed bridge between the cloud-
chamber observations and the mathematics of quantum
mechanics. True, it had still to be proved that any experiment
whatsoever was bound to set up situations satisfying the uncer-
tainty principie, but this struck me as plausible a priori, since the
processes involved in the experiment or the observation had
necessarily to satisfy the laws of quantum mechanics. On this
presupposition, experiments are unlikely to produce situations
that do not accord with quantum mechanics. "It is the theory
which decides what we can observe." I resolved to prove this by
calculations based on simple experiments during the next few
days.
Here, too, I was helped by the memory of a conversation I once
had with Burkhard Drude, a fellow student in Gottingen. When
discussing the difficulties involved in the concept of electron
orbits, he had said that it ought to be possible, in principie, to
construct a microscope of extraordinarily high resolving power in
which one could see or photograph the electron paths inside the
atom. Such a microscope would not, of course, work with ordi-
nary light rays, but perhaps with gamma rays. Now this ran
 FRESH FIELDS 79
counter to my hypothesis, according to which not even the best
microscope could cross the limits set by the uncertainty principie.
Hence I had to demonstrate that the princi ple was obeyed even
in this case. 1,his I managed to do, and the proof strengthened
my confidence in the consistency of the new interpretation. After
a few more calculations of this kind, I sat down and summarized
my results in a long letter to Wolfgang Pauli. His encouraging
reply from Hamburg cheered me considerably.
Then Niels Bohr returned from his skiing holiday, and we had
a fresh round of difficult discussions. For Bohr, too, had pursued
his own ideas on wave-corpuscle dualism. Central to his thought
was the concept of complementarity, which he had just intro-
duced to describe a situation in which it is possible to grasp one
and the same event by two distinct modes of interpretation.
These two modes are mutually exclusive, but they also comple-
ment each other, and it is only through their juxtaposition that
the perceptual content of a phenomenon is fully brought out. At
first, Bohr raised a number of objections against the uncertainty
principie, which he probably considered too special a case of the
general rule of complementarity. But he soon afterward realized
-manfully assisted by the Swedish physicist, Oskar Klein, who
was also working in Copenhagen-that there was no serious
difference between the two interpretations, and that all that
mattered now was to represent the facts in such a way that de-
spi te their novelty they could be grasped and accepted by all
physicists.
The matter was thrashed out in the autumn of 1927 at two
physics conferences: the General Physics Congress in Como, at
which Bohr gave a comprehensive account of the new situation,
and the Solvay Congress in Brussels. In accordance with the
wishes of the Solvay Foundation, the latter was attended by a
small group of specialists anxious to discuss the problems of
quantum theory in detail. We all stayed at the same hotel, and
the keenest arguments took place, not in the conference hall but
during the hotel meals. Bohr and Einstein were in the thick of it
all. Einstein was quite unwilling to accept the fundamentally
statistical character of the new quantum theory. Needless to say,
he had no objections against probability statements whenever a
particular system was not known in every last detail-after all,
80 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

the old statistical mechanics and thermodynamics had been

based on just such statements. However, Einstein would not
admit that it was impossible, even in principie, to discover all the
partial facts needed for the complete descri ption of a physical
process. "God does not throw dice" was a phrase we often heard
from his lips in these discussions. And so he refused point-blank
to accept the uncertainty principie, and tried to think up cases in
which the principie would not hold.
The discussion usually started at breakfast, with Einstein
serving us up with yet another imaginery experiment by which
he thought he had definitely refuted the uncertainty principie.
We would at once examine his fresh offering, and on the way to
the conference hall, to which I generally accompanied Bohr and
Einstein, we would clarify sorne of the points and discuss their
relevance. Then, in the course of the day, we would have further
discussions on the matter, and, as a rule, by suppertime we
would have reached the point where Niels Bohr could prove to
Einstein that even his latest experiment failed to shake the
uncertainty principie. Einstein would look a bit worried, but by
next morning he was ready with a new imaginery experiment
more complicated than the last, and this time, so he avowed,
bound to invalidate the uncertainty principie. This attempt
would fare no better by evening, and after the same game had
been continued for a few days, Einstein's friend Paul Ehrenfest,
a physicist from Leyden in Holland, said: "Einstein, I am
ashamed of you; you are arguing against the new quantum
theory just as your opponents argue about relativity theory."
But even this friendly admonition went unheard.
Once again it was driven home to me how terribly difficult it is
to give up an attitude on which one's entire scientific approach
and career have been based. Einstein had devoted his life to
probing into that objective world of physical processes which
runs its course in space and time, independent of us, according to
firm laws. The mathematical symbols of theoretical physics were
also symbols of this objective world and as such enabled physi-
cists to make statements about its future behavior. And now it
was being asserted that, on the atomic scale, this objective world
of time and space did not even exist and that the mathematical
symbols of theoretical physics referred to possibilities rather than
 FRESH FIELDS

to facts. Einstein was not prepared to let us do what, to him,

amounted to pulling the ground from under his feet. Later in
life, also, when quantum theory had long since become an inte-
gral part of modern physics, Einstein was unable to change his
attitude-at best, he was prepared to accept the existence of
quantum theory as a temporary expedient. "God does not throw
dice" was his unshakable principie, one that he would not allow
anybody to challenge. To which Bohr could only counter with:
"Nor is it our business to prescribe to God how He should run
the world."
 7
Science and Religion (1927)

One evening during the Solvay Conference, sorne of the younger

members stayed behind in the lounge of our hotel. This group
included Wolfgang Pauli and myself, and was soon afterward
joined by Paul Dirac. One of us said: "Einstein keeps talking
about God: what are we to make of that? It is extremely difficult
to imagine that a scientist like Einstein should have such strong
ties with a religious tradition."
"Not so much Einstein as Max Planck," sorneone objected.
"From sorne of Planck's utterances it would seem that he sees no
contradiction between religion and science, indeed that he be-
lieves the two are perfectly compatible."
I was asked what I knew of Planck's views on the subject, and
what I thought myself. I had spoken to Planck on only a few
occasions, mostly about physics and not about general questions,
but I was acquainted with sorne of Planck's close friends, who
had told me a great deal about his attitude.
"I assume," I must have replied, "that Planck considers reli-
gion and science compatible because, in his view, they refer to
quite distinct facets of reality. Science deals with the objective,
material world. It invites us to make accurate statements about
objective reality and to grasp its interconnections. Religion, on
the other hand, deals with the world of values. lt considers what
ought to be or what we ought to do, not what is. In science we
are concerned to discover what is true or false; in religion with
what is good or evil, noble or base. Science is the basis of technol-
ogy, religion the basis of ethics. In short, the conflict between the
two, which has been raging since the eighteenth century, seems
 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

founded on a misunderstanding, or, more precisely, on a confu-

sion of the images and parables of religion with scientific state-
ments. Needless to say, the result makes no sense at all. This
view, which I know so well from my parents, associates the two
realms with the objective and subjective aspects of the world
respectively. Science is, so to speak, the manner in which we
confront, in which we argue about, the objective side of reality.
Religious faith, on the other hand, is the expression of the sub-
jective decisions that help us choose the standards by which we
propose to act and live. Admittedly, we generally make these
decisions in accordance with the attitudes of the group to which
we belong, be it our family, nation or culture. Our decisions are
strongly influenced by educational and environmental factors,
but in the final analysis they are subjective and hence not
governed by the 'true or false' criterion. Max Planck, if I under-
stand him rightly, has used this freedom and come down squarely
on the side of the Christian tradition. His thoughts and actions,
particularly as they affect his personal relationships, fit perfectly
into the framework of this tradition, and no one will respect him
the less for i t. As far as he is concerned, therefore, the two
realms-the objective and the subjective facets of the world-are
quite separate, but I must confess that I myself do not feel alto-
gether happy about this separation. I doubt whether human
societies can live with so sharp a distinction between knowledge
and faith."
Wolfgang shared my concern. "It's all bound to end in tears,"
he said. "At the dawn of religion, all the knowledge of a particu-
lar comrnunity fitted into a spiritual framework, based largely on
religious values and ideas. The spiritual framework itself had to
be within the grasp of the simplest member of the community,
even if i ts para bles and images conveyed no more than the
vaguest hint as to their underlying values and ideas. But if he
himself is to live by these values, the average man has to be
convinced that the spiritual framework embraces the entire
wisdom of his society. For 'believing' does not to him mean
'taking for granted,' but rather 'trusting in the guidance' of
accepted values. That is why society is in such danger whenever
fresh knowledge threatens to explode the old spiritual forras.
The complete separation of knowledge and faith can at best
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

be an emergency measure, afford sorne temporary relief. In

Western culture, for instance, we may well reach the point in the
not too distant future where the parables and images of the old
religions will have lost their persuasive force even for the average
person; when that happens, I am afraid that all the old ethics
will collapse like a house of cards and that unimaginable horrors
will be perpetrated. In brief, I cannot really endorse Planck's
philosophy, even if it is logically valid and even though I respect
the human attitudes to which it gives rise.
"Einstein's conception is closer to mine. His God is somehow
involved in the immutable laws of nature. Einstein has a feeling
for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity
of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this simplicity very
strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of rela-
tivity. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I
don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I
rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him.
But as far as he is concerned there is no split between science and
religion: the central order is part of the subjective as well as the
objective realm, and this strikes me as being a far better starting
point."
"A starting point for what?" I asked. "If you consider man's
attitude to the central order a purely personal matter, then you
may agree with Einstein's view, but then you must also concede
that nothing at all follows from this view."
"Perhaps it does," Wolfgang replied. "The development of
science during the past two centuries has certainly changed man's
thinking, even outside the Christian West. Hence it matters
quite a bit what physicists think. And it was precisely the idea of
an objective world running its course in time and space accord-
ing to strict causal laws that produced a sharp clash between
science and the spiritual formulations of the various religions. If
science goes beyond this strict view-and it has done just that
with relativity theory and is likely to go even further with
quantum theory-then the relationship between science and the
contents religions try to express must change once again. Perhaps
science, by revealing the existence of new relationships during
the past thirty years, may have lent our thought much greater
depth. The concept of complementarity, for instance, which
 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Niels Bohr considers so crucial in the interpretation of quantum

theory, was by no means unknown to philosophers, even if they
did not express it so succinctly. However, its very appearance in
the exact sciences has constituted a decisive change: the idea of
material objects that are completely independent of the manner
in which we observe them proved to be nothing but an abstract
extrapolation, something that has no counterpart in nature. In
Asiatic philosophy and Eastern religions we find the comple-
mentary idea of a pure subject of knowledge, one that confronts
no object. This idea, too, will prove an abstract extrapolation,
corresponding to no spiritual or mental reality. If we think about
the wider context, we may in the future be forced to keep a
middle course between these extremes, perhaps the one charted
by Bohr's complementarity concept. Any science that adapts
itself to this form of thinking will not only be more tolerant of
the different forms of religion, but, having a wider over-all view,
may also contribute to the world of values."
Paul Dirac had joined us in the meantime. He had only just
turned twenty-five, and had little time for tolerance. "I don't
know why we are talking about religion," he objected. "If we are
honest-and scientists have to be-we must admit that religion is
a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea
of God is a product of the human imagination. lt is quite un-
derstandable why primitive people, who were so much more
exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today,
should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But
nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we
have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how
the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do
see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions
as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation
of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have
prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means
because its ideas still convince us, but simply because sorne of us
want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much
easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are
also very much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that
allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the
injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence
86 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

the close alliance between those two great political forces, the
State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God
rewards-in heaven if not on earth-all those who have not risen
up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and
uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that
God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as
the worst of ali mortal sins."
"You are simply judging religion by its political abuses," I
objected, "and since most things in this world can be abused-
even the Communist ideology which you recently propounded-
all such judgments are inadmissible. After ali, there will always
be human societies, and these must find a common language in
which they can speak about life and death, and about the wider
context in which their lives are set. The spiritual forms that have
developed historically out of this search for a common language
must have had a great persuasive force-how else could so many
people have lived by them for so many centuries? Religion can't
be dismissed as simply as ali that. But perhaps you are drawn to
another religion, such as the old Chinese, in which the idea of a
personal God does not occur?"
"I dislike religious myths on principie," Paul Dirac replied, "if
only because the myths of the different religions contradict one
another. After ali, it was purely by chance that I was born in
Europe and not in Asia, and that is surely no criterion for judg-
ing what is true or what I ought to believe. And I can only
believe what is true. As for right action, I can deduce it by reason
alone from the situation in which I find myself: I live in society
with others, to whom, on principie, I must grant the same rights
I claim for myself. I must simply try to strike a fair balance; no
more can be asked of me. Ali this talk about God's will, about sin
and repentance, about a world beyond by which we must direct
our lives, only serves to disguise the sober truth. Belief in God
merely encourages us to think that God wills us to submit to a
higher force, and it is this idea which helps to preserve social
structures that may have been perfectly good in their day but no
longer fit the modern world. Ali your talk of a wider context and
the like strikes me as quite unacceptable. Life, when ali is said
and done, is just like science: we come up against difficulties and
have to solve them. And we can never solve more than one diffi-
 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

culty at a time; your wider context is nothing but a mental

superstructure added a posteriori."
And so the discussion continued, and we were ali of us sur-
prised to notice that Wolfgang was keeping so silent. He would
pull a long face or smile rather maliciously from time to time,
but he said nothing. In the end, we had to ask him to tell us
what he thought. He seemed a little surprised and then said:
"Well, our friend Dirac, too, has a religion, and its guiding
principie is: 'There is no God and Dirac is His prophet.' "We ali
laughed, including Dirac, and this brought our evening in the
hotel lounge to a close.
Sorne time later, probably in Copenhagen, I told Niels about
our conversation. He immediately jumped to the defense of the
youngest member of our circle. "I consider it marvelous," he said,
"that Paul should be so uncompromising in his defense of all
that can be expressed in clear and logical language. He believes
that what can be said at ali can be said clearly-or, as Wittgen-
stein put it, that 'whereof one cannot speak thereof one must
be silent.' Whenever Dirac sends me a manuscript, the writ-
ing is so neat and free of corrections that merely looking at it
is an aesthetic pleasure. If I suggest even minor changes, Paul
becomes terribly unhappy and generally changes nothing at ali.
His work is, in any case, quite brilliant. Recently the two of us
went to an exhibition which included a glorious gray-blue sea-
scape by Manet. In the foreground was a boat, and beside it, in
the water, a dark gray spot, whose meaning was not quite clear.
Dirac said, 'This spot is not admissible.' A strange way of looking
at art, but he was probably quite right. In a good work of art,
justas in a good piece of scientific work, every detail must be laid
down quite unequivocally; there can be no room for mere
accident.
"Still, religion is rather a different matter. I feel very much
like Dirac: the idea of a personal God is foreign to me. But we
ought to remember that religion uses language in quite a differ-
ent way from science. The language of religion is more closely
related to the language of poetry than to the language of science.
True, we are inclined to think that science deals with informa-
tion about objective facts, and poetry with subjective feelings.
Hence we conclude that if religion does indeed deal with objec-
88 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

tive truths, it ought to adopt the same criteria of truth as science.

But I myself find the division of the world into an objective and
a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions
through the ages have spoken in images, parables and paradoxes
means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality
to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a
genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a
subjective side won't get us very far.
"That is why I consider those developments in physics during
the last decades which have shown how problematical such
concepts as 'objective' and 'subjective' are, a great liberation of
thought. The whole thing started with the theory of relativity. In
the past, the statement that two events are simultaneous was
considered an objective assertion, one that could be communi-
cated quite simply and that was open to verification by any
observer. Today we know that 'simultaneity' contains a subjec-
tive element, inasmuch as two events that appear simultaneous to
an observer at rest are not necessarily simultaneous to an ob-
server in motion. However, the relativistic description is also
objective inasmuch as every observer can deduce by calculation
what the other observer will perceive or has perceived. For ali
that, we have come a long way from the classical ideal of objec-
tive descriptions.
"In quantum mechanics the departure from this ideal has been
even more radical. We can still use the objectifying language of
classical physics to make statements about observable facts. For
instance, we can say that a photographic plate has been
blackened, or that cloud droplets have formed. But we can say
nothing about the atoms themselves. And what predictions we
base on such findings depend on the way we pose our experi-
mental question, and here the observer has freedom of choice.
Naturally, it still makes no difference whether the observer is a
man, an animal or a piece of apparatus, but it is no longer
possible to make predictions without reference to the observer or
the means of observation. To that extent, every physical process
may be said to have objective and subjective features. The objec-
tive world of nineteenth-century science was, as we know toe.lay,
an ideal, limiting case, but not the whole reality. A<lmittedly,
even in our future encounters with reality we shall have to dis-
 SCIENCE AND RELIGION 89
tinguish between the objective and the subjective side, to make a
division between the two. But the location of the separation may
depend on the way things are looked at; to a certain extent it can
be chosen at will. Hence I can quite understand why we cannot
speak about the content of religion in an objectifying language.
The fact that different religions try to express this content in
quite distinct spiritual forras is no real objection. Perhaps we
ought to look upon these different forras as complementary de-
scriptions which, though they exclude one another, are needed to
convey the rich possibilities flowing from man's relationship with
the central order."
"If you distinguish so sharply between the languages of reli-
gion, science and art," I asked, "what meaning do you attach to
such apodictic statements as 'There is a living God' or 'There is
an immortal soul'? What is the meaning of 'there is' in this type
of language? Science, like Dirac, objects to such formulations. Let
me illustrate the epistemological side of the problem by means of
the following analogy:
"Mathematicians, as everyone knows, work with an imaginary
unit, the square root of -1, called i. We know that i does not
figure among the natural numbers. Nevertheless, important
branches of mathematics, for instance the theory of analytical
functions, are based on this imaginary unit, that is, on the fact
that v'=i exists after all. Would you agree that the statement
'There is a v=T' means nothing else than 'There are importa~t
mathematical relations that are most simply represented by the
introduction of the v=-i concept'? And yet these relations would
exist even without it. That is precisely why this type of mathe-
matics is so useful even in science and technology. What is deci-
sive, for instance, in the theory of functions, is the existence of
important mathematical laws governing the behavior of pairs of
continuous variables. These relations are rendered more compre-
hensible by the introduction of the abstract concept of v=r,
although that concept is not basically needed for our under-
standing, and although it has no counterpart among the natural
numbers. An equally abstract concept is that of infinity, which
also plays a very important role in modern mathematics. It, too,
has no correlate, and moreover raises grave problems. In short,
mathematics introduces ever higher stages of abstraction that
90 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

help us attain a coherent grasp of ever wider realms. To get back

to our original question, is it correct to look upon the religious
'there is' as just another, though different, attempt to reach ever
higher levels of abstraction? An attempt to facilitate our under-
standing of universal connections? After all, the connections
themselves are real enough, no matter into what spiritual forms
we try to fit them."
"With respect to the epistemological side of the problem, your
comparison may pass," Bohr replied. "But in other respects it is
quite inadequate. In mathematics we can take our inner distance
from the content of our statements. In the final analysis mathe-
matics is a mental game that we can play or not play as we
choose. Religion, on the other hand, deals with ourselves, with
our life and death; its promises are meant to govern our actions
and thus, at least indirectly, our very existence. We cannot just
look at them impassively from the outside. Moreover, our atti-
tude to religious questions cannot be separated from our attitude
to society. Even if religion arose as the spiritual structure of a
particular human society, it is arguable whether it has remained
the strongest social molding force throughout history, or whether
society, once formed, develops new spiritual structures and
adapts them to its particular level of knowledge. Nowadays, the
individual seems to be able to choose the spiritual framework of
his thoughts and actions quite freely, and this freedom reflects
the fact that the boundaries between the various cultures and
societies are beginning to become more fluid. But even when an
individual tries to attain the greatest possible degree of independ-
ence, he will still be swayed by the existing spiritual struc-
tures-consciously or unconsciously. For he, too, must be able to
speak of life and death and the human condition to other
members of the society in which he has chosen to live; he must
educate his children according to the norms of that society, fit
into its life. Epistemological sophistries cannot possibly help him
attain these ends. Here, too, the relationship between critica!
thought about the spiritual content of a given religion and
action based on the deliberate acceptancc of that content is
complementary. And such acceptance, if consciously arrived at,
fills the individual with strength of purpose, helps him to over-
come doubts and, if he has to suffer, provides him with the kind
 SCIENCE AND RELIGION 91
of solace that only a sense of being sheltered under an all-
embracing roof can grant. In that sense, religion helps to make
social life more harmonious; its most important task is to remind
us, in the language of pictures and parables, of the wider frame-
work within which our life is set."
"You keep referring to the individual's free choice," I said,
"and you compare it with the freedom with which the atomic
physicist can arrange his experiments in this way or that. N ow
the classical physicist had no such freedom. Does that mean that
the special features of modern physics have a more direct bearing
on the problem of the freedom of the will? As you know, the fact
that atomic processes cannot be fully determined is often used as
an argument in favor of free will and divine intervention."
"I am convinced that this whole attitude is based on a simple
misunderstanding, or rather on the confusion of questions,
which, as far as I can see, impinge on distinct though comple-
mentary ways of looking at things. If we speak of free will, we
refer to a situation in which we have to make decisions. This
situation and the one in which we analyze the motives of our
actions or even the one in which we study physiological processes,
for instance the electrochemical processes in our brain, are
mutually exclusive. In other words, they are complementary, so
that the question whether natural laws determine events com-
pletely or only statistically has no direct bearing on the question
of free will. N aturally, our different ways of looking at things
must fit together in the long run, i.e., we must be able to recog-
nize them as noncontradictory parts of the same reality, though
we cannot yet tell precisely how. When we speak of divine
intervention, we quite obviously do not refer to the scientific
determination of an event, but to the meaningful connection
between this event and others or human thought. Now this
intellectual connection is as much a part of reality as scientific
causality; it would be much too crude a simplification if we
ascribed it exclusively to the subjective side of reality. Once
again we can learn from the analogous situation in natural
science. There are well-known biological relations that we do not
describe causally, but rather finalistically, that is, with respect of
their ends. We have only to think of the healing process in an
injured organi~m. The finalistic interpretation has a characteris-
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

tically complementary relationship to the one based on physico-

chemical or atomic laws; that is, in the one case we ask whether
the process leads to the desired end, the restoration of normal
conditions in the organism; in the other case we ask about the
causal chain determining the molecular processes. The two de-
scriptions are mutually exclusive, but not necessarily contradic-
tory. We have good reason to assume that quantum-mechanical
laws can be proved valid in a living organism just as they can in
dead matter. For ali that, a finalistic description is just as valid. I
believe that if the development of atomic physics has taught us
anything, it is that we must learn to think more subtly than in
the past."
"We always come back to the epistemological side of religion,"
I objected. "But Dirac's attack on religion was aimed chiefly at
its ethical side. Dirac disapproves quite particularly of the dis-
honesty and self-deception that are far too often coupled to
religious thought. But in his abhorrence he has become a fanatic
defender of rationalism, and I have the feeling that rationalism
is not enough."
"I think Dirac did well," N iels said, "to warn you so forcefully
against the dangers of self-deception and inner contradictions;
but Wolfgang was equally right when he jokingly drew Dirac's
attention to the extraordinary difficulty of escaping this danger
entirely." Niels closed the conversation with one of those stories
he liked to tell on such occasions: "One of our neighbors in
Tisvilde once fixed a horseshoe over the door to his house. When
a mutual acquaintance asked him, 'But are you really supersti-
tious? Do you honestly believe that this horseshoe will bring you
luck?' he replied, 'Of course not; but they say it helps even if you
don't believe in it.' "
 8
Atomic Physics
and Pragmatism (1929)

To those of us who participated in the development of atomic

theory, the five years following the Solvay Congress in Brussels
looked so wonderful that we often spoke of them as the golden
age of atomic physics. The great obstacles that had occupied all
our efforts in the preceding years had been cleared out of the
way; the gate to that entirely new field-the quantum mechanics
of the atomic shell-stood wide-open, and fresh fruits seemed
ready for the plucking. Where purely empirical rules or vague
concepts had had to serve as substitutes for real understanding-
for instance, of ferromagnetic phenomena and of chemical bonds
in the physics of solids-the new methods brought absolute
clarity. Moreover, it seemed very much as if the new physics was
in many respects greatly superior to the old even on the philo-
sophical plane; that, in ways that had to be investigated more
closely, it was much broader and richer.
In the late autumn of 1927 when I was offered a professorship
by the universities of both Leipzig and Zurich, I decided for the
former, where I would be working with the brilliant experi-
mental physicist, Peter Debye. Though my first seminar on
atomic theory was attended by just one student, I was convinced
that I would eventually make many fresh converts to the new
atomic physics.
Befare taking over my new post, I was granted a year's leave of
absence to go on a lecture tour to the U nited Sta tes. And so, in
February 1929 during a particularly cold spell, I boarded a ship
94 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

in Bremerhaven for N ew York. I t took us two whole days to get

out of the harbor: the shipping channel was blocked with thick
ice, and, once outside, we were tossed about by the most violent
storms that I had ever experienced at sea. Then, after fifteen
rough days the coast of Long Island and, later at dusk, the
famous skyline of New York finally rose up to bid us welcome.
The New World cast its spell on me right from the start. The
carefree attitude of the young, their straightforward warmth and
hospitality, their gay optimism-all this made me feel as if a
great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. lnterest in the
new atomic theory was keen, and since I had been invited by a
fairly large number of universities in many parts of the country,
I became acquainted with many different aspects of American
life. Wherever I stayed for more than a few days, I struck up new
acquaintanceships that started with tennis, boating or sailing
parties and quite often ended in long discussions of recent
developments in atomic physics. I quite particularly remember a
conversation with my tennis partner, Barton Hoag, a young
experimental physicist from Chicago, who invited me to join him
on a fishing tri p to the remo te northern lakes.
I told him of a strange feeling I had acquired during this
lecture tour: while Europeans were generally averse and often
overtly hostile to the abstract, nonrepresentational aspects of the
new atomic theory, to the wave-corpuscle duality and the purely
statistical character of natural laws, most American physicists
seemed prepared to accept the novel approach without too many
reservations. I asked Barton how he explained the difference, and
this is what he said:
"You Europeans, and particularly you Germans, are inclined
to treat such new ideas as matters of principie. We take a much
simpler view. Newtonian physics used to provide an accurate
enough description of the observed facts. Then we became
acquainted with electromagnetic phenomena, and found that
Newtonian mechanics was no longer adequate, but that Max-
well's equations did the trick. Finally, the study of atomic
processes taught us that neither classical mechanics nor electro-
dynamics could account for the experimental evidence. And so
physicists had willy-nilly to go beyond the old laws or equations.
The result was quantum 1nechanics. Basically, physicists, even
 ATOMIC PHYSICS AND PRAGMATISM 95
the theorists among them, behave just like the engineer building
a new bridge. He notices that the old formulae he has been using
in the past do not quite fit the new construction. He must allow
for wind pressure, for metal fatigue, for temperature variations
and the like, ali of which he now builds into the old formulae.
The result is a more reliable blueprint, and everyone is happy
about it. But the basic engineering principies have remained
unchanged. The same seems to be true of modern physics. Per-
ha ps you make the mistake of treating the laws of nature as
absolutes, and you are therefore surprised when they have to be
changed. To my mind, even the term 'natural law' is a glorifica-
tion or sanctification of what is basically nothing but a practica!
prescription for dealing with nature in a particular domain. I
believe that once ali absolutist claims are dropped, the difficulties
will disappear by themselves."
"Then you are not at ali surprised," I asked, "that an electron
should a ppear as a particle on one occasion and as a wave on
another? As far as you are concerned, the whole thing is merely
an extension of the older physics, perhaps in unexpected form?''
"Oh, no, I am surprised; but, after ali, I can see that it hap-
pens in nature, and that's that. If there are structures that look
like a wave on one occasion and like a particle on the next, then
we must obviously come up with new concepts. Perhaps one
ought to call such structures 'wavicles,' and quantum mechanics
the mathematical description of their behavior."
"No, that solution is a bit too simple for me. After ali, we are
not dealing with a special property of electrons, but with a
property of ali matter and of ali radiation. Whether we take
electrons, light quanta, benzol molecules or stones, we shall
always come up against these two characteristics, the corpuscular
and the undular. In other words, the statistical features of natu-
ral laws are ubiquitous and a matter of principie. It's just that
these quantum-mechanical features are far more obvious in
atomic structures than in the objects of daily experience."
"Very well, then, you have simply introduced minor changes
into the Newtonian and Maxwellian laws, changes that are more
obvious to the observer of atomic phenomena, and imperceptible
to people working in more down-to-earth fields. In either case,
the changes represent improvements, and no doubt quantum
96 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

mechanics will also be further improved in the future so as to

account for other phenomena that still elude our grasp. In the
meantime, quantum mechanics strikes me as a correct procedure
in the atomic realm, one that has obviously proved its worth."
I found Barton's whole approach somewhat unsatisfactory, but
I realized I would have to be much more explicit if I were to
make him see why. Hence I said rather pointedly: "I think
Newtonian mechanics cannot be improved in any way, for in-
asmuch as we can describe a particular phenomenon with the
concepts of Newtonian physics-namely, position, velocity, ac-
celeration, mass, force, etc.-Newton's laws hold quite rigorously,
and nothing in this will be changed for the next hundred thou-
sand years. More precisely, I ought perhaps to say: Newton's laws
are valid to that degree of accuracy to which the phenomena
concerned can be described by these concepts. The fact that this
accuracy has limits, was of course well known even to classical
physicists, none of whom ever claimed he could measure to any
desired degree of accuracy. The fact, however, that the accuracy
of measurements is limited in principie, i.e., by uncertainty rela-
tions, is something quite new, something we first encountered in
the atomic field. But for the moment we need not enter into this
subject. For the purposes of our discussion, it is enough to assert
that, inasmuch as it is possible to make accurate measurements
of this kind at ali, Newtonian mechanics is fully valid now and
will remain so in the future."
"I'm afraid I cannot follow you here," Barton replied. "Isn't
the mechanics of relativity theory an improvement on New-
tonian mechanics? Even if we leave the uncertainty principie out
of the discussion?"
"We may leave the uncertainty principie out of the discus-
sion," I tried to point out, "but not the fact that we are dealing
with a different space-time structure, and quite particularly with
a different relationship between time and space. As long as we
talk of absolute time, i.e., of time that is apparently independent
of the observer's place and state of motion, as long as we deal
with rigid or practically rigid bodies of given volume, then
Newton's laws do hold. But as soon as we come to processes
involving very great velocities and at the same time try to make
very precise measurements, we discover that Newtonian mechan-
 ATOMIC PHYSICS AND PRAGMATISM 97
ics no longer provides an adequate description. We shall find, for
instance, that the dock of a moving observer appears to go more
slowly than that of an observer at rest, etc., and then we must
have recourse to relativistic mechanics."
"But why aren't you prepared to call relativistic mechanics an
improvement on N ewtonian mechanics?"
"I only objected to the term 'improvement' because it may
lead to misunderstandings, but once that danger is removed I
have no further objections. The misunderstanding hinges pre-
cisely on your idea that progress in physics is comparable to
improvements in the engineering field. To my mind, it is funda-
mentally wrong to compare the basic changes involved in the
transition from Newtonian mechanics to relativistic or quantum
mechanics with the improvements of the engineer, which, after
all, do not call for modifications of his basic concepts. For him,
all technical terms retain their old significance; at most, the
formulae are adjusted or corrected so as to cover previously
neglected factors. Changes of this type, however, would make no
sense at all in Newtonian mechanics. There are no experiments
to force them upon us. And this is precisely why we can grant
that Newtonian physics has an absolute validity: in its particular
sphere of application it cannot be improved by small changes.
However, there are areas of experience in which we can no longer
manage with the conceptual system of Newtonian mechanics. For
such areas we need entirely new conceptual structures, for in-
stance, those introduced by relativity theory or quantum me-
chanics. Still, Newtonian physics constitutes a closed system in
the sense that the physical equipment of the engineer can never
hope to be. It is thanks to this coherence that there can be no
minor improvements. All we can do is to adopt an entirely new
conceptual system, in which the old system is contained as a
limiting case."
"How can you know," Barton asked, "whether a particular
realm of physics is closed in the sense you claim N ewtonian
mechanics is? Which criteria distinguish closed realms from those
that are still open, and which are the closed realms of present-day
physics?"
"The most important criterion for a closed system is probably
the presence of a precisely formulated and self-consistent set of
98 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

axioms governing the concepts and logical relations of the system.

To what extent an axiomatic system corresponds to reality can
only be decided empirically, and we can only call it a 'theory' if
it represents large realms of experience. On that basis, I would
distinguish four closed realms in physics: Newtonian mechanics,
statistical thermodynamics, special relativity theory together with
Maxwell's electrodynamics and, finally, modern quantum me-
chanics. For each of these realms there is a precisely formulated
system of concepts and axioms, whose propositions are strictly
valid within the particular realm of experience they describe. I
think it is too early to count the general theory of relativity
among the closed realms, because its axiom system is still unclear
and its application to cosmological problems still admits of
various solutions. For the time being, we must therefore treat it
as one of the open theories, one that is still full of unanswered
questions."
Barton seemed fairly satisfied with my reply, but wanted to
know more about my motives for introducing the doctrine of
closed systems. "Why do you lay so much stress on the fact that
the transition from one realm to another, for instance from
Newtonian physics to quantum theory, is not continuous but
discrete? You are right, of course, in saying that new concepts are
introduced, and that different questions are asked in each new
realm. But why is that so important? After all, what matters is
the progress of science, the opening up of ever wider realms of
nature. Whether this progress is continuous or occurs by steps
seems a matter of complete indifference to me."
"No, it is anything but that. Your idea of continuous progress
as we know it from engineering would weaken, or rather soften,
physics to such an extent that we could hardly continue to call it
an exact science. If we wanted to work at physics in this purely
pragmatic way, we would have to keep picking on what partial
realms happened to be experimentally accessible, and then try to
represent the phenomena in them by approximations. If the
results turned out to be too inaccurate, we could always add fresh
corrections. But we should have to give up asking about the
wider connections, and there would be very li ttle chance of our
advancing to the very simple relations which, to mention just one
example, distinguish Newtonian mechanics from Ptolemy's
 ATOMIC PHYSICS AND PRAGMATISM 99
astronomy. In other words, we would lose the most important
truth criterion of physics, namely, the ultimate simplicity of all
physical laws. You may, of course, object that this insistence on
simplicity is nothing but a hidden thirst for the absolute, devoid
of the least logical justification. Why should physical laws be
simple, why should wide realms of experience be susceptible to
simple representation? The answer lies in the history of physics.
You will admit that each of the four closed realms I have men-
tioned has a very simple axiom system, capable of embracing a
very wide set of relations. Only in such axiom systems are we
entitled to speak of 'physical laws'; without them physics would
never have attained the noble rank of an exact science.
"This simplicity has still another consequence, one that affects
our relationship to physical laws. But this whole subject is ex-
tremely difficult to put into words. If, as we must always do as a
first step in theoretical physics, we combine the results of experi-
ments and formulae and arrive at a phenomenological descrip-
tion of the processes involved, we gain the impression that we
have invented the formulae ourselves. If, however, we chance
upon one of those very simple, wide relationships that must later
be incorporated into the axiom system, then things look quite
different. Then we are quite suddenly brought face to face with a
relationship that has always existed, and that was quite obviously
not invented by us or by anyone else. Such relationships are
probably the real content of our science. Only when one has fully
assimilated the fact of their existence can one really claim to
have grasped physics."
Barton reflected. He did not contradict me, but I had the
distinct impression that n1y way of thinking was rather alien to
him.
Luckily our weekend was not entirely filled with such intense
conversations. We spent our first night in a small hut on the
shores of a secluded lake, in the midst of what looked like an
endless stretch of water and forests. N ext morning, an Indian
guide took us out fishing, and so well did he know the locality
that, within the hour, we had bagged eight unusually large pike
which provided us and our guide's family with a most satis{ying
dinner. Next day, we tried again, but this time without the
Indian. Weather and wind conditions were much the same, and
100 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

we made straight for the same spot in the lake. But though we
stayed out ali day, we carne back empty-handed. "These fish,"
Barton said, "are just like atoms. If you aren't fully familiar with
their intimate habits and reactions, you have little chance of ever
catching them."
Toward the end of my stay in America, I made arrangements
to return home with Paul Dirac. We would meet in Yellowstone
Park, go walking for a few days, then sail across the Pacific to
Japan and return to Europe via Asia. Our meeting place was the
hotel in front of Old Faithful, and since I got there a day earlier,
I did sorne mountaineering on my own. Only on the way up did
I realize that these mountains, unlike the Alps, are rarely ex-
plored by man: there were neither roads nor footpaths, neither
signs nor markings, and no help could be expected in an
emergency. On the way up I wasted a great deal of time on a
roundabout route, and during the descent I became so tired that
I sat down in the grass and fell asleep at once. I was awakened by
a bear licking my face. I got such a shock that I started off at
once, but it was not until dusk that I was able to find my way
back to the hotel.
In my letter to Paul Dirac I had mentioned that we might
perhaps look at sorne of the other geysers, and that with luck we
might see one or two in action. lt was characteristic of Paul's
careful and systematic ways that, when we met, he had already
worked out a precise itinerary in which he had not only marked
the times of activity of these natural fountains, but had mapped
out precise routes that would bring us, in the course of one
afternoon, to the greatest possible number of geysers just in time
to watch them spring into action.
Physics was discussed chiefly during our long sea voyage from
San Francisco to Yokohama via Hawaii. Although I was happy to
join in the many games of table tennis or shuffieboard, there were
hours in which, comfortably ensconced in a deck chair, I could
watch schools of dolphins bustling about the ship or swarms of
flying fish making a quick getaway. Since Paul usually took a
deck chair next to mine, we could speak at length about our
respective experiences in America and our ideas about the future
of atomic physics. The readiness of American physicists to accept
even the abstract, nonrepresentational features of the new atomic
 ATOMIC PHYSICS AND PRAGMATISM 101

physics surprised Paul much less than it did me. Like Barton, he
probably felt that the development of our science was a more or
less continuous process, in which clarifying the conceptual struc-
tures that emerged at any particular stage of development mat-
tered less than discovering the quickest path to the next stage.
For once you use the pragmatic approach, you are bound to
consider the progress of science as a continuous and never-ending
process of thought adaptation to the growing body of experi-
mental knowledge. What matters, therefore, is not the prevailing
interpretation, but the method of adaptation.
Like me, Paul was convinced that simple physical laws would
finally emerge, or, as I would put it, come to light, during
this process. But, methodologically, his starting points were
particular problems, not the wider relationship. When he de-
scribed his approach, I often had the feeling that he looked
upon scientific research much as sorne mountaineers look upon a
tough climb. All that matters is to get over the next three yards.
If you do that long enough, you are bound to reach the top. To
keep thinking of the whole climb with all its innumerable
difficulties only leads to discouragement. And, in any case, you
only grasp the true problems when you reach the most difficult
ledges. I myself took a different view. My first step-to stick to
the mountaineering simile-was a decision about the climb as a
whole. For I was convinced that once one has found the correct
route, then and then only can the individual obstacles be sur-
mounted. The whole comparison was false, however, because, in
the case of a rock ledge, you can never tell in advance what lies
behind and above, whereas in science the basic relations have to
be simple; nature, I was certain, is made to be understood, or,
rather, our thought is made to understand nature. As Robert had
put it so well during our walk around Lake Starnberg: the same
organizing forces that have shaped nature in all her forms are
also responsible for the structure of our minds.
Paul and I spoke a great <leal about this methodological
question, and about our hopes with respect to future develop-
ments: whereas Paul argued that one can never solve more than
one difficulty at a time, I contended that one can never overcome
an isolated clifficulty, but must always surmount severa! at once.
Paul probably wished to say no more than that anyone trying to
102 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

grapple with more than one problem at a time was guilty of

arrogance. For he knew how hard one has to fight for every step
in a realm as remote from daily experience as atomic physics. I,
for my part, merely wished to point out that the genuine solution
of a difficult problem is neither more nor less than a glimpse of
the wider context, a glimpse that helps us to clear away other
difficulties as well, including many whose existence we do not
even suspect. And so both our formulations contained a Iarge
grain of truth, and Paul and I could console ourselves with an oft-
repeated dictum of Niels Bohr: "The opposite of a correct state-
ment is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth
may well be another profound truth."
 9
The Relationship between Biology,
Physics and Chemistry (1930-1932)

From America and Japan, I returned to a wide round of duties

in Leipzig. I had to give lectures, prepare tests, participate in
faculty meetings and examinations, help to modernize our tiny
Institute of Theoretical Physics and introduce young physicists to
quantum theory. So much academic variety was quite new to me,
and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Still, my links with the Copenhagen
circle around Niels Bohr had become so important over the years
that I made a point of spending a few weeks of most of my
holidays in Denmark. Sorne of the most vital discussions were
held in Bohr's country house in Tisvilde or on a sailing boat
which he and sorne of his friends kept on Langelinie in Copen-
hagen Harbor, from which we would often set out far into the
Baltic.
The country house was situated in Northern Zealand, a mile
or so from the beach and at the edge of a large forest. I knew it
well from our first walk. To reach the popular beach we had to
take a sandy forest path; its straightness suggested that we were
in a man-made plantation, serving as a screen against storms and
dune migrations. \iVhen N iels' children were still small, he used
to keep a horse and cart, and I always thought it a special honor
if I was allowed to drive one of the youngsters through the
woods.
In the evenings, we would often sit around the open fire,
taking great pains to keep it alight. When the doors of the living
room were closed, the chimney would smoke a good deal, and we
104 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

had to leave at least one door open. The result was a mighty
draft, and Niels, who loved paradoxical formulations, claimed
that the fireplace had been especially put in as a cooling device.
But hot or cold, the area round the fireplace was highly popular,
and whenever other physicists carne to visit us from Copenhagen,
keen conversations on the problems that interested all of us
would take place before it. I remember one evening particularly
well. I think that Kramers and Oskar Klein were among those
present, and, as so often, the discussion revolved around Einstein's
refusal to accept the statistical character of the new quantum
mechanics.
"Isn't it odd," Oskar Klein said, "that Einstein should have
such great difficulties in accepting the role of chance in atomic
physics? He knows more about statistical thermodynamics than
most other physicists, and has himself produced a convincing
statistical derivation of Planck's radiation law. Yet he still rejects
quantum mechanics, simply because chance plays a fundamental
part in i t."
"It is precisely this fundamental aspect that upsets him," I
tried to point out. "In a pot of water, we cannot possibly hope to
tell how each water molecule moves. Hence no one should be
surprised that physicists are applying statistics to it, making use
of probability, much as life insurance companies must make
actuaria! computations of their clients' life expectancies. But
we used to assume that, in principie at least, it was possible to
describe the motion of every molecule in accordance with the
laws of Newtonian mechanics. In other words, nature was
thought to have at any given moment an objective state from
which one could deduce its state during the next moment. But this
is no longer so in quantum mechanics. Here we cannot make
observations without disturbing the phenomena-the quantum
effects we introduce with our observation automatically intro-
duce a degree of uncertainty into the phenomenon to be ob-
served. This Einstein refuses to accept, although he knows the
facts perfectly well. He thinks that our interpretation cannot
possibly be complete, and hopes that the discovery of fresh data
will help to close what he thinks are open gaps in our knowledge.
But that is an idle hope."
"I don't entirely agree with you," Niels said. "There is, of
 BIOLOGY, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY 105

course, a basic difference between classical thermodynamics and

quantum mechanics, but you have exaggerated its importance. In
any case, I find all such assertions as 'observation introduces
uncertainty into the phenomenon' inaccurate and misleading.
Nature has taught us that the word 'phenomenon' cannot be
applied to atomic processes unless we also specify what experi-
mental arrangement or what observational instruments are in-
volved. If a particular experimental setup has been defined anda
particular observation follows, then we can admittedly speak of a
phenomenon, but not of its disturbance by observation. And
though the results of different observations can no longer be
correlated as directly as they could in classical physics, this does
not mean that the phenomena have been disturbed by observa-
tion; it simply means that we cannot objectify the observational
results in the manner of classical physics or everyday experience.
Different observational situations-by that I mean the over-all
experimental setup, the readings, etc.-are often complementary,
i.e., they are mutually exclusive, cannot be obtained simultane-
ously, and their results cannot be correlated without further ado.
Hence I cannot see any very fundamental difference between
quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. An observational
situation involving a temperature reading also has an exclusive
relationship with one in which the coordinates and velocities of
ali the participating particles can be determined. After all, the
very concept of temperature may be defined as the degree of
uncertainty about the behavior of fractions of the system charac-
teristic of what we call 'canonical distribution.' Or, to put it less
academically: if a system consisting of many particles exchanges
heat steadily with the environment or with other macrosystems,
then the energy of each particle will fluctuate continuously and
so will that of the the entire system. However, the mean values
obtained from a large number of particles over long periods of
time correspond very precisely to the mean values of this normal
or canonical distribution. All this you can read in Gibbs. And
temperature, after all, can only be defined by energy exchanges.
It follows that a precise determination of temperature is incom-
patible with a precise determination of the positions and veloc
ities of the molecules.''
"But doesn't that mean," I asked, "that temperature is not an
106 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

objective property? We have always thought that the statement

'The tea in this pot has a temperature of 70 degrees' refers to an
objective fact; that everyone who measures the temperature in
that particular teapot will get a reading of 70 degrees, regardless
of how he performs the measurement. On the other hand, if
temperature merely defines the degree of one's knowledge or
ignorance of the molecular motions in the tea, it follows that
different observers may obtain different temperature readings
even if the real state of the system is identical; after all, different
observers can have different levels of knowledge."
"No, you are quite wrong," Niels broke in. "The very word
'temperature' refers to an observational situation involving
energy exchanges, say, between the tea and the thermometer, and
this quite irrespective of the other properties of the thermometer.
A thermometer is only a real thermometer if the molecular
motions in the system to be measured, in our case the tea, and in
the thermometer itself reflect the canonical distribution with the
required degree of accuracy. If that is the case, all thermometers
will give the same readings, and to that extent temperature is an
objective quality. lt ali goes to show once again how problemati-
cal the concepts 'objective' and 'subjective,' which we normally
use so glibly, really are."
Kramers seemed unhappy about this definition. "From the way
you speak of processes inside the teapot," he said to Niels, "one
might think that you were asserting sorne sort of uncertainty
relation between the temperature and the energy inside. But
surely you can't be thinking of applying such ideas in classical
physics?''
"To a certain extent, I can," Niels replied. "Let us look at the
properties of an individual hydrogen atom inside the teapot. Its
temperature, if we can talk about it at all, is surely as high as
that of the rest of the tea, in our case 70 degrees, because it
exchanges heat with ali the other tea molecules. lts energy,
however, must fluctuate and this precisely because it exchanges
heat; hence we can only define a probability curve for its energy.
lf, conversely, we had measured the energy of the hydrogen atom
and not the temperature of the tea, then we could not deduce the
latter unequivocally from the former; once again we could only
draw a probability curve-for the temperature. The relative
 BIOLOGY, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY

breadth of this curve, in other words the lack of certainty as to

the precise temperature or energy values, is relatively large in so
small an object as a hydrogen atom, and hence significant. In a
much larger object, for instance a small quantity of tea within
the pot, it becomes considerably smaller and can therefore be
neglected."
"In the old thermodynamics as we teach it to our students,"
Kramers objected, "energy and temperature are attributed to an
object simultaneously. Nota word is said about indeterminacy or
uncertainty. How can you possibly reconcile that with your
views?"
''The old thermodynamics," Niels replied, "is to statistical
thermodynamics what classical mechanics is to quantum me-
chanics. With large objects we do not commit significant errors if
we attribute certain values to their temperature and energy
simultaneously, just as we can attribute simultaneous values to
their position and velocity. With very small objects things are
quite different. In thermodynamics, we used to say that the latter
are endowed with energ-y but not with temperature. But this
strikes me as a mistaken idea, if only because we don't know
where to draw the line between small and large objects."
All of us now realized why N iels laid far less stress on the
fundamental difference between the statistical laws of thermo-
dynamics and those of quantum mechanics than Einstein. Niels
felt that complementarity was a central feature of all attempts to
describe nature, a feature inherent in, though insufficiently
brought out by, statistical thermodynamics, especially in the
form Gibbs had given it; Einstein, on the other hand, remained
steeped in the conceptual world of Newtonian mechanics or of
Maxwellian field theory and completely failed to notice these
complementary features.
The discussion now turned to possible further applications of
complementarity, and Niels mentioned that it might well help iu
distinguishing biological processes from purely physical an 1
chemical ones. This subject was discussed at greater leng1 l ·
during one of our sailing trips, of which I shall now say a kv
words.
The captain of our boat was Niels Bjerrum, a chemical physi-
cist at the U niversity of Copenhagen, a man who combined the
108 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

wry humor of the old salt with a thorough knowledge of naviga-

tion. From the outset, his attractive personality filled me with so
much confidence that I would have followed his orders in any
situation. Among the crew was the surgeon, Chievitz, who liked
to make ironical remarks about everything that happened on
board, and who often chose the captain as the special butt of his
friendly gibes. Bjerrum gave as good as he got, and it was great
fun to listen to their exchanges. On this particular trip, there
were also two other crew members whose names I cannot re-
member.
At the end of each summer, the yacht Chita had to be taken
from Copenhagen to Svendborg on the island of Fyn, where she
was put in dry dock and repaired. The trip could not be man-
aged in one day even with a following wind, and we made our
arrangements accordingly. We set out from Copenhagen very
early one morning, with a fresh northwesterly and under a bright
sky. We quickly passed the southern tip of the island of Amager
and sailed into Koge Bay on a southwesterly course. After a few
hours the steep Stevns Klint carne into view, and as soon as we
had passed it, the wind dropped. We were almost completely
becalmed, and after one or two hours of this we began to grow
impatient. We had earlier been discussing disastrous North Pole
expeditions, and Chievitz now said to Bjerrum: "If the wind
doesn't freshen up soon, we'll run out of supplies and then we'll
have to draw lots as to who'll be eating whom first." Bjerrum
handed Chievitz a bottle of beer and said: "I didn't realize that
you would be needing spiritual solace quite so soon. Let's hope
this bottle will keep you going through the next hour."
All of a sudden, the sky became clouded over, and the first
drops of rain began to fall on the deck. We had to put on our
oilskins. When we entered the narrow channel between the
islands of Zealand and Moen, the wind was nearly up to gale
force and the rain had turned into a downpour. We had to tack
so hard in the small fairway that after an hour or so all of us
were close to exhaustion. My hands had swelled up from the
unaccustomed work with the ropes, and Chievitz murmured:
"What a pity our captain didn't find us an even smaller fairway.
Still, we are sailing for pleasure, so we mustn't complain too
much." Niels lent a hand with all the difficult maneuvers, and 1
was amazed at how much physical strength he still had. It was
 BIOLOGY, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY

dusk when, at long last, we reached Storstrom Strait, a broad

stretch of water between Zealand and Falster. Since we were
making northwest now, and the rain had stopped, we could relax
and let the wind carry us forward. Sailing by the compass in
complete darkness, we began to chat, occasionally taking our
bearings from sorne distant beacons. Sorne of the crew had taken
to the small cabin, resting or sleeping after their hard labor.
Chievitz was at the wheel, Niels stood next to him glancing at
the compass, and I posted myself forward, looking out for the
lights of passing ships. "It's all very well watching for lights,"
Chievitz piped up, "but what if we should meet a stray whale?
It'll neither have red lights to port nor green lights to starboard
and we might easily hit it. Heisenberg, can you see any whales?"
"I can't see anything but," I replied, "though sorne of them
may turn out to be nothing more dangerous than big waves."
"Let's hope so. But what if we should hit a whale? Our boat
and the whale would both get holed. But there is this funda-
mental difference between the two: the hole in the whale would
heal by itself, while our boat would remain a wreck. Particularly
if it were lying at the bottom of the sea. Otherwise, of course, we
can always get it repaired."
Niels now joined in. "The difference between living and dead
matter is not nearly so simple. True, in the whale we can see the
workings of a formative force, if that's what you want to call it,
which ensures that the injured part becomes whole again. Natu-
rally, the whale itself knows nothing about this formative force.
No doubt it is sorne unexplained part of its biological heritage.
But the ship, too, is not a completely dead object. It behaves
toward men much as the web behaves toward the spider or the
nest toward the bird. Its formative force emanates from man, and
the process of repair is somehow analogous to the process of
healing. For if there were no living being-in this case man-to
determine its shape, the boat would never get repaired either. Of
course, the fact that, in man, this formative force involves con-
sciousness <loesconstitute an important difference."
"By formative force," I asked, "do you refer to something quite
outside the realm of physics and chemistry, or do you imagine
this force can somehow express itself in the position of atoms, in
their mutual interactions, in resonance effects or the like?"
"We should probably have to start from the fact that an
110 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

organism has the kind of wholeness that a system built up of a

host of atomic bricks-the kind considered by classical physics-
could never have," Niels said. "But then we have moved on to
quantum mechanics. Hence we may be tempted to compare those
integral structures quantum theory can represent in mathemati-
cal terms, for instance the stationary states of atoms and mole-
cules, with those resulting from biological processes. But here,
too, there are a number of fundamental differences. The integral
structures of atomic physics-atoms, molecules, crystals-are all
of them static structures; they consist of a certain number of
elementary particles, atomic nuclei and electrons, and they do
not change with time unless they are disturbed from the outside.
lf that happens, then they will admittedly react, but if the dis-
turbance is not too great or persistent, they will eventually
return to their original state. Organisms, by contrast, are any-
thing but static structures. The ancients used to compare living
beings to flames because they thought of both as forms through
which matter streams. lt is quite unlikely that we shall ever be
able to determine by measurements which particular atoms
belong to a living being and which do not. The question must
therefore be put as follows: Can quantum mechanics explain
nature's tendency to form structures through which matter with
fixed chemical properties can stream for a limited time?"
"The physician," Chievitz interjected, "does not have to
bother about the answer to that question. He assumes that the
organism has a tendency to return to normal conditions after a
disturbance, and he is also convinced that the processes involved
are causally determined; in other words, that a mechanical or
chemical intervention leads to the very effects predicted by
physics and chemistry. The fact that the biological and physical
approaches may be incompatible does not even occur to most
physicians."
''But here we have a typical case of two complementary ways of
looking at things," Niels pointed out. "We can, first, describe an
organism with concepts men have developed through contact
with living beings over the millennia. In that case, we speak of
'living,' 'organic function,' 'metabolism,' 'breathing,' 'healing,'
etc. Or else we can inquire into causal processes. Then we use the
language of phvsics and chemistry, study chemical or electrical
processes, for instance in nerve conduction, and assume, appar-
 BIOLOGY, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY 111

ently with great success, that the laws of physics and chemistry, or
more generally the laws of quantum theory, are fully applicable
to living organisms. These two ways of looking at things are
contradictory. For in the first case we assume that an event is
determined by the purpose it serves, by its goal. In the second
case we believe that an event is determined by its immediate
predecessor. It seems most unlikely that both approaches should
have led to the same result by pure chance. In fact, they comple-
ment each other, and, as we have long since realized, both are
correct precisely because there is such a thing as life. Biology thus
has no need to ask which of the two viewpoints is the more
correct, but only how nature managed to arrange things so that
the two should fit together."
"In other words," I cut in, "you do not believe that, over and
above the forces and mutual effects known in atomic physics.
there exists a special life force-for instance, the kind stipulated
by the vitalists-a force responsible for the special behavior of
living organisms, in our case the whale's recovery from his
wounds? You would rather take the view, wouldn't you, that the
characteristic biological laws, for which no analogy can be found
in inorganic matter, result from what you have just described as
a complementary situation?"
"Yes, I would agree with that. One could also say that the two
ways of looking at things refer to complementary observational
situations. In principie, we could probably measure the position
of every atom in a cell, though hardly without killing the living
cell in the process. What we would know in the end would be the
arrangement of the atoms in a dead cell, not a living one. If we
now used quantum mechanics to determine the subsequent
behavior of these atomic arrangements, we would find that the
cell decays, breaks up or whatever else you care to call it. If,
conversely, we want to keep the cell alive and hence allow no
more than very cautious observations of the atomic structure,
then our conclusions will still be correct, but they will not enable
us to tell whether the cell survives or decays."
"I can quite see why you should distinguish biological from
physical and chemical laws by means of complementarity," I said.
"But your remarks still leave usa choice between two interpreta-
tions that many scientists consider as different as chalk and
cheese. Let us imagine that one day biology will have become as
112 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

completely fused with physics and chemistry as physics and

chemistry have become fused in quantum mechanics. Do you
believe that the natural laws of this new science will simply be
the laws of quantum mechanics with sorne biological concepts
superimposed, justas such statistical concepts as temperature and
entropy have been superimposed on the laws of Newtonian
mechanics? Or do you, rather, believe that this unified science
will be governed by broader natural laws of which quantum
mechanics is only a limiting case, much as Newtonian mechanics
may be considered a limiting case of quantum mechanics? In
favor of the first assumption we can argue that we must, in any
case, add the concept of evolution, i.e., of selection in geological
time, to quantum mechanics, if we are to explain the profusion
of organisms. There is no reason why the addition of this element
should cause us any fundamental difficulties. Living organisms
would simply be those forms nature has tried out on earth in the
framework of quantum-mechanical laws over severa! thousands
of millions of years. But there are also good arguments for the
second view. For instance, we might say that nothing in quantum
theory so far points to a tendency to produce forms capable of
maintaining fixed chemical properties, despite continuous ex-
changes of matter. I cannot tell which of the two arguments has
the greater weight. Can you?"
''First of ali, I fail to see," N iels said, "why a choice between
these viewpoints should be a matter of such importance to
science in its present state. What is important is to find a proper
place for biology in a world so dominated by physical and
chemical laws. This, the concept of the complementarity of
observational situations enables us to do. The eventual addition
of biological concepts to quantum mechanics is a foregone con-
clusion. However, we cannot yet tell whether the addition of the
former will necessarily call for an extension of the latter. Perhaps
the wealth of mathematical forms hidden in quantum mechanics
is large enough to embrace biological forms. As long as biological
research sees no reason for the extension of quantum physics, we
ourselves should certainly not insist. In science it is always the
best policy to be as conservative as possible, and to make exten-
sions only if the observations would otherwise remain inex-
plicable."'~
 BIOLOGY, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY 113

"But there are biologists who believe that this is already the
case," I remarked. "They think that Darwinism in its present
form-chance mutation and selection-cannot possibly account
for ali the different organic forms we find on earth. True, the
layman has no difficulty when the biologist explains the existence
of accidental mutations, tells him that the genetic stock of a
given species may be subjected to sudden changes in this or that
direction, and that environmental factors favor the propagation
of sorne species and suppress that of others. Darwin's explana-
tion, that the whole thing is a selective process, that only the fit
survive, is also readily believed, though one may perhaps wonder
whether this statement is a scientific assertion or simply a defini-
tion of the word 'fit.' We call ali those species 'fit' or 'viable'
which prosper under the given circumstances. But even if we
agree that selection leads to the emergence of particularly fit or
viable species, it is very diffi.cult to believe that such complicated
organs as, for instance, the human eye were built up quite
gradually as the result of purely accidental changes. Many biolo-
gists obviously take the view that this is precisely what did
happen, and they will also tell you what particular steps in the
course of geological history could have led to the final result, the
eye. Others are more skeptical. I have been told about a con-
versation between von N eumann, the mathematician, and a
biologist. The biologist was a convinced neo-Darwinist; von
Neumann was skeptical. He led the biologist to the window of
his study and said: 'Can you see the beautiful white villa over
there on the hill? It arose by pure chance. I t took millions of
years for the hill to be formed; trees grew, decayed and grew
again, and then the wind covered the top of the hill with sand,
stones were probably deposited on it by a volcanic process, and
accident decreed that they should come to lie on top of one
another. And so it went on. I know, of course, that accidental
processes through the aeons generally produce quite different
results. But on just this one occasion they led to the appearance
of this country house, and people moved in and live there at this
very moment.' Needless to say, the biologist disliked this line of
reasoning. But though von Neumann is no biologist, and though
I myself can't judge who was right, I take it that even among
biologists there is sorne hesitation as to whether Darwinian selec-
114 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

tion provides an adequate explanation of the existence of the

most complicated organisms."
''The whole thing is probably a question of the correct time
scale," Niels suggested. "Darwinian theory in its present form
makes two independent assertions. On the one hand, it states
that, through the process of heredity, nature tests ever new living
forms, rejecting the great majority and preserving a few suitable
ones. This seems to be empirically correct. But there is also the
second assertion: that the new forms originate through purely
accidental disturbances of the gene structure. This claim is much
more questionable, even though we can hardly conceive of an
alternative. Von Neumann's argument was, of course, designed
to show that, though almost anything can arise by chance in the
long run, the probability of this happening in the time we know
nature has taken to produce higher organisms is absurdly small.
Physical and astrophysical studies tell us that no more than a few
thousand million years have passed since the appearance of the
most primitive living beings on earth. Now, whether or not
accidental mutations and selection are sufficient to produce the
most complicated and highly developed organisms during this
interval will depend on the time needed to develop a new bio-
logical species. I suspect that we know much too little about this
factor to give a reliable answer. Hence we had best suspend
judgment for the time being."
"Another argument," I continued, "that is occasionally
brought up in favor of an extension of quantum theory is the
existence of human consciousness. There can be no doubt that
'consciousness' does not occur in physics and chemistry, and I
cannot see how it could possibly result from quantum mechanics.
Yet any science that deals with living organisms must needs cover
the phenomenon of consciousness, because consciousness, too, is
part of reality."
"This argument," Niels said, "looks highly convincing at first
sight. We can admittedly find nothing in physics or chemistry
that has even a remote bearing on consciousness. Yet ali of us
know that there is such a thing as consciousness, simply because
we have it ourselves. Hence consciousness must be part of nature,
or, more generally, of reality, which means that, quite apart from
the laws of physics and chemistry, as laid down in quantum
theory, we must also consider laws of quite a <lifferent kind. But
 BIOLOGY, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY 115

even here Ido not really know whether we need greater freedom
than we already enjoy thanks to the concept of complementarity.
As far as I can see, it makes very little difference whether-as in
the statistical interpretation of thermodynamics-we join new
concepts to quantum mechanics and formulate new laws with
them but do not change quantum mechanics itself, or whether, as
happened in the extension of classical physics into quantum
theory, we extend the theory itself. The real problem is: How
can that part of reality which begins with consciousness be
combined with those parts that are treated in physics and chem-
istry? How is it possible that the laws governing these several
parts should not conflict? Here we obviously have a genuine case
of complementarity, one that we shall have to analyze in greater
detail once we know more about biology than we do at present."
And so the conversation continued. For a time Niels manned
the wheel and Chievitz took charge of the compass while I con-
tinued to look for lights on the black horizon. lt was long past
midnight, and from time to time a bright patch behind the fairly
dense clouds would reveal the position of the moon. We had
done a good twenty miles since we had entered Storstrom Strait,
and we ought to have been approaching Orno Sound, which we
intended to pass before dropping anchor. According to our map,
the entrance to the sound was marked by a besom sticking out of
the water, and I could not, for the life of me, imagine how, after
sailing sorne twenty miles in a weak current and in the pitch
dark, I was expected to spot a besom.
"Heisenberg, have you found it yet?" Chievitz demanded.
"No, you might just as well ask whether I have found a Ping-
Pong hall someone dropped from the last steamer to pass here."
"You are a rotten sailor."
"Why don't you take over then?"
Chievitz raised his voice to make sure he would be heard in the
cabin: "lt's always the same old story, just like a bad novel: the
captain is asleep, the ship bits a reef and the whole crew goes
down."
From below we could hear Bjerrum's sleepy voice: "Have you
at least s01ne rough idea of where we may be?"
Chievitz answered: "Yes, we can tell precisely; we are on the
yacht Chita, under Captain Bjerrum, who is fast asleep."
Bjerrum now carne up and took over. In the dim distance, I
116 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

could see the flashes of a beacon from which we had to take our
bearings very carefully. I was told to take soundings with a
plumb line, which I managed to do fairly accurately, since we
were making rather slow progress. We consulted our map and,
from the position of the beacon and the measured depth, were
able to establish, to everyone's great relief, that we must be just
half a mile from the besom I had been looking for.
We sailed on for a few more minutes. Bjerrum joined me
forward, and, while I saw nothing but undiluted darkness, he
suddenly called: "There it is." The entrance to Omosund was
just a few hundred yards away. We dropped anchor on the far
side of the island, and ali of us were glad to spend the rest of the
night fast asleep in the cabin.
 10
Quantum Mechanics and
Kantian Philosophy (1930-1934)

My Leipzig circle grew very quickly. Highly talented young men

from many different countries joined us either to take part in the
development of quantum mechanics or else to apply the new
theory to the structure of matter. And these active, open-minded
physicists all helped to enliven our seminar, and almost monthly
widened the sphere of application of the new ideas. Felix Bloch
from Switzerland did much to increase our understanding of the
electric properties of metals; Lev Landau from Russia and
Rudolph Peierls examined the mathematical problems of quan-
tum electrodynamics, Friedrich Hund developed the theory of
chemical bonds, Edward Teller determined the optical prop-
erties of molecules. Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker joined this
group at the age of only eighteen and introduced a philosophical
note into our discussions; although he was a student of physics,
he grew unusually animated whenever our talks impinged on
philosophical or epistemological problems.
We were offered a special occasion for philosophical discussions
one or two years later when the young philosopher Grete Her-
mann carne to Leipzig for the express purpose of challenging the
philosophical basis of atomic physics. In Gottingen, she was an
active member of the circle around the philosopher Leonard
Nelson, and thus steeped in the neo-Kantian ideas of the early-
nineteenth-century philosopher and naturalist Jakob Friedrich
Fries. One of the requirements of Fries' school and hence of
Nelson's circle was that all philosophical questions must be
118 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

treated with the rigor normally reserved for modern mathe-

matics. And it was by following this rigorous approach that
Grete Hermann believed she could prove that the causal law-in
the form Kant had given it-was unshakable. Now the new
quantum mechanics seemed to be challenging the Kantian con-
ception, and she had accordingly decided to fight the matter
out with us.
Her first discussion was with Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker
and myself, and probably went something like this:
"In Kant's philosophy," she began, "the causal law is not an
empirical assertion which can be proved or disproved by experi-
ence, but the very basis of ali experience-it is part of the
categories of the understanding Kant calls 'a priori.' The sense
impressions by which we grasp the world would be nothing but
subjective sensations, with no objective correlates, if there were
not a rule by which certain impressions must follow from certain
preceding ones. This rule, i.e., the existence of a strict relation-
ship between cause and effect, must be presupposed if we wish to
objectify our observations, if, indeed, we wish to assert that we
have experienced any thing or process. Now science deals pre-
cisely with objective experiences; only experiences that can also
be verified by others, and are objective in precisely that sense,
can be the objects of natural science. It follows that science must
presuppose a causal law, that science itself can exist only because
there is such a law. The causal law is a mental tool with which
we try to incorporate the raw material of our sense impressions
into our experience, and only inasmuch as we manage to do so do
we grasp the objects of natural science. That being the case, how
can quantum mechanics possibly try to relax the causal law and
yet hope to remain a branch of science?"
I tried to describe the experiments that had led to the statisti-
cal interpretations of quantum theory:
"Let us take a single atom of Radium B. It is, of course, very
much easier to experiment with a large number of such atoms,
i.e., with a small chunk of Radium B, than with a single atom,
but in principie there is no reason why we should not also study
the behavior of the latter. We know that, sooner or later, the
Radium B atom must emit an electron in sorne direction and
change into a Radium C atom. On the average this will happen
 QUANTUM MECHANICS AND KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY l 19
after half an hour or so, but a particular atom may become
transformed after seconds or only after days. By 'average' we
simply mean that, in the case of large numbers of Radium B
atoms, half of them will have become transformed after about
thirty minutes. But we cannot-and this is where the causal law
breaks down-explain why a particular atom will decay at one
moment and not at the next, or what causes it to emit an elec-
tron in precisely this direction rather than that. And we are
convinced, for a variety of reasons, that no such cause exists."
"That is precisely," Grete Hermann said, "where so many
people think modern physics has gone wrong. The mere fact
that no cause for a certain effect has yet been discovered does
not mean that no such cause exists. I myself would simply con-
elude that the problem has still to be solved, that atomic physi-
cists must go on searching until they discover the cause. After ali,
your knowledge of the state of the Radium B atom before the
emission of the electron is incomplete inasmuch as you cannot
tell when and in what direction the electron will be emitted. In
other words, you will have to keep looking."
"No, we think that we have found ali there is to be found in
this field," I insisted, "for from other experiments with Radium
B we know that there are no determinants beyond those we have
established. Let me put it more precisely: we have just said that
it is impossible to tell in which direction an electron will be
emitted, and you tell us to keep looking for further factors. Even
assuming that you were right and we could discover such factors,
we should get into new difficulties. You see, the electron can also
be treated as a material wave sent out by the atomic nucleus.
Such a wave can cause interference phenomena. Let us further
assume that those parts of the wave which the atomic nucleus
emits in opposite directions can be made to interfere within a
special apparatus. The result will be extinction in certain direc-
tions. In that case we could make the certain prediction that the
electron will not ultimately be emitted in that direction. But if
we had discovered new determinants from which we could tell
that the electron was originally emitted in a clearly defined
direction, then no interference could have occurred. There
would be no extinction, and our earlier conclusion would have
been wrong. In fact, however, extinction can be observed experi-
120 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

mentally. This is nature's own way of telling us that no new

determinants exist, that our knowledge is complete without
them."
"But this is dreadful," Grete Hermann said. "On the one
hand, you claim that your knowledge of the Radium B atom is
incomplete inasmuch as you cannot tell when and in what direc-
tion the electron will be emitted, while, on the other hand, you
tell me that your knowledge is complete because, if there were
further determinants, you would get into trouble with other
experiments. But our knowledge cannot possibly be complete
and incomplete at the same time. The whole thing is sheer
nonsense."
Carl Friedrich now joined the discussion. "The apparent
contradiction," he said, "probably arises because we behave as if
a Radium B atom were a 'thing-in-itself,' a Kantian 'Ding an
sich.' But this is by no meaos self-evident or correct. Even Kant
treated the 'Ding an sich' as a problematical concept. He realized
that we can say nothing about the 'Ding an sich' as such; we can
only speak about the objects of our perception. He did, however,
assume that we could correlate or arrange these objects according
to the model of the 'Ding an sich.' In other words, he treated as a
priori that structure of experience to which we have become used
in daily life and which, in more precise form, is also the basis of
classical physics. In this view the world consists of things in space
that change with time, of processes that follow one another
according to a set rule. But in atomic physics we have learned
that observations can no longer be correlated or arranged on the
model of the 'Ding an sich.' Hence there is also no 'Radium B
atom in itself.' "
Grete Hermann cut him short. "You don't seem to be using
the term 'Ding an sich' in the spirit of Kantian philosophy. We
must clearly distinguish between the 'Ding an sich' and the
physical object. According to Kant, the 'Ding an sich' does not
appear in phenomena, not even indirectly. This concept has only
one function: in natural science and in the whole of theoretical
philosophy it refers to what cannot possibly be known. Because,
you see, our entire knowledge is based on experience, and
ex perience meaos knowing precise! y things as they a ppear to us.
E ven a priori know ledge does not deal with things as they are in
 QUANTUM MECHANICS AND KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I21

themselves; its only function is to make experience possible. Now

if you refer to a 'Radium B atora an sich,' in the sense of classical
physics, you are simply referring to what Kant calls a thing or an
object. Objects are part of the world of phenomena: chairs and
tables, stars and atoras."
"Even if we cannot see them, Iike atoras, for instance?"
"Even then, for we deduce them from observable phenomena.
The world of phenomena is a coherent structure, and it is quite
impossible, even in daily experience, to distinguish sharply be-
tween what we see directly and what we merely infer. You see
this chair, but you can't see its back from where you are standing.
Still, you are positive that it exists. This simply means that
science is objective; it is objective precisely because it speaks of
objects, not of perceptions."
''But when it comes to atoms, we can see neither front nor
back. Why should they have the same properties as chairs and
tables?"
"Because they are objects. Without objects there can be no
objective science. And what objects are is determined by such
categories as substance, causality, etc. If you renounce the strict
application of these categories, then you also renounce the possi-
bility of experience in general."
But Carl Friedrich refused to give in. "In quantum theory we
have to use a new method of objectifying perceptions, one that
Kant would never have dreamt of in his philosophy. Every per-
ception refers to an observational situation that must be specified
if experience is to result. The consequence of a perception can no
longer be objectified in the manner of classical physics. Once an
experiment allows us to deduce the presence of a Radium B
atom, then the resulting knowledge is complete for this particu-
lar observational situation, but incomplete for another observa-
tional situation, for example, one involving statements about the
emission of an electron. If two observational situations are in the
relationship Bohr has called complementary, then complete
knowledge of one necessarily means incomplete knowledge of the
other."
"And with that you intend to overthrow the whole Kantian
analysis of experience?"
"No, Ido not. Kant has perceived very shrewdly how we come
122 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

by our experiences, and I believe that his analysis is essentially

correct. But when he makes the intuitive forms 'space' and 'time,'
and the category 'causality,' a priori conditions of experience, he
runs the danger of postulating them as absolutes and of claiming
that they must enter into the content of all physical theories.
But this is not the case, as relativity and quantum theory have
shown. Nevertheless Kant is perfectly right in bis own way.
Physical experiments must first of all be described in the lan-
guage of classical physics, or else the results cannot be com-
municated to other physicists who have to verify them. The
Kantian 'a priori' is therefore by no means eliminated from
modern physics; it has simply been 'relativized.' The concepts of
classical physics, which include space, time and causality, may be
said to be a priori conditions of relativity and quantum theory,
inasmuch as they must be used in the description of experi-
ments-or let us put it more circumspectly, inasmuch as they are
actually used in that way. But their content is nevertheless
changed by the new theories.''
"All this still fails to provide an answer to my original ques-
tion," Grete Hermann said. "I was wondering why our inability
to discover the causes of, say, the emission of an electron means
that we must stop searching further. Admittedly, you don't
forbid this search, but you claim that it is futile since no further
determining factors can be found. Indeed, you contend that, if
only it is formulated in precise mathematical language, the
indeterminacy allows a definite prediction in another experi-
ment. And this, too, you claim is borne out by the results. If you
argue like that, you turn uncertainty into a physical reality, with
an objective character, while, normally speaking, uncertainty is a
synonym for ignorance, andas such something purely subjective.''
Here I felt I must once again intervene in the discussion.
"With your last remark," I said, "you have given a very precise
description of the most characteristic feature of modern quantum
theory. Whenever we try to deduce laws from our study of atomic
phenomena, we discover that we no longer correlate objective
processes in space and time, but only observational situations.
Only for these can we derive empirical laws. The mathematical
symbols with which we describe such observational situations
represent possibilities rather than facts. One might say that they
 QUANTUM MECHANICS AND KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY 12 3
represent an intermediate stage between the possible and the
factual, which can only be called objective in the sense that, say,
temperature is called objective by statistical thermodynamics.
Our knowledge about what is possible does admittedly enable us
to make a few clear predictions, but, as a rule, it only allows us to
speculate as to the probability of a future event. Kant could not
possibly have foreseen that in an experimental realm so far
beyond daily experience we could no longer treat observations as
if they referred to 'Dinge an sich, or 'objects'; in other words, he
could not foresee that atoms are neither things nor objects."
"In that case what are they?"
"We lack the right term, for our language is based on daily
experience, and atoms are not. But if you dislike such evasions,
we might say that atoms are parts of observational situations,
parts that have a high explanatory value in the physical analysis
of the phenomena in volved."
"Since we are talking about linguistic difficulties," Carl Fried-
rich now interjected, "it is worth remembering that the most
important lesson we can learn from modern physics is perhaps
the fact that all the terms with which we describe experience
apply to a limited realm only. All such concepts as 'thing,' 'object
of perception,' 'moment,' 'simultaneity,' 'extension,' etc., get us
into trouble in certain experimental situations. That does not
mean that these concepts have ceased to be the presupposition of
all experience, but it does mean that they are the presupposition
that must be critically evaluated in each case, and from which no
absolute rules can be deduced."
Grete Hermann seemed very unhappy about this turn in our
conversation. She had set out to refute the arguments of atomic
physics with Kantian propositions or, conversely, had hoped to
be shown that Kant had been guilty of a serious philosophical
lapse. But what she now found was a ramshackle halfway house,
in which she did not really feel at home. Hence she asked: "Is
your relativization of the Kantian 'a priori,' indeed of language
itself, not tantamount to complete resignation in the sense of 'I
see that nothing can be known'? Do you finally believe that there
is no ground of knowledge on which we can safely take our
stand?"
Carl Friedrich answered very boldly that it was precisely the
124 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

development of natural science that seemed to justify a slightly

more optimistic view:
"When we say that, with his 'a priori,' Kant gave a correct
account of the state of scientific knowledge in his time, but that
modern atomic physics faces a new epistemological situation,
then our statement may be compared to the other statement, that
Archimedes' lever laws were the right formulation of the practi-
ca! rules of technology in Archimedes' day, but do not meet the
needs of modern technology, for instance of electronics. Archi-
medes' laws represent true knowledge, not sorne vague expression
of opinion. They apply to all levers at ali times, and if there
should be life on sorne planet of sorne distant stellar system, then
Archimedes' laws will apply to them as well. The fact that exten-
sions of knowledge have helped us to advance into realms of
technology in which the lever concept no longer suffices signifies
neither the relativization nor the historization of the lever laws;
it simply means that in the course of historical development these
laws have lost the central significance they originally enjoyed.
Similarly, I believe that Kant's analysis of human understanding
represents true knowledge, not sorne vague expression of opinion,
and that it will apply whenever thinking beings enter into the
kind of contact with their environment to which we refer as
'experience.' But even the Kantian 'a priori' can be displaced
from its central position and become part of a very much wider
analysis of the process of understanding. In this context, it would
certainly be a mistake were we to detract from scientific or
philosophical knowledge with the phrase, 'Every age has its own
truth.' We should nevertheless remember that the very structure
of human thought changes in the course of historical develop-
ment. Science progresses not only because it helps to explain
newly discovered facts, but also because it teaches us over and
over again what the word 'understanding' may mean."
This reply, based partly on Bohr's teachings, seemed to satisfy
Grete Hermann to sorne extent, and we had the feeling that we
had all learned a good deal about the relationship between Kant's
philosophy and modern science.
 11
Discussions about Language (1933)

The golden age of atomic physics was now fast drawing to an

end. In Germany political unrest was increasing. Radical groups
of the right and the left carne out into the streets, fought in the
backyards of the poorer quarters and tried to break up each
other's meetings. Almost imperceptibly, tension mounted, even
at the university and during faculty meetings. For a time I tried
to close my eyes to the danger, to ignore the ugly scenes in the
street. But, when all is said and done, reality is stronger than all
our wishes-this time it entered my consciousness in the form of
a dream. One Sunday morning I was due to go on a bicycle tour
with Carl Friedrich, and I had set the alarm dock for five o'clock.
Just before I woke up, I saw a strange vision in my half-sleep. I
was walking up the Ludwigstrasse in Munich at first light, just as
I had done in the spring of 1919. The street was bathed in a
reddish, increasingly intense and uncanny glow. Crowds of
people with scarlet and black-red-and-white flags were streaming
from the Victory Gate toward the university fountains and the
air was filled with noise and uproar. Suddenly, just in front of
me, amachine gun began to cough. I tried to jump to safety and
woke up; the sputtering of the gun was simply the ringing of my
alarrn dock, and the reddish light the morning sun on my bed-
room curtains. From that moment I knew that we were once
again facing hard times.
After the catastrophe of J anuary 1933 I took just one more
happy holiday with old friends, long remembered by all of us as
a beautiful but painful farewell to the "golden age."
I had the use of a skiing hut on an alpine meadow high above
the village of Bayrischzell on the southern slope of the Grosse
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

Traithen. It had been restored by friends from the Youth Move-

ment after an avalanche had half-destroyed it. The father of one
of my comrades, a timber merchant, had supplied the necessary
materials and tools, the farmer who owned the hut had carried
them up to the meadow during the summer, and within a few
glorious autumn weeks my friends had put up a new roof, re-
paired the shutters and fixed upa dormitory inside. As a reward,
ali of us were allowed to use the hut as a skiing hostel, and for
Easter 1933 I invited Niels and his son Christian, Felix Bloch
and Carl Friedrich for a skiing holiday. Niels, Christian and
Felix decided to come to Oberaudorf straight from Salzburg,
where Niels had an engagement, and climb the rest of the way.
Carl Friedrich and I had gone up two days earlier to fix things
up and to lay in provisions. A few weeks earlier, during the good
weather, cases of food had been delivered to the Brünrn;tein
refuge, whence we had to carry them up to our hut, just under
an hour's walk away, in rucksacks. During our first night in the
mountains a gale blew up and there was a continuous fall of
snow. In the morning, we had great difficulty in clearing the en-
trance, and by noon when we fought our way through the bliz-
zard to the refuge through new snow almost a yard deep, the
weather showed no sign of breaking, and we realized that we had
to watch out for possible avalanches. From the refuge I rang up
Niels in Salzburg, as we had agreed, described conditions on the
mountain and promised that Carl Friedrich and I would meet
him at Oberaudorf station next day. Niels thought that this was
quite unnecessary; he, Christian and Felix would simply take a
taxi from Oberaudorf and come up to the hut. I had to explain
that this idea was extremely unrealistic, and then he agreed to
my original suggestion. During the second night, too, it kept
snowing hard, and by morning our hut was almost buried.
Yesterday's tracks had completely disappeared. Luckily, the sky
began to clear, visibility was good, and we were able to avoid the
worst spots. Carl Friedrich and I took turns at digging a new
path to the refuge; once there we could ski downhill to Ober-
audorf all the way. Our tracks would help us to retrace our
path-the sky was clear and the wind still, so that there was no
danger of a snowdrift before nightfall. But when we reached the
station at the agreed time, there was no sign of Niels, Christian
 DISCUSSIONS ABOUT LANGUAGE

or Felix. Instead, a great deal of luggage was being unloaded:

skis, rucksacks, coats, all of which looked very much as if they
belonged to our guests. We learned from the stationmaster that
the owners of the luggage had missed their train because they
had insisted on taking coffee at an intermediate stop and that
they would not be arriving before 4 P.M. at the earliest. This
meant that most of our difficult climb would have to be made in
the dark. Carl Friedrich and I used the interval to sort out the
essential luggage-we had to conserve our physical strength on
the way up. When our guests arrived punctually at four o'clock, I
told Niels that we were in for quite an adventure-the tracks
Carl Friedrich and I had left coming downhill were our only
signpost through the thick snow.
"Strange, isn't it," Niels said after a moment's reflection, "and
there I was thinking that a mountain is something you have to
start climbing from the bottom."
One of us mentioned that something like "inverse mountain-
eering" was the rule in the Grand Canyon. You got there by
train, were put down by the edge of a vast desert plateau, had to
descend six thousand feet to the Colorado River and then climb
back to the train. That was precisely why the place was called a
canyon and not a mountain. Chatting away like this, we made
good progress during the first two hours, but I kept remembering
that a climb that takes no more than two to three hours in
summer might well take six or even seven under the presen t
conditions. It was pitch-dark when we carne to the most difficult
part of our ascent. I went ahead, followed by Niels, Carl Fried-
rich who was carrying a lantern, Christian and Felix, in that
order. Most of our tracks were still deeply chiseled into the snow
and hence easy to find-only in a few unprotected spots had the
wind covered them up. I was rather uneasy when I found that
the snow had remained so powdery; Niels was beginning to tire
and we had to slow down. It was ten o'clock now, and I thought
it would take us another hour to reach the refuge.
As we passed a steep slope, something very odd happened-I
suddenly had the feeling that I was swimming. I completely lost
control of my movements, and then something pressed on me so
violently from all sides that, for a moment, I stopped breathing.
Luckily, my head had stayed above the encroaching masses of
128 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

snow, and within seconds I got my arms free again. I turned

around. It was completely dark and none of my friends was in
sight. I called out "Niels" but received no answer. For a moment,
I thought all of them had been buried in the avalanche. I made
frantic exertions to dig my skis out of the snow, and when I had
done so, I spotted a light a long way up. I yelled for all I was
worth and received an answer from Carl Friedrich. It suddenly
dawned on me that I had been carried quite a long way down by
the avalanche, and that the others had been spared. I now made
my way toward the lantern, and we continued with the utmost
caution. At eleven, we reached the refuge and decided not to run
the risk of a further climb that night. We accordingly bedded
down, and early next morning reached our hut after laboring
through great drifts of blinding white snow under a dark-blue
sky.
Too exhausted by the climb and the shock of the avalanche,
we took it easy during that day. We lay on the roof, from which
we had cleared the snow, enjoying the sun and discussing recent
developments in atomic physics. Niels had brought along a cloud-
chamber photograph from California, which immediately cap-
tured our interest and gave rise to heated discussions. The
argument hinged on a problem Paul Dirac had brought upa few
years earlier in connection with his work on relativistic electron
theory. According to that theory, which had meanwhile been
borne out by experiment, there were mathematical reasons for
concluding that, in addition to the negatively charged electron,
there must also be a related particle with a positive charge. Dirac
had at first tried to identify this hypothetical particle with the
proton, that is, with the atomic nucleus of the hydrogen atom,
but most other physicists had objected to this hypothesis on the
ground that there was convincing evidence to show that this
positively charged particle ought to have the same mass as the
electron, while the proton was known to be sorne two thousand
times heavier. In addi tion, the hypothetical particle was said to
behave quite differently from usual matter-upon collision with
an ordinary electron the two were supposed to be transformed
into radiation. (Today we speak, accordingly, of "anti1natter.")
Now Niels' cloud-chamber photograph seemed to prove the
existence of just such an (anti) particle. lt showed a trail of water
 DISCUSSIONS ABOUT LANGUAGE 129

droplets obviously produced by a particle coming from the top.

The particle had then crossed a lead plate and had left a further
trail on the other side of the plate. The cloud chamber had been
placed in a strong magnetic field so that the tracks had become
deflected. The density of the water droplets in the track corre-
sponded precisely to the density one could expect from electrons,
but the deflection suggested the presence of a positive electrical
charge, that is, if the particle had indeed come from the top.
Now this followed necessarily from the fact that the curvature
above the plate was smaller than that below, in other words,
from the fact that the particle had been slowed down by the lead
plate. We now argued at length whether or not these conclusions
were necessarily correct. All of us realized that the answer was
crucial.
After we had been looking for possible experimental mistakes
for sorne time, I said to Niels: "lsn't it odd that, throughout this
discussion, no one should have mentioned quantum theory? We
behave as if the electrically charged particles were an object like
an electrically charged oil droplet, or like a pith hall in an old
electroscope. We quite unthinkingly use the concepts of classical
physics, as if we had never heard of the limitations of these
concepts and of uncertainty relations. Isn't that bound to lead to
errors?''
"No, certainly not," Niels replied. "After all, it is almost the
essence of an experiment that the observations can be described
with the concepts of classical physics. That is the whole paradox
of quantum theory. On the one hand, we establish laws that
differ from those of classical physics; on the other, we apply the
concepts of classical physics quite unreservedly whenever we
make observations, or take measurements or photogra phs. And
we have to do just that because, when all is said and done, we are
forced to use language if we are to comm unicate our results to
other people. A measuring instrument is a measuring instrument
only when the observations it yields enable us to arrive at
unequivocal conclusions about the phenomenon under observa-
tion, only when a strict causal connection can be assumed to
exist. Yet when it comes to the theoretical description of an
atomic phenomenon, we must make a distinction between the
phenomenon and the observer or his apparatus. ~~he demarca-
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

tion line may be subject to choice, but on the observer's side of

the split we are forced to use the language of classical physics,
simply because we have no other language in which to express
the results. We know that the concepts of this language are
imprecise, that they have a limited area of application, but we
have no other language, and, after all, it does help us to grasp
the phenomenon at least indirectly."
"Isn't it possible," Felix objected, "that once we have under-
stood quantum theory even better, we might be able to dispense
with the classical concepts and use a new language to speak far
more accurately about atomic phenomena than we can today?"
"You are misunderstanding the problem," Niels replied. "Sci-
ence is the observation of phenomena and the communication of
the results to others, who must check them. Only when we have
agreed on what has happened objectively, or on what happens
regularly, do we have a basis for understanding. And this whole
process of observation and communication proceeds by means of
the concepts of classical physics. The cloud chamber is a measur-
ing apparatus, which means that this photograph entitles us to
conclude that a positively charged particle which has the prop-
erties of an electron has passed through the chamber. Of course,
we have to assume that the measuring instruments were properly
built, that they were firmly fixed to the table, that the camera
was mounted so rigidly that it did not shake when the photo-
graph was taken, that the lens was properly focused, etc.; in other
words, we must be certain that the experiment was performed
under the precise conditions laid down by classical physics. It is
one of the basic presuppositions of science that we speak of
measurements in a language that has basically the same structure
as the one in which we speak of everyday experience. We have
learned that this language is an inadequate means of communi-
cation and orientation, but it is nevertheless the presupposition
of all science."
While the rest of us continued sunning ourselves on the roof
and engaging in physical and philosophical discussions, Christian
decided to explore the immediate vicinity of our hut. He
brought back a damaged wind wheel which sorne of my Youth
Movement friends n1ust have built during an earlier stay-per-
haps to determine the strength and direction of the wind, or
perhaps purely for fun.
 DISCUSSIONS ABOUT LANGUAGE

We at once decided to construct a new and better wheel. Niels,

Felix and I each began to carve one from bits of firewood. But
while Felix and I tried to produce the perfect hydrodynamic
shape-that is, a propeller-Niels took a square piece of timber
and carved out two planes set at right angles. We discovered that
our "ideal" propeller was mechanically so unsound that it would
not revolve properly in the wind, while Niels' simple instrument
was built so well, down to its shaft, that it turned in the slightest
breeze.
"You gentlemen are far too ambitious" was all Niels said of
our efforts, though he himself had, of course, been no less ambi-
tious in his clean and careful craftsmanship, which, incidentally,
reflected his whole attitude to classical physics.
That night we played poker. We could, of course, have lis-
tened to the bad phonograph, and to the awful music-hit records
stored in the hut, but the demand for this type of music was very
slight. Our poker game was of a rather original variety. The
hands on which we staked our money were shouted out and
praised to the skies in an attempt to outbluff each other. Niels
saw this as a fresh opportunity for philosophizing about the
meaning of language.
"It is quite obvious," he said, "that in this game we are using
language quite differently than we do in science. To begin with,
we try to hide rather than bring out the real facts. Bluffing is part
of the game. But how do we hide the real facts? Language may
convey pictures to others that help to oust ideas reached by sober
reflection and so give rise to mistaken actions. But what factors
decide whether or not these pictures impinge on others with
sufficient intensity? Surely not the loudness of our voices. This
would be much too primitive a view. Nor is it the kind of routine
persuasion a good salesman might use. For none of us are famil-
iar with this routine, and we can hardly imagine that any of us
would be taken in by it either. Perhaps our ability to convince
others depends on the intensity with which we can persuade
ourselves of the force of our own imagination."
This view was given unexpected confirmation during the
game. Niels was loudly insisting that he was holding five cards of
the same suit. He kept doubling, and by the time four cards had
been turned up the rest of us threw in our hands. Niels won a
large sum of play money. When it was all over, and he proudly
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

showed us his fifth card, it turned out that it was not of the same
suit, as he himself had wrongly thought. He had mistaken the ten
of hearts for a ten of diamonds. Hence his bidding had been pure
bluff. I was reminded of his remark, during our walk through
Zealand, about the power of ideas to mold men's thoughts
through the ages.
Our hut had turned terribly cold, and not even the stiff grog
with which we had enlivened our poker game helped us to
ignore that fact. And so we ali climbed into our sleeping bags
and bedded down on our bales of straw. In the quiet of the
night, my thoughts began to harken back to Niels' cloud-
chamber photograph. Could it be true that the positive electrons
predicted by Dirac really did exist, and, if so, what were the
consequences? The more I thought about it, the more strongly I
was gripped by the kind of emotion that always seizes one when
one is forced to change one's opinions on fundamental points.
During the past year I had been working on the structure of the
atomic nucleus. Chadwick's discovery of the neutron had sug-
gested that atomic nuclei consist of protons and neutrons, held
together by strong but hitherto undiscovered forces. That seemed
plausible enough. The further assumption that the nucleus was
completely devoid of additional electrons had seemed very much
more questionable, and sorne of my friends had criticized me
most sharply for propounding this view. "After all," they had
said, "you can see electrons leaving the atomic n ucleus during
beta disintegrations." But I had imagined that the neutron itself
was made up of a proton and an electron, even though, for
reasons I did not yet understand, it was no larger than the
proton. Moreover, the newly discovered forces responsible for
holding the atomic nucleus together did not seem to change
when a proton was replaced with a neutron. This symmetrical
interaction could be explained partly by the assumption that the
cohesive force resulted from the exchange of an electron between
the two heavy particles. But this picture had two major flaws. To
begin with, there was no real reason why there should not be
equally strong forces binding proton to proton, or neutron to
neutron. And then it was inexplicable why-apart from the rela-
tively small electrical contribution-the two forces should appear
to be identical. Moreover, the neutron was empirically so much
 DISCUSSIONS ABOUT LANGUAGE 1 33

like the proton that it seemed unreasonable to consider the one

as a simple and the other as a compound structure.
But if Dirac's positive electron-or, as we now call it, the
positron-really existed, then we were faced with a completely
new situation: the proton could now be imagined to consist of a
neutron and a positron, and the symmetry between proton and
neutron was completely restored. But, in that case, was there any
sense in asserting that electrons or positrons were contained in
the atomic nucleus? Could they not have been produced from
energy, as a converse to Dirac's assertion that they combined to
produce radiation? And if energy could be transformed into
electron and positron pairs and vice versa, could we still ask how
many particles went into the atomic nucleus? So far we had
always believed in the doctrine of Democritus, which can be
summarized by: "In the beginning was the particle." We had as-
sumed that visible matter was composed of smaller units, and
that, if only we divided these long enough, we should arrive at
the smallest units, which Democritus had called "atoras" and
which modern physicists called "elementary particles." But per-
haps this entire approach had been mistaken. Perhaps there was
no such thing as an indivisible particle. Perhaps matter could be
divided ever further, until finally it was no longer a real division
of a particle but a change of energy into matter, and the parts
were no longer smaller than the whole from which they had been
separated. But what was there in the beginning? A physical law,
mathematics, symmetry? In the beginning was symmetry! This
sounded like Plato's Timaeus, and I was reminded of the day I
spent on the roof of the theological college in the summer of
1919. If the particle in the cloud-chamber photograph was really
Dirac's positron, vast new realms had been opened up, and I
could already discern sorne of the paths on which we should have
to advance into them. And so I kept musing until, at long last, I
fell asleep.
Next morning the sky was blue again. We put on our skis right
after breakfast, and went up the Himmelmoos slope to a small
lake and on across a ridge into a lonely valley behind the Grosse
Traithen and from there back to the top of our mountain. On
the crest running eastward we suddenly witnessed a strange
meteorological and optical phenomenon. The gentle wind blow-
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

ing from the north carried up a thin cloud of vapor brightly

illuminated by the sun; in it we could see our shadows, and those
cast by our heads were surrounded by a bright ring of light.
Niels, who seemed particularly delighted by this unusual spec-
tacle, said that he had heard about it before. People had told
him that it was possibly the origin of the halo in which the early
masters had wreathed the heads of the saints. "And perhaps it is
characteristic," he added with a wink, "that it is only around our
own heads that we can see the halo." This remark was greeted
with great glee and also gave rise to quite a few self-critical
remarks. Then it was time for a quick race down to our hut.
Felix and I were particularly ambitious, and so wildly did I set
off that, cutting into a steep slope, I started another avalanche.
Fortunately, we managed to stay on top of it, and all of us
arrived home safely, although at considerable intervals. It was
now my job to cook the meal, and Niels, who was rather tired, sat
down with me in the kitchen, while the rest sunned themselves
on the roof. I used the opportunity to continue our earlier con-
versation.
"Your explanation of the halo," I said, "is most convincing,
and I am prepared to accept itas ,at least part of the truth. But I
am only half-satisfied, and once, in a letter to an overzealous
positivist of the Vienna Circle, I put forward the opposite view-
point. The positivist assertion that every word has a clear mean-
ing and that it is quite improper to use it in any other way struck
me as arrant nonsense. Accordingly, I wrote that everyone knows
what is meant when we say that a great man sheds light wherever
he goes. I realized, of course, that this sort of light could not be
measured with a photometer, but I refused to take the physical
meaning of the word 'light' as the real one, and dismiss the other
as purely derived. Quite possibly, therefore, it was the light of the
saints themselves and not the strange phenomenon we have just
observe<l that inspired the painters."
"I am quite prepared to accept that," Niels told me, "and we
agree much more than you think. Of course, language has this
strange, fluid character. We never know what a word means ex-
actly, and the meaning of our wor<ls depends on the way we join
them together into a sentence, on the circumstances under which
we formulate them, and on countless subsi<liary factors. If you
 DISCUSSIONS ABOUT LANGUAGE 1 35

read the American philosopher William James, you will find that
he has described it ali most accurately. He says that, though our
minds may seem to seize on only the most important meaning of
a word we hear spoken, other meanings arise in its darker re-
cesses, link up with different concepts and spread into the un-
conscious. That happens with everyday speech anda fortiori with
the language of the poets. To a lesser extent, it applies to the
language of science as well. Particularly in atomic physics, na-
ture has taught us that sorne of our most trusted concepts have a
strictly limited application. You have only to think of position
and velocity.
"In spite of all that, Aristotle and the ancient Greeks took a
great step forward when they discovered that language can be
idealized and rendered precise enough for logical deductions.
That kind of language is, of course, much narrower than every-
day speech, but it is of inestimable value in natural science.
"The positivists are quite right when they stress the impor-
tance of linguistic accuracy and when they warn us that language
may become meaningless once it eschews logical rigor. But per-
haps they overlook the fact that in science we can at best try to
approximate this ideal, but can never actually attain it. For the
language with which we describe our experiments contains con-
cepts whose scope we cannot define with precision. One could, of
course, say that the mathematical formulae with which we theo-
retical physicists describe nature ought to have this degree of
logical purity and strictness. But then the whole problem re-
appears in different guise just as soon as we try to apply these
formulae to nature. For if we want to say anything at all about
nature-and what else does science try to do?-we must somehow
pass from mathematical to everyday language.''
"The positivists," I remarked, "seem to aim their shafts chiefly
at metaphysics and especially at religious metaphysics. To them,
the arguments of religion are nothing but pseudo problems which
cannot stand up to linguistic analysis, and are therefore meaning-
less. Do you think they are right, if only in part?"
"Certainly their critique contains a large grain of truth," Niels
replied, "and we can learn a great deal from it. I do not object to
positivism on the grounds that I would be less skeptical in this
area, but rather because I am afraid that, on principie, things
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

cannot be much better in science either. To put it in an exag-

gerated way: in religion we renounce the wish to give words an
unequivocal meaning from the outset, while in science we start
with the hope-or, if you like, the illusion-that one day it may
be possible to do just that. But for ali that, we can learn a great
deal from the positivists. For instance, I cannot see what people
have in mind when they speak about the meaning of life. After
all, the word 'meaning' refers to a connection between a subject
or object and something else, for instance, an intention, an idea
or a plan. But when it comes to life-by that I mean the whole of
life, the world we experience-to what else can we possibly refer
it?"
"But, surely, we do know what we mean when we speak of the
'meaning' of life," I objected. "The meaning of life depends on
ourselves. I think the expression refers to the way we shape our
own life, in which we fit it into a wider context; perhaps it is
only an image, a principie, a faith, but still something we can
fully understand."
Niels reflected in silence a while, and then said: "No, the
meaning of life is simply that there is no meaning in saying that
life has no meaning. Our quest for understanding is like a well
without a bottom."
"But aren't you being too rigid with language? You know that
the old Chinese sages placed the 'tao' at the head of all philos-
ophy, and 'tao' is often translated as 'meaning.' The Chinese
sages would probably have raised no objection to linking the
words 'tao' and 'life.'"
"If you give the term 'meaning' so wide a definition, then
anything is possible. But none of us can really say how the word
'tao' was used. Still, since you are talking about Chinese philos-
ophers and life, I must say I prefer the old legend about the three
sages who were asked to describe the taste of vinegar. Perhaps I
ought to add that the Chinese call vinegar the 'water of life.' The
first philosopher said, 'It is sour'; the second, 'It is bitter'; and
the third, none other than Lao-tse, 'It is fresh.' "
Carl Friedrich carne into the kitchen and asked when in God's
name I was going to serve up the food. I told him that if he
called the others, and put out the aluminum plates and cutlery,
 DISCUSSIONS ABOUT LANGUAGE

we could start eating at once. We sat around the table and the
old proverb "Hunger is the best cook" proved my salvation.
After the meal, we established a ros ter of duties: N iels would
wash up, I would clean the stove, the others would chop wood or
sweep the hut. It goes without saying that our primitive kitchen
would have caused a sanitary inspector's hair to stand on end.
''Our washing up is just like our language," Niels said. "We have
dirty water and dirty dishcloths, and yet we manage to get the
plates and glasses clean. In language, too, we have to work with
unclear concepts and a form of logic whose scope is restricted in
an unknown way, and yet we use it to bring sorne clarity into our
understanding of nature."
During the next few days the weather proved changeable and
we went on a number of excursions, sorne long, others short. We
climbed the Trainsjoch and did skiing exercises on the training
slope of the U nterberger-Alm. Once again our talk carne round
to the problem of language, this time after Carl Friedrich and I
had tried to take sna pshots of a herd of chamois one afternoon.
We failed to get close enough, and admired the instinct of ani-
mals who could detect the softest sound, the merest footprint in
the snow, the crackling of a branch or the slightest scent, and
take evasive action. This gave Niels cause for a disquisition on
the difference between intellect and instinct.
"Perhaps these chamois only succeeded in escaping from you
because they did not have to think first, or discuss the best
method of eluding you. Their whole organism is specialized for
finding safety on mountainous terrain. Selection no doubt helps
a particular species to develop certain physical capacities to near-
perfection. As a result, however, it is forced to wage the struggle
for life in a particular manner. If environmental conditions
change too much, it can no longer adapt itself and will become
extinct. There are sorne fish that can produce electric shocks
and so defend themselves against enemies. There are others
whose appearance is so perfectly adapted to life in the sand
that they completely merge with the sea bed and so fool all
predators. With us human beings specialization has taken a
different path. Our nervous system, which enables us to think
and speak, can be considered an organ with which we can probe
much deeper into time and space than any other animal. We can
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

remember the past and predict probable future events. We can

also imagine what happens far away in space, and we can make
use of the experiences of others. As a result, we have become
much more flexible, much more adaptable than any other ani-
mal, to such an extent that one can speak of man's specialization
toward flexibility. But quite naturally this development of
thought and speech, or, more generally, the preponderance of the
intellect, has led to a stunting of our instinctual reactions. In
that respect, therefore, man is inferior to the animals. He does
not have as keen a sense of smell and he cannot jump across rocks
as sure-footedly as a chamois. But he can compensate for these
deficiencies by reaching into wider spatial and temporal spheres.
Here, the development of language was probably the decisive
step. For speech, and with it thought, is an ability which-in
contrast to all other physical capacities-does not develop within
individuals but between individuals. We learn our speech from
others. Language is, as it were, a net spread out between people,
a net in which our thoughts and knowledge are inextricably
enmeshed."
"If you hear a positivist or a logician speak about language," I
broke in, "you get the impression that the forms and expressive
power of language can be treated and analyzed quite regardless
of evolution and biological precedent. Yet if one compares intel-
lect and instinct, as you have just done, it is possible to imagine
that different forms of intellect and language could have ap-
peared in different parts of the world. And, in fact, the grammars
of different languages are quite distinct, and perhaps differences
in grammar may produce differences in logic."
"Naturally, it is possible to have different forms of speech and
thought," Niels replied, "just as there are different races or
different parts of an organism. But much as ali living organisms
are constructed in accordance with the same laws of nature, and
largely from approximately the same chemical compounds, so the
various possibilities of logic are probably based on fundamental
forms that are neither man-made nor even dependent on man.
These forms must play a decisive part in the selective develop-
ment of language; they cannot be its mere consequences."
"Let's come back to the difference between the chamois and
 DISCUSSIONS ABOUT LANGUAGE 1 39

ourselves,'' Carl Friedrich suggested. "lt seemed to me that you

were arguing that intellect and instinct are mutually exclusive.
Do you simply mean that the natural-selection process favors the
development of one at the expense of the other orare you think-
ing rather of a complementary relationship in which the devel-
opment of one is incompatible with the development of the
other?"
"I merely believe that these two ways of finding one's way in
the world are radically different. But, needless to say, many of
man's actions, too, are determined by instinct. Quite likely, when
we judge others by their appearance or expression, or make up
our mind about their intelligence or conversational ability, we
operate by instinct as well as by experience."
During this conversation, sorne of us had begun to tidy the rest
of the hut-our holidays were coming to an end within a few
days. Niels had started shaving. He had been living like a
N orwegian lumberman, stuck away in sorne remote forest, and
was astonished to see from the mirror how the razor was changing
him back into a professor of physics within a matter of minutes.
"I wonder if a cat, also, would look more intelligent after a
shave," he now mused.
That evening we played poker again, and since speech, or
rather bluffing, played so large a part in our version of the game,
Niels suggested that we try the whole thing without cards. Felix
and Christian would probably win, he added, because none of us
others could match their persuasive powers. The attempt was
made, but did not lead to a successful game, whereupon Niels
said: "My suggestion was probably based on an overestimate of
the importance of language; language is forced to rely on sorne
link with reality. In real poker one plays with real cards. In that
case, we can use language to 'improve' the real hand with as
much optimism and conviction as we can summon up. But if we
start with no reality at all, then it becomes impossible to make
credible suggestions."
When our holidays were over, we took the short, western route
down into the valley between Bayrischzell and Landl. It was a
warm sunny day, and below, where the snow line stopped, liver-
wort stood in flower between the trees and the meadows were full
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

of yellow primroses. Since our luggage was heavy, we asked the

innkeeper to let us have two horses and an old cart. We tried to
forget that we were returning to a world full of political troubles.
The sky was as bright as the faces of our two young companions,
Car! Friedrich and Christian, when we climbed into the cart and
drove out into the Bavarian spring.
 12
Revolution and
University Life (1933)

When I returned to my Leipzig lnstitute at the beginning of the

summer term of 1933, the rot had begun to spread. Severa! of my
most capable colleagues had left Germany, others were preparing
to flee. Even my brilliant assistant, Felix Bloch, had decided to
emigrate, and I myself began to wonder whether there was any
sense in staying on. From this time of painful reflection I remem-
ber two conversations particularly well: one with a young Na-
tional Socialist student, the other with Max Planck.
At the time I was living in a small attic on the top floor of the
lnstitute. After moving in, I had proudly acquired a grand
piano from Blüthner's of Leipzig, and I would play on it most
evenings, either by myself or with friends who liked chamber
music. Besides that I was taking lessons from the pianist Hans
Beltz, at the College of Music, and so I would sometimes have to
practice at noon as well.
One afternoon I had just left my apartment after an hour's
practice of the Schumann A Minor Concerto and was on my way
to the Institute, when I spotted a young man in the window seat
of the corridor. I had previously noticed him at my lectures,
dressed in brown uniform. He now rose with sorne embarrass-
ment, and I asked him if he wished to speak to me.
No, he said rather shyly, he had merely been listening to my
music. But since I had asked him, he would be grateful if he
could ask me a few questions. I showed him into my living room,
where he began to pour out his heart.
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

"I come to your lectures and I know that there is much we can
learn from you. But otherwise we have no contact with you at ali.
I have listened more than once to your playing. I don't very
often get a chance to hear music. I also know that you used to be
a member of the Youth Movement, like myself. But you never
come to youth meetings nowadays, whether they are run by the
National Socialist Student Association, the Hitler Youth or any-
one else. I myself am a Hitler Youth leader, and I would very
much like to see you at one of our meetings. But you actas if you
were one of those conservative old professors who live completely
in the past and to whom the new Germany is alien, if not
anathema. I simply cannot imagine that someone as young and
as musical as you are should show such lack of sympathy toward
youth, toward those of us who are anxious to do what we can to
build a better Germany. After all, we need people with more
experience, people who are prepared to hel p us in the great work
of reconstruction. Perhaps you object to the many ugly things
that are happening, to the persecution and expulsion of so many
innocent people. But please believe me, I myself find these out-
rages just as repulsive as you do, and I am certain that none of
my friends would take part in that sort of thing. Quite likely it is
impossible to stop people from going too far in their first flush of
excitement after a great revolution, to stop time-servers from
climbing onto a successful bandwagon. We can only hope that
after a brief spell they will ali be thrown out. That is precisely
why we need the cooperation of all who want to build more
wisely, who, for instance, can help infuse our movement with
many of the ideals that used to inspire the Youth Movement.
Won't you please tell me why you are keeping your distance
from us?"
"If it were merely a question of joining in with young stu-
dents, working for what I believe is right, I might well offer my
support, in both speech and action. But now that such vast num-
bers of people have been thrown into the arena, the opinion of
a few stu<lents and professors hardly matters. Moreover, the
leaders of this revolution have made quite sure that the nation
will turn a deaf ear to reason: they keep pouring scorn on so-
called intellectuals, on all those who show greater spiritual dis-
cernment than your new masters. And can you really be sure that
 REVOLUTION ANO UNIVERSITY LIFE 1 43

you are on the right road toward a better Germany? I won't, of

course, deny that you personally may have every intention of
getting there; but on the whole all we can say with certainty is
that the old Germany is being destroyed, and that injustices
flourish all around us-everything else is nothing but wishful
thinking. If you would simply try to remedy what grievances
there are, I would be with you all the way. But what is happen-
ing today is something quite different. You must realize that I
cannot help you when Germany is being ruined; it's as simple
as that."
"Now you are really being unfair. You can't honestly believe
that Germany could still be saved with minor reforms. Ever since
1918 things have been going from bad to worse. True enough, we
lost the war; our former ene1nies were stronger, and we ought to
have learned our lesson. But what happened? Nightclubs and
cabarets sprang up everywhere, and all who showed concern, all
who had made efforts or sacrifices, were mocked and derided.
'Why waste your time,' they said, 'when you can en joy yourself?
The war is lost, but there is always alcohol and beautiful women.'
And in business life, corruption was rife as never befare. When
the government ran short of cash, because it had to pay repara-
tions or because the common people had grown too poor to pay
their taxes, it simply printed more money. Why not? The fact
that many old and weak people were swindled out of their last
few pennies and had to starve seemed to worry nobody. The
government had enough money; the rich grew richer, the poor
poorer. And you have to admit that Jews were involved in sorne
of the worst scandals of recent years."
"And that entitles you to look upon Jews as sorne special kind
of human beings, to treat them shamelessly and to drive a large
number of outstanding people from Germany? Why don't you
leave it to the courts to punish the guilty, irrespective of religion
or race?"
"Simply because it doesn't happen. Justice has long since been
turned into political justice, a means of perpetuating the rotten
status quo, of protecting the ruling class and letting the rest go to
hell. Just look at the mild sentences they used to give sorne of the
worst swindlers. The stench of decay rose from many other places
as well. In art exhibitions the most incredible rubbish, the most
144 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

unwholesome confusion was offered to the public as great art,

and if the man in the street refused to marvel, he was told, 'You
simply don't understand it; you are too ignorant.' And did the
State ever bother about the poor? They boasted about all those
wonderful social institutions that were there to ensure no one
went hungry. But is it really enough to give the poor just enough
money to keep them alive and then forget about them? You must
admit, we are doing things very much better. We sit down with
the workers, we drill with them in the same Storm Trooper
squads, we collect food and clothing for the poor, we march side
by side with them in demonstrations, and we can feel that they
welcome us. Surely, that's an improvement, or isn't it? During
the past fourteen years, everyone worked to line his own pockets.
The only thing that mattered was being better dressed than your
neighbor, having more elegant quarters, greater pretensions. And
Reichstag deputies sought only to gain the maximum material
advantage for their own party. Everyone called everyone else
greedy, only to become greedier himself. Meanwhile the general
good was conveniently forgotten by one and ali. And when they
couldn't agree, fists or inkpots started flying in the chamber. We
certainly put an end to that, and no one can blame us for it."
"Have you ever thought that in 1919 the German people were
forced to learn how to govern themselves for the first time, and
that it was not all that easy for them to respect the rights of
others, once those in power stopped using their authority to
ensure justice and fair treatment?"
"That may well be so, but the parties have had fourteen years
to learn just that, and things have been getting worse, not better.
lf we Germans keep fighting and lying to each other at home, we
cannot really be surprised to find that the world outside should
be fast losing what little respect it still has for us, and tries
constan ti y to put us down. The League of N ations keeps talking
about self-determination, but no one bothers to ask the people of
South Tyrol whether they wish to remain part of Italy. And
when they prate about security and disarmament, what they
really mean is the disarmament of Germany and the security of
other nations. You can't really blame our young men for refusing
to swallow ali these lies; indeed, you should be happy that they
don't."
 REVOLUTION AND UNIVERSITY LIFE 1 45
"And do you really believe that Hitler is any more honest?"
"I can see that Hitler is much too coarse for your liking. But
he is speaking to ordinary people, and has to use their language.
I can't prove that he is more honest than the rest, but you will
soon realize that he is much more successful. You will see that
Germany's old adversaries will make many more concessions to
Hitler than they did to his predecessors, simply because, from
now on, they, too, will have to make sacrifices if they intend to
continue on their unjust course. In the past, things were very
much easier for them, seeing that the German Government
yielded to the least pressure from the outside."
"Even if you were right about that, I would not like to call a
forced retreat by others a genuine achievement of your move-
ment or of Hitler. Every concession she forces upon others will
earn Germany fresh enemies, and the war ought to have taught
all of us the folly of the slogan 'More foes, more honor.'"
"And so you think Germany should remain a nation despised
and derided by all, a nation that takes every insult lying down,
and accepts sole responsibility for the last war, simply because
the others say so, or rather because, when ali is said and done, we
lost?"
"We don't seem to be speaking the same language," I said,
trying to calm him. "Perhaps you will let me explain what I
really think. To begin with, I have found that countries like
Denmark, Sweden or Switzerland do quite well even though they
have won no wars in the past h undred years and though they
lack powerful armies. They are able to preserve their own
character despite their semidependence on the great powers. Why
shouldn't we be striving for the same thing? You may object that
we are a much bigger and economically much stronger nation
than the Swedes or the Swiss, and that our influence abroad
ought to be correspondingly greater. But I am trying to look
further ahead. The changes we are witnessing throughout the
world are reminiscent of the changes that occurred in Europe at
the end of the Middle Ages. At that time, technical advances,
particularly in the manufacture of weapons, caused castle and
town to lose their political independence, to make way for larger
units, for territorial states, great or small. Once this change had
taken place, the building of costly walls and defensive moats
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

became a pos1tive disadvantage-small towns which had dis-

pensed with them could spread more easily and more quickly
than those which continued to huddle behind great boulders. In
our day, too, technology is making enormous strides, and defense
techniques have been radically changed by the invention of the
airplane. Consequently, there is once again the tendency to form
Iarger political units, to go beyond national boundaries. Hence
we would probably do more for national security if we disarmed
and tried, instead, to establish friendly relations with our neigh-
bors through economic contracts. If we rearmed, we should prob-
ably encourage others to do likewise, and the result would be a
decrease in general security. Joining a wider political community
might well afford us much better protection. I am only mention-
ing these facts to stress how difficult it is to assess the value of
distant political objectives. I am firmly convinced that we must
never judge political movements by their aims, no matter how
loudly proclaimed or how sincerely upheld, but only by the
means they use to realize these aims. Now when it comes to
means, you N ational Socialists are no different from the Com-
munists; the leaders of both movements have clearly lost faith in
the persuasive force of their own ideas. Hence both leave me quite
unmoved except for the fact that I am sadly convinced that both
will bring down misfortune on Germany."
"But you have to admit that nothing at ali has been achieved
by what you call 'good means.' The Youth Movement organized
no demonstrations, smashed no windows and did not beat up its
opponents. It only tried, by personal example, to set new and
better standards. But what did it achieve?"
"Perhaps nothing in political terms. But the Youth Movement
does have sorne cultural achievements to its credit. You have only
to think of public education, of crafts, of the Dessau Bauhaus, of
the reviva! of old music, of song circles and amateur plays. Don't
you think that is worth something, too?"
"Yes, perhaps. I don't wish to belittle any of it, and I am truly
thankful for all that was done. But Germany also needs political
liberation from her state of inner corruption, and no amount of
goodwill has been able to achieve that. Surely, this cannot mean
we must now sit by and do nothing. You criticize us because we
follow a man whom you consider too coarse and of whose meth-
 REVOLUTION AND UNIVERSITY LIFE 1 47

ods you disapprove. I, too, think that anti-Semitism is one of the

most unplea~ant aspects of our movement, and I hope that it will
soon stop. But have any of the old school, any of the old pro-
fessors who now complain about our revolution, ever tried to show
us young people a better way, one that would have led us to our
goal along a better road? N ot one of them told us how to
shake off our misery. You, too, kept silent. What else could we
have done in the circumstances?"
"And so you resorted to force and made a revolution-in the
mistaken belief that good can come out of destruction. Do you
know what Jakob Burckhardt said about the consequences of
revolution? 'How fortunate the revolution that does not end
with the enthronement of the archenemy.' Why should we Ger-
mans have this extraordinary fortune? The reason why we older
ones-I have to count myself among them now-gave you no
advice was simply that we had no advice to offer-beyond the
very humdrum counsel that everyone ought to do his work as
conscientiously and decently as he can, hoping that his example
may produce sorne good in the end."
"In other words, all you want is to preserve the old, to cling to
the past. You <lisapprove of all changes, w hereas the young are
desperately anxious to forge ahead. If you had your way, nothing
new could ever happen. And yet you see fit to propound revolu-
tionary ideas in your own science. After all, relativity and
quantum theory represent radical breaks with everything that
has gone before."
"lf we are discussing revolutions in science, we ought to look
more closely at what has been happening. Take Planck's quan-
tum theory. No doubt, you know that when Planck first tackled
the subject he had no desire to change classical physics in any
serious way. He simply wanted to solve a particular problem,
namely, the distribution of energy in the spectrum of a black
body. He tried to do so in conformity with all the established
physical laws, and it took him many years to realize that this was
impossible. Only at that stage did he put forward a hypothesis
that did not fit into the framework of classical physics, and even
then he tried to fill the breach he had made in the old physics
with additional assumptions. That proved impossible, and the
consequences of Planck's hypothesis finally led to a radical recon-
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

struction of all physics. But even after that those realms of

physics that can be described with the concepts of classical
physics remained quite unchanged. In other words, only those
revolutions in science will prove fruitful and beneficia! whose
instigators try to change as little as possible and limit themselves
to the solution of a particular and clearly defined problem. Any
attempt to make a clean sweep of everything or to change things
quite arbitrarily leads to utter confusion. In science only a crazed
fanatic-for instance, the kind of man who maintains that he can
invent a perpetual-motion machine-would try to overthrow
everything, and, needless to say, all such attempts are completely
abortive. True, I don't know whether scientific revolutions can
be compared with social revolutions, but I suspect that even
historically the most durable and beneficia! revolutions have
been the ones designed to serve clearly defined problems and
which left the rest strictly alone. Think of that great revolution
two thousand years ago, whose maker said: 'Think not that I am
come to destroy the law ... but to fulfill it.' So let me repeat:
what matters is to confine oneself to a single, important objective
and to change as little of the rest as possible. The small part we
have to change may well have so great a transforming force that
it may affect all forms of life without any further effort on our
part."
"But why do you cling so resolutely to the old forms? Surely, it
happens only too often that they are out of step with the times
and merely survive through a kind of inertia. Why not shake
them off? For instance, I find it absurd that our professors should
still appear at official functions dressed in their medieval gowns.
Surely, that is one old vestige that ought to be discarded."
"Needless to say, I am not so much concerned with the old
forms themselves as with what they stand for. Let me explain
this, too, by an example taken from physics. The formulae of
classical physics represent an old store of empirical knowledge
that was not only correct in the past but will be correct at any
time in the future. Quantum theory has merely given this store of
knowledge a different form. But as far as the content is con-
cerned there is nothing in the motion of pendulums, the lever
laws, the motions of the planets, that needs to be changed,
because the world itself does not change with respect to these
 REVOLUTION AND UNIVERSITY LIFE 1 49

processes. And this brings me to the problem of the gown: this

old form of dress probably goes back to the time when people
were divided into guilds, and it probably reflects the very much
older recognition that men of learning are especially important
to mankind, simply because their advice is the soundest. The
gown is meant to symbolize this special position, and its wearer,
even when he falls short of the standards of his guild, is protected
against rude attacks by the common people. This experience is
certainly as true today as it was a hundred years ago; but I agree
that it matters very little whether or not we express it outwardly
through the wearing of gowns. In any case, I suspect that many of
those who object to the wearing of academic dress are also anx-
ious to get rid of the meaning these gowns were designed to
represent. That would be unspeakably silly of them; after all, the
facts cannot be changed."
"You are again extolling experience as opposed to the rashness
of youth, as old people are so accustomed to do. And since we
can't argue back, we simply withdraw deeper into our shells."
My visitar now made as if to go, but I asked him whether I
might not play him the last movement of the Schumann con-
certo-as far as this could be done at all without the hel p of an
orchestra. He seemed happy to stay on, and when he finally took
his leave, I felt that we were parting on good terms.
During the weeks following this conversation, political inter-
ference in university life became more and more intolerable. One
of my faculty colleagues, the mathematician Levy, who, by law,
should have enjoyed immunity because of his distinguished war
record, was suddenly relieved of his post. The indignation of
sorne of the younger members of the staff-I am thinking par-
ticular! y of Friedrich Hund, Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer and the
mathematician B. L. van der Waerden-was so great that we
thought of tendering our resignations and of persuading other
colleagues to follow suit. Befare taking this grave step, I decided
to discuss the whole question with an older man, one who
enjoyed our full confidence. I accordingly asked Max Planck for
an interview and then paid a visit to his home in the Grunewald
section of Berlin.
Planck received me in a somewhat somber but otherwise
friendly and old-fashioned living room; all that was missing to
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

complete the picture was an old oil lamp over its central table.
Planck seemed to have grown a good many years older since our
last meeting. His finely chiseled face had developed deep creases,
his smile seemed tortured, and he was looking terribly tired.
"You have come to get my advice on political questions," he
said right off, "but I am afraid I can no longer advise you. I see
no hope of stopping the catastrophe that is about to engulf all
our universities, indeed our whole country. Before you tell me
about Leipzig-and, believe me, things couldn't be worse than
they are here in Berlin-1 would like to apprise you of my
conversation with Hitler a few days ago. I had hoped to convince
him that he was doing enormous damage to the German univer-
sities, and particularly to physical research, by expelling our
Jewish colleagues; to show him how senseless and utterly im-
moral it was to victimize men who have always thought of
themselves as Germans, and who had offered up their lives for
Germany like everyone else. But I failed to make myself under-
stood-or, worse, there is simply no language in which one can
talk to such men. He has lost all contact with reality. What
others say to him is at best an annoying interruption, which he
immediately drowns by incessant repetitions of the same old
phrases about the decay of healthy intellectual life during the
past fourteen years, about the need to stop the rot even at this
late hour, and so on. All the time, one has the fatal impression
that he believes all the nonsense he pours forth, and that he
indulges his own delusions by ignoring all outside influences. He
is so possessed by his so-called ideas that he is no longer open to
argument. A man like that can only lead Germany into dis-
aster."
I now told him about the latest developments in Leipzig and
about the plan of sorne of the younger staff members to resign.
But Planck was convinced that all such protests had become
utterly futile.
"I am glad to see that you are still optimistic enough to believe
you can stop the rot by such actions. Unfortunately, you greatly
overestimate the influence of the university or of academi-
cians. The public would hear next to nothing about your
resignation. The papers would either fail to report it or else treat
 REVOLUTION AND UNIVERSITY LIFE

your protests as the actions of misguided and unpatriotic cranks.

You simply cannot stop a landslide once it has started. How
many people it will destroy, how many human lives it will
swallow up, is a matter of natural law, even if we ourselves
cannot predict its precise course. Hitler, too, can no longer
determine the subsequent course of events; he is a man driven by
his obsessions and not someone in the driver's seat. He cannot
tell whether the forces he has unleashed will raise him up or
smash him to pieces.
"In these circun1stances, your resignation would have no effect
at the present time other than to ruin your own career-I know
you are prepared to pay that price. But as far as Germany is
concerned, your actions will only begin to matter again after the
end of the pre~ent catastrophic phase. It is to the future that all
of us must now look. If you resign, then, at best, you may be able
to get a job abroad. What might happen at worst, I would rather
not say. But abroad you will be one of countless emigrants in
need of a job, and who knows but that you would deprive
another, in much greater need than yourself? No doubt, you
would be able to work in peace, you would be out of danger, and
after the catastrophe you could always return to Germany-with
a clear conscience and the happy knowledge that you never
compromised with Germany's gravedigger. But before that hap-
pens many years will have passed; you will have changed and so
will the people of Germany, and I don't know whether you will
be able to adapt yourself to the new circumstances, or how much
you will achieve in this changed world.
"If you do not resign and stay on, you will have a task of quite
a different kind. You cannot stop the catastrophe, and in order to
survive you will be forced to make compromise after compromise.
But you can try to band together with others and form islands of
constancy. You can gather young people around you, teach them
to become good scientists and thus help them to preserve the old
values. Of course, no one can tell how many such islands will
survive the catastrophe; but I am certain that if we can guide
even small groups of talented and right-minded young people
through these horrible times, we shall have done a great deal to
ensure Germany's resuscitation after the end. For such groups
can constitute so many seed cry~tals from which new forms of life
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

can arise. I am thinking first and foremost of the reviva! of scien-

tific research in Germany. But since no one knows what precise
roles science and technology will play in the future, these re-
marks may apply to much wider fields of endeavor as well. I
think that all of us who have a job to do and who are not
absolutely forced to emigrate for racial or other reasons must try
to stay on and lay the foundations for a better life once the
present nightmare is over. To do so will certainly be extremely
diflicult and dangerous, and the compromises you will have to
make will later be held against you, and quite rightly so. Natu-
rally, I cannot blame anyone who decides differently, who finds
life in Germany intolerable, who cannot remain while injustices
are committed that he can do nothing to prevent. But in the
ghastly situation in which Germany now finds herseH, no one can
act decently. Every decision we make involves us in injustices of
one kind or another. In the final analysis, all of us are left to our
own devices. There is no sense in giving advice or in accepting it.
Hence I can only say this to you: No matter what you do, there is
little hope that you can prevent minor disasters until this major
disaster is over. But please think of the time that will follow the
end."
And that is how we left it. On the train journey back to
Leipzig, the conversation kept going round and round in my
head. I almost envied those of my friends whose life in Germany
had been made so impossible that they simply had to leave. 1~hey
hatl been the victims of injustice and would have to suffer great
material hardships, but at least they had been spared the agoniz-
ing choice of whether or not they ought to stay on. I trietl again
and again to pose the problem in different ways, to look at it
from all angles. If a member of one's family catches a fatal infec-
tion, is it better to lea ve the house before one ca tches the infec-
tion and perhaps spreads it, or is it better to look after the
patient even if he is bound to die? But then could one really
compare a revolution with a disease? Might that not be a cheap
way of suspending all moral judgments? And what precisely were
the compromises Planck had hinted at? At the beginning of each
lecture you hatl to raise your hand and give the Nazi salute. But
hadn't I raisetl my hand to wave at acquaintances even before
the advent of Hitler? Was that really a tlishonorable compro-
 REVOLUTION AND UNIVERSITY LIFE 1 53

mise? And then you had to sign all official letters with "Heil
Hitler." That was much less pleasant, but luckily I, for one,
didn't have to write all that many official letters, and when I did,
the new salutation invariably meant: "I don't want to have
closer contact with you." We were expected to attend celebra-
tions and marches, but I felt it ought to be possible to get out of
quite a few. A compromise here, a compromise there, and where
did you draw the line? Had William Tell been right to refuse
homage to Gessler's hat, thus endangering the life of his own
child? Ought he to have compromised? And if the answer was no,
ought we to compromise with our own Gesslers?
Conversely, if one decided to emigrate, how could one recon-
cile that decision with Kant's dictum: "Act only on that maxim
whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a
universal law"? After all, not everyone could emigrate. Ought
one to roam restlessly from one country to the next, in an at-
tempt to avoid all possible social catastrophes? And when all was
said and done, you belonged to a particular country by birth,
language and education. And if you cut off your roots and
moved, might you not be simply leaving the field to those
madmen, those spiritually unhinged creatures whose demented
plans were driving Germany headlong into disaster?
Planck had said that we might be faced with alternatives that
would be equally unjust. Were such situations possible? I tried to
think upan extreme situation which, though it had not occurred
in reality, was not too farfetched nor quite obviously beyond a
humane solution. This was the example I finally hit upon: A
dictatorial government has jailed ten of its opponents and has
decided to kili at least the most important of the prisoners. At
the same time, the government is terribly anxious to justify this
murder before the rest of the world. Accordingly, it makes an
offer to another of its opponents, say, a jurist who has been left at
liberty because of his high international renown: if he can
produce and sign a legal justification for the murder of the most
important prisoner, then the other nine will be released and
allowed to emigrate. If he refuses, all ten prisoners will be killed.
The jurist is left in no doubt that the dictator is in earnest. What
is he to do? Is a clear conscience, a "white waistcoat," as we used
to call it cynically, worth more than the lives of nine friends?
1 54 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

Even his suicide would be no solution; it would merely lead to

the immediate slaying of the innocent ten.
Thinking along these lines, I remembered a conversation with
Niels Bohr, during which he referred to the fact that justice and
love were complementary concepts. Although both are essential
components of our behavior toward others, they are, in fact,
mutually exclusive. Justice would force the jurist to withhold his
signature, the more so as the political consequences of his signing
might be such as to destroy many more innocent people than the
nine friends. But would love refuse the cry for help sent up by
the desperate families of the nine friends?
After a while, I realized how extremely childish it was to go on
playing such absurd mental games. What mattered was to decide
here and now whether I ought to emigrate orto stay in Germany.
"Think of the time after the catastrophe," Planck had said, and I
felt he was right. We would have to form islands, gather young
people round us and help them to live through it ali, to build a
new and better world after the holocaust. And this was bound to
involve compromises, for which we would rightly be held to
account-and perhaps even worse. But at least it was a worth-
while job. The world outside did not need us; there were others
who could fulfill the tasks set there much better than we could.
By the time the train pulled into Leipzig, I had made up my
mind: I would stay on in Germany, at least for a time, continue
working at the university, and, for the rest, do my bit as best as I
possibly could.
 13
Atomic Power and
Elementary Particles (1935-1937)

Despite the convulsion of scientific life at home and abroad

caused by Hitler's rise to power, atomic physics developed with
astonishing rapidity. In Lord Rutherford's Cambridge labora-
tory, Cockcroft and Walton succeeded in building a linear
accelerator capable of producing a beam of high-energy protons
(ionized hydrogen). With it they bombarded atoms of boron
and lithium, and so great was the energy of the accelerated
protons that they overcame the barrier of electrical repulsion, hit
the atomic nucleus and transformed it. By means of this and
similar accelerators, notably the cyclotron developed in America,
it was possible to make countless new experiments in nuclear
physics, so that a fairly clear picture of the properties of atomic
nuclei and the forces working within them could be built up
soon afterward. It appeared that atomic nuclei, unlike atoms,
could not be likened to small-scale planetary systems in which
lighter bodies revolve about a heavy central body; rather must
the atomic nuclei be considered as various-sized drops of the same
nuclear material, itself made up of protons and neutrons in
about the same proportions. The density of this material was
roughly the same for all atomic nuclei; however, strong electro-
static repulsion between protons ensured that in heavy nuclei
there were slightly more neutrons than protons. The assumption
that the powerful forces binding the nuclear material together
are invariant under the exchange of protons and neutrons was
proved correct, and the symmetry between protons and neutrons,
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

which I had envisaged so long ago in our skiing hut, was further
borne out by the fact that while sorne atomic nuclei emit elec-
trons during beta disintegration others emit positrons. So as to
get a more detailed idea of the structure of the nucleus, we in
Leipzig proceeded on the assumption that the nucleus was a
nearly spherical drop of nuclear material, in which neutrons and
protons moved about freely without appreciably interacting
with, or disturbing, one another. Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen, on
the other hand, thought that neutron-proton interactions were of
great importance, and accordingly likened the nucleus to a kind
of sandbag.
It was in order to resolve these differences that I went to
Copenhagen for a few weeks sorne time between the autumn of
1935 and the autumn of 1936. As Niels' guest, I was assigned a
room in the offi.cial residence which the Danish Government and
the Carlsberg Foundation had put at the disposal of the Bohr
family. For many years this house was a most important meeting
center for atomic physicists. It was built in Pompeian style, and
reflected the strong influence of the famous scul ptor, Thorvald-
sen. From the living room a broad flight of steps, flanked by
statues, led into the park, with a central fountain among flower
beds and massive old trees offering shelter from sun and rain.
The vestibule of the house gave onto a conservatory, where the
splashing of another small fountain was the only sound to
break the otherwise perfect silence. Here we would watch Ping-
Pong halls riding on the jet of the fountain and discuss the
physical causes of this phenomenon. Behind the conservatory was
a large hall with Doric columns which often served for receptions
during scientific congresses. lt was in this magnificent house that
I now joined the Bohr family, and it so happenecl that Lord
Rutherford, the father of modern atomic physics, as he was later
called, was also spending part of his holidays there. Hence it was
only natural that all three of us should from ti1ne to time walk
through the park, discussing the latest experiinents or the struc-
ture of the atomic nucleus. I shall now try to reconstruct one of
these conversations.
Lord Rutherford: "What do you think would happen if we
built even bigger accelerators or high-tension generators and
fired protons of still greater energy and velocity at even heavier
 ATOMIC POWER AND ELEMENTARY PARTICLES 157
atomic nuclei? Will the projectile simply pass through the atomic
nuclei, possibly without causing much damage, or will it remain
stuck in them and surrender ali its kinetic energy? If the inter-
actions between individual nuclear particles are as important as
Niels believes them to be, then the projectiles will get caught
inside, but if protons and neutrons move about more or less
freely in the atomic nucleus, i.e., without strong interactions,
then the projectiles might easily pass through a nucleus without
causing any great disturbance inside."
Niels: "I am certain that the projectiles will, as a rule, remain
stuck in the atomic nucleus and that their kinetic energy will be
more or less evenly distributed among ali the nuclear particles,
for the interactions are very great indeed. As a result of its colli-
sion with a projectile the atomic nucleus will simply grow
hotter, and the rise in temperature can be calculated from the
specific heat of the nuclear material and the energy of the pro-
jectile. What happens afterward might perhaps best be called a
partial evaporation of the atomic nucleus. In other words, a few
particles on the surface will occasionally receive so much energy
that they will leave the atomic nucleus. But what do you think?"
The question was put to me.
"I am inclined to agree with you on the whole," I replied,
"although your scheme differs considerably from our Leipzig
model, according to which the particles move about with almost
complete freedom inside the nucleus. A very quick-moving par-
ticle penetrating the nucleus would certainly be involved in
severa} collisions because of the intensity of the interactions and
thus lose its energy. Things may be quite different with a slow-
moving particle, for its wave nature must come into play and the
number of possible energy transfers become smaller. In that case
the interaction may become unimportant. But it ought to be
possible to work it all out by simple calculations-we know
enough about the atomic nucleus for that. I shall make this my
first task when I get back to Leipzig.
"May I now put a question to you? Do you think it likely that
with more powerful accelerators we may one day be able to use
nuclear energy for technical purposes-for instance, for the artifi-
cial creation of new chemical elements in appreciable quantities-
or to utilize the energy of nuclear bonds much as we exploit the
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

energy of chemical bonds during combustion? I believe there is

an English science fiction story in which a physicist solves ali his
country's political difficulties, at home and abroad, by producing
an atom bomb as a kind of deus ex machina. Ali that is, of
course, nothing but wishful thinking, but in a somewhat more
serious vein the physical chemist Walther Nernst once said in
Berlin that the earth was a kind of powder keg, and that it
needed only a match to blow it sky-high. And he was right: if
only we could keep combining four hydrogen nuclei from the
sea into one helium nucleus, we would free such enormous quan-
tities of energy that Nernst's powder-keg comparison would
become a ridiculous understatement."
Niels: "No one has really thought the whole matter through to
its conclusion. The decisive difference between chemistry and
nuclear physics is this: whereas most chemical experiments in-
volve the majority of the molecules of the substances concerned-
for instance, in the powder of your keg-in nuclear physics we
can never experiment with more than a very small number of
atomic nuclei. On principie, nothing in this can change with the
invention of ever-greater accelerators. After ali, the number of
processes involved in a chemical experiment is to the number of
nuclear processes so far produced by experimental techniques as,
say, the diameter of our planetary system is to the diameter of a
pebble, and this relationship is not materially altered if instead
of the pebble we take a piece of rock. Of course, things would be
quite different if we could raise a piece of matter to so high a
temperature that the energy of the individual particles became
great enough to overcome the repulsive forces between the
atomic nuclei, and if, at the same time, we could keep the density
high enough to ensure that collisions did not become too rare.
But this calls for temperatures of something like a thousand
million degrees, and long before we reached such temperatures
the vessels in which we enclosed our experimental substances
would have evaporated."
Lord Rutherford: "In any case, no one has seriously suggested
that energy can be derived from nuclear processes. For though
the fusion of a proton or neutron with an atomic nucleus does
release energy, a much greater amount is needed to produce the
fusion in the first place, for instance, by the acceleration of a very
 ATOMIC POWER AND ELEMENTARY PARTICLES 159
large number of protons, most of which will miss their target. The
largest proportion of this energy is in any case dissipated in the
form of Brownian movement. As far as the liberation of energy is
concerned, experiments with atomic nuclei may therefore be
called a sheer waste. All those who speak of the technical exploi-
tation of nuclear energy are talking moonshine."
On this point we quickly reached agreement, and none of us
suspected that, only a few years later, Otto Hahn's discovery of
uranium fission would dramatically change the picture.
Of the prevailing political turmoil very Iittle filtered through
into the stillness of Bohr's park. We sat down on a bench in the
shadow of the large trees and watched an occasional gust of wind
deflect the descending spray of the fountain, causing individual
droplets to settle on the rose leaves, where they glistened brightly
in the sun.
After my return to Leipzig, I produced the promised calcula-
tions. They confirmed Niels' suspicion that quick-moving protons
would generally remain stuck in the atomic nucleus, simply
heating the latter by the collision. (It was at about the same time
that processes of this type were actually observed with fast-
moving protons from cosmic rays.) However, my calculations also
seemed to suggest that the strong interactions of individual
particles could, in a first approximation, be neglected during the
study of the inner structure of atomic nuclei. We accordingly
continued to work along these lines. Carl Friedrich, who was
then assistant to Lise Meitner in Otto Hahn's Institute in the
Dahlem section of Berlin, would of ten attend our siminars in
Lei pzig and, on one occasion, gave us a report of his own investi-
gations of nuclear processes in the sun and the stars. He was able
to adduce a convincing theoretical proof that certain well-defined
reactions between light atomic nuclei take place in the innermost
part of the stars, and that the enormous energy that is constantly
emitted by the stars is obviously due to these nuclear processes.
Hans Bethe published similar findings in America, and we
became used to the idea of treating stars as gigantic atomic
furnaces, in which atomic energy is released before our very eyes,
admittedly not as a controllable process but as a natural phe-
nomenon. But even then none of us seriously thought of the
possibility of using atomic power for technological purposes.
160 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

In our Lei pzig seminar we did not work only on the theory of
atomic nuclei. Ever since my stay in the skiing hut, I had been
devoting a great deal of fresh thought to the theoretical problems
connected with the behavior of elementary particles. Paul Dirac's
ideas on antimatter had since become an experimentally proven
constituent of atomic physics. We knew that there was at least
one process in nature during which energy is transformed into
matter: the energy of radiation can give rise to electron-positron
pairs. It seemed reasonable to assume that there would be other
processes of the same kind, and we tried to imagine the nature of
such processes during collisions of elementary particles traveling
at very high velocities.
The next person with whom I discussed these problems was
Hans Euler, who had joined us a few years earlier as a young
student. I had noticed him almost immediately, not because he
was of above-average intelligence but because of his striking
appearance. He looked more delicate and far more sensitive than
most of my other students, and his eyes bore the marks of suffer-
ing, particularly when he smiled. He had an elongated, almost
sunken face, framed in curly fair hair, and when he spoke, one
could feel a degree of concentration that was quite unusual in so
young a man. It was easy to see that he was living in great
poverty, and I was most ha ppy to get him the modest job of lah
assistant. It was not until very much later, however, when I had
earned his trust, that he confided all his troubles to me. His
parents could barely pay his fees. He himself was a convinced
Communist; his father, too, was probably in trouble for political
reasons. He was engaged to a young girl who had had to flee
Germany because she was of Jewish descent, and now lived in
Switzerland. Of those who had seized power in Germany since
1933 he could only think with disgust, and he would rarely speak
of them. To relieve his financia} burden, I would invite young
Euler for lunch whenever I could, and on one such occasion I
suggested that he might perhaps like to emigrate. But Euler
would not hear of it; his ties with Germany were too close for
that. But that was another subject on which he preferred to keep
his own counsel.
And so we would talk about atomic physics instead and, in
particular, about the possible consequences of Dirac's discovery,
and the transformation of energy into matter.
 ATOMIC POWER AND ELEMENTARY PARTICLES 161

"Dirac has shown," Euler said, "that when a light quantum

flies past an atomic nucleus, it may change into a pair of particles
-an electron and a positron. Does this mean the light quantum
itself consists of an electron and a positron? In that case, it would
be a kind of double star, one in which the electron and positron
revolve about each other. Or is that a false picture?"
"I don't think it's very convincing. You see, the mass of a
double star cannot be much smaller than the sum of the masses
of its constituent parts. Nor would it necessarily have to move
through space with the velocity of light. There is no reason why
it should never come to rest."
"But what can we say about the light quantum in this
context?"
"Perhaps that it is virtually made up of an electron and a
positron. The word 'virtually' means that we are dealing with a
possibility. In that case, my assertion means no more than that
the light quantum may, in certain experiments, split up into an
electron anda positron-nothing more."
"Well, in a very high-energy impact, a light quantum might
easily be transformed into two electrons and two positrons. Does
that mean that it is virtually made up of these four particles as
well?"
"Yes, I believe that would be the consistent view. Since the
term 'virtually' denotes possibilities, we are entitled to say that
the light quantum is virtually made up of two or four particles.
Two different possibilities do not necessarily exclude each other."
"But what is the advantage of this sort of assertion?" Euler
asked. "We might equally well say that every elementary particle
is virtually made up of any number of other particles. After all,
any number of particles might be created during high-energy
collisions. In that case our statement says very little indeed."
"I should not put it like that, for, you see, the number and
type of particles are not as arbitrary as all that. Only such con-
figurations may be considered possible descriptions of a particu-
lar particle as have the same symmetry as the original particle.
Instead of 'symmetry,' we might say more precisely: transforma-
tion characteristics under operations that leave the physical laws
unchanged. After all, quantum mechanics has taught us that the
stationary states of an atom are characterized by their sym-
metries. 'Things are probably much the same with ele1nentary
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

particles, which, when ali is said and done, are simply stationary
states of matter."
Euler was still not fully satisfied. "The whole argument is a bit
too abstract for my liking. What we probably ought to be doing
is to think up experiments that would lead to unexpected results,
and this precisely because light quanta are virtually made up of
pairs of particles. It seems reasonable to assume that we should
obtain at least qualitatively satisfactory results if we stuck to the
model of the double star, and asked what conclusions orthodox
physics would draw. For instance, we could investigate whether
or not two light rays crossing in empty space really pass through
each other with no interaction, as we have assumed until now,
and as the old Maxwellian equations demand. If pairs of elec-
trons and positrons are virtually present, i.e., contained as a
possibility, in a light ray, then another light ray ought to be
scattered by these particles; hence there would be deflection of
light by light, that is, an interaction of the two light rays. We
ought to be able to demonstrate its existence and to calculate its
extent from Dirac's theory."
"Whether or not we would be able to observe it would, of
course, depend on the intensity of the mutual perturbation. But
by all means calculate the effect. Perhaps experimental physicists
will then discover ways and means of corroborating your results."
"l really think this whole 'as if' philosophy is terribly odd. The
light quantum is said to behave in sorne experiments as if it
consisted of an electron and a positron. But at other times it
apparently behaves as if it consisted of two or more such pairs.
The result is a wishy-washy kind of physics. And yet we can use
Dirac's theory to calculate the probability of a certain event with
great precision, and find that experiments will confirm the re-
sults."
I tried to develop the "as if" approach a little further. "You
know that experimental physicists have recently discovered yet
another type of elementary particle, namely, the meson. Over
and above that, there are the powerful forces which keep the
atomic nucleus together and to which sorne elementary particles
must correspond, reflecting the wave-particle dualism. Perhaps
there are still a great many other elementary particles which we
have missed, simply because they are too short-lived. We could
 ATOMIC POWER AND ELEMENTARY PARTICLES 163
then compare an elementary particle with an atomic nucleus ora
molecule. That is, we could treat it 'as if' it were a collection of
many, possibly different, elementary particles. In this connection,
we might ask a question which Lord Rutherford recently put to
me in Copenhagen in connection with atomic nuclei: 'What do
you think would happen if we fired a high-energy elementary
particle at another?' Will it remain stuck in the other elementary
particle, considered as a cluster, heat it up and eventually cause
its evaporation, or will it pass smoothly through the cluster
without too much of a disturbance? Needless to say, the answer
depends once again on the intensity of the interactions, and on
this subject we know next to nothing. But perhaps it is worth our
while to concentrate on the known interactions, and to see what
happens with them."
At the time this conversation took place, the physics of ele-
mentary particles was still in its infancy. True, cosmic rays had
provided physicists with certain experimental starting points, but
systematic experimentation had not even been begun. Euler
wanted to know what I thought of the future of this branch of
atomic physics.
"Thanks to Dirac's discovery, i.e., the existence of antimatter,"
he said, "the whole picture has become much more complicated
than ever it was. For a time it looked as if the whole universe was
built up out of only three basic units: the proton, the electron
and the light quantum. This was a simple enough picture, and
there was good reason to hope that its essential features would
soon be completed. Now the picture is getting increasingly
confused. The elementary particle has ceased to be elementary;
'virtually' speaking at least, it is a very complicated structure.
Doesn't that mean that we are that much further from true
understanding?"
"No, I don't really think so. After all, the earlier picture with
its three elementary units was not particularly convincing. Why
ever should there have been just these three arbitrary units, and
why should one of them, the proton, be precisely 1,836 times
heavier than the other, the electron? What is so distinctive
about the number 1,836? And why should these units have been
indestructible? After all, we can shoot them at one another with
tremendous force, so why should they hold together? Now,
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

thanks to Dirac's discovery, things look much more reasonable

than they did. The elementary particle, like the stationary state
of an atom, is determined by its symmetry. The stability of forms,
which Bohr made the starting point of his theory and which can
be interpreted, at least in principie, by quantum mechanics, is
also responsible for the existence and stability of elementary
particles. These forms are always recreated if they are destroyed,
just like the atoms of the chemists; and this is the natural conse-
quence of the fact that symmetry is rooted in nature herself.
Admittedly, we are still a long way from being able to formulate
the physical laws responsible for the structure of elementary
particles, but I could very well imagine that sooner or later they
will lead us to even that strange number, 1,836. I am quite
fascinated by the idea that symmetry should be something much
more fundamental than the particle itself. This fits in with the
spirit of quantum theory as Bohr has always conceived it. It also
fits into Plato's philosophy, but this need not detain us now. Let
us stick to what we can investigate. I think you ought to deter-
mine the scattering of light by light, while I look at the general
question of what happens during the collision of high-energy
partid es."
This was the program to which both of us kept during the next
few months. My own calculations showed that at high energies
even the interaction involved in radioactive beta decompositions
can become very marked, so that it seemed possible that a colli-
sion between two high-energy elemen tary particles could lead to
the creation of many new particles. Now, at the time, we already
had hints of this multiple-creation process in cosmic radiation,
but still lacked reliable experimental corroboration-this was to
come twenty years later, with the construction of the great ac-
celerators. Meanwhile Euler, together with another of my pupils,
B. Kockel, determined the scattering of light by lig·ht, and al-
though no direct experimental verification was possible here,
there is little <loubt today that the scattering effect they deduced
is a fact.
 14
IndividualBehaviorin the Face of
PoliticalDisaster (1937-1941)

The immediate prewar years, or rather what part of them I spent

in Germany, struck me as a period of unspeakable loneliness.
The Nazi regime had become so firmly entrenched that there was
no longer the slightest hope of a change from within. At the same
time, Germany became increasingly isolated, and it was obvious
that resistance abroad was gathering momentum. A gigantic arms
race had started, and it seemed only a question of time before the
two camps clashed in open battle, a battle in which international
law, Geneva conventions and moral inhibitions would all go
completely by the board. In Germany itself this situation was
aggravated further by the isolation of the individual. Communi-
cation became increasingly difficult-only the most intimate
friends dared to speak their minds to one another; otherwise you
resorted to the kind of language that hid far more than it re-
vealed. I found life in this stifling atmosphere of distrust quite
unbearable, and the certainty that it was all bound to lead to the
total destruction of Germany only drove home to me the severity
of the task I had set myself on returning from Max Planck.
I reme1nber a gray, cokl morning in January 1937, when I had
to sell "Winter Aid" Hags in the center of Leipzig. This activity,
too, was part of the many humiliations and compromises we had
to put up with at the time-although we could, of course, tell
ourselves that collecting money for the poor was nothing to be
ashamed of. Just the same, I was in a state of complete despair as
I rattled my box, not because the show of subordination I had
166 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

been forced to make bothered me in itself, but simply because of

the utter senselessness and hopelessness of what I was doing and
of what was happening all around me. Suddenly, I was in the
throes of a strange and disturbing mental state. The houses in
these narrow streets seemed very far away and almost unreal, as if
they had already been destroyed and only their pictures re-
mained behind; people seemed transparent, their bodies having,
so to speak, abandoned the material world so that only their
spirits remained. Behind these ghostly figures and the gray sky, I
sensed a strong brightness. I noticed that several people stepped
up to me with unusual cordiality, and gave me their "Winter
Aid" contributions with looks that brought me out of my reveries
and, for a moment, bound me closely to them. But then I was far
away again, and began to fear that so much loneliness might well
prove more than I could bear.
That evening I was asked to play chamber music at the Bück-
ings. My host, a publisher, was a cellist; Jacobi, a jurist from the
University of Leipzig and a dear friend, was an excellent vio-
linist, and together we intended to play the Beethoven G Major
Trio, which I knew so well from my youth-in 1920 I had played
in the slow movement during the matriculation celebrations in
Munich. But this time, in my delicate state of mind, I was afraid
of the music and of meeting new people, and so I was delighted
to see that our audience was a small one. But one of the young
guests, on her first visit to the Bückings, managed to reach across
to me even during our first conversation, and drew me back from
the far reaches to which I had withdrawn. I felt I was on solid
ground once again, and this sensation grew steadily stronger as I
continued our conversation while playing the trio. We were
married a few months later, and in the coming years Elisabeth
Schumacher was to share all my difficulties and dangers with
great fortitude and courage.
In the summer of 1937, I ran briefly into political trouble. It
was my first trial, but I shall pass over it, because many of my
friends had to suffer so much worse.
Hans Euler had become a regular visitor in our house, and we
often discussed the political problems we were facing. On one
occasion, Euler told me that he had been asked to attend a Nazi
camp for lecturers and teachers in a nearby village. I advised him
 BEHAVIOR IN THE F ACE OF POLITICAL DISASTER 167
to go lest he endanger his university position, and told him about
the Hitler Youth leader who had once poured out his heart to me
and whom he would probably see there. Perhaps they would both
benefit from the meeting.
When Euler carne back from the camp, he was disturbed and
agitated. He told us at length about his experiences.
"The people attending the camp are a very strange mixture.
Many simply go because they are expected to, and because, like
me, they are afraid to lose their jobs. I had very li ttle contact
with these. But then there is a smaller group, including your
Hitler Youth leader, who really believe in National Socialism
and are certain that good will come of it. Now, I know how much
harm the Nazis have already done and what disasters Germany
can expect from them in the future. But at the same time I feel
that many of these young men want much the same things as Ido
myself. They, too, find this rigid, bourgeois life quite intolerable,
detesta society in which material wealth and status matter above
everything else. They want to replace this hollow sham with
something richer, more vital. They want to render human rela-
tionships more human, and so, in fact, do l. I still fail to under-
stand why these efforts must lead to such inhuman results. I just
see that they do. And that makes me doubt my own beliefs as
well. I always hoped for a Communist victory. If it had come,
sorne who are up today would have been down and vice versa,
and we would undoubtedly have done many things much better,
but whether the sum total of man's inhumanity would have
grown less I can no longer tell. Good intentions are obviously not
enough. Stronger forces are brought into play, and these quickly
get out of control. But surely that can't mean we must put up
with the old at all costs, even though it is nothing better than a
hollow sham. I honestly don't know what to think or what to do
any more."
"We shall simply have to wait," I said, "until such time as we
can do anything at all. Meanwhile we must try to keep order in
those small corners to which our own lives are confined."
In the summer of 1938, the dark clouds on the international
horizon had become so threatening that they began to cast a
shadow even over my new home life. I had to do two months'
service with the Mountain Rifle Brigade in Sonthofen, and on
168 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

many occasions we were ordered to stand by for immediate trans-

fer to the Czech border. Then the clouds moved away once more,
but I was convinced that it could not be for long.
Toward the end of the year, something quite unexpected
happened in atomic physics. One Tuesday Carl Friedrich carne
over from Berlin to inform the members of our Lei pzig sen1inar
of Otto Hahn's discovery that barium was one of the products of
the bombardment of uranium atoms with neutrons. This meant
that the nucleus of the uranium atom had been split into
two comparable parts, and we at once asked ourselves whether
this process could be explained in terms of what we then knew
about the atomic nucleus. For a long time we had likened the
atomic nucleus to a droplet of protons and neutrons, and Carl
Friedrich had, years earlier, produced estimates of the energy,
surface tension and electrostatic repulsion inside the droplet,
based on empirical data. To our pleasant surprise, it now turned
out that the quite unexpected process of nuclear fission was
altogether in keeping with our general ideas. In very heavy
atomic nuclei this process could occur spontaneously and hence it
could be triggered off by a slight externa! action, for instance, by
bombardment with a neutron. It seemed almost incredible that
we should not have thought of this possibility earlier. A further
exciting consequence was that, immediately after the division,
the two parts of the divided nucleus would probably not be
perfect spheres. This meant that they would contain extra energy
which might later lead to sorne evaporation, that is, to the
emission of a few neutrons from the surface. Now these neutrons
might well hit other uranium nuclei, causing them to divide in
turn and so set off a chain reaction. Needless to say, a great deal
of experimental work would still have to be done before such
speculations became part and parcel of mo<lern physics, but the
many new possibilities they opened up were enough to excite us
tremendously. Only a year later we carne face to face with the
problem of the technical exploitation of atomic energy in peace
and war.
lf we have to sail a ship into the storm, we close all the hatches,
take in sail, fasten anything that moves and look to our safety.
That was why, in the spring of 1939, I went in search of a house
in the mountains in which my wife and children could take
 BEHAVIOR IN THE F ACE OF POLITICAL DISASTER 169
refuge fr01n the coming disaster. I eventually found just the right
place in Urfeld, above Lake Walchen, a few hundred feet up
from the road on which Wolfgang Pauli, Otto La porte and I had
gone cycling so many years ago, discussing quantum theory while
looking across the Karwendel Mountains. The house had be-
longed to the painter Lovis Corinth, and I had admired the view
fron1 the terrace at exhibitions.
I took yet another important step that year. I had many
friends in America, and felt the need to see them before the war
started-who knew if we would ever meet again? And I also
realized that, if I was to help in Germany's reconstruction after
the collapse, I would badly need their help.
In the summer of 1939 I lectured at the universities of Ann
Arbor and Chicago. I used the opportunity to call on Enrico
Fermi, with whom I had attended Born's seminars in Gottingen.
For many years, Fermi had been Italy's lea<ling phy~icist, but he
had subsequently decided to ride out the coming storm in
America. V\Then I visited him in his home, he asked me whether
it would not be better if I, too, made my home in the States.
"\Vhatever makes you stay on in Germany?" he asked. "You
can't possibly prevent the war, and you will have to do, and take
the responsibility for, things which you will hate to do or to be
responsible for. If so much anguish might produce the least bit of
good, then your remaining there might be understandable. But
the chances of that happening are extremely remote. Here you
could make a completely fresh start. You see, this whole country
has been built up by Europeans, by people who fled their homes
because they could not stand the petty restrictions, continuous
quarrels and recriminations among small nations, the repression,
liberation and revolution and all the misery that goes with it.
Here, in a larger and freer country, they could live without being
weighed clown by the heavy ballast of their historical past. In
Italy I was a great man; here I am once again a young physicist,
and that is incomparably more exciting. Why don't you cast off
all that ballast, too, and start anew? In America you can play
your part in the great advance of science. Why renounce so much
happiness?"
"I know just how you feel, and I have told myself the same
thing thousands of times. Indeed, the idea of leaving the confines
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

of Europe for the expanses of the New World has been a constant
temptation ever since my first visit ten years ago. Perhaps I ought
to have emigrated then. But instead I decided to collect a small
circle of young people around me, people who wish to participate
in the advances of modern science and who are anxious to make
certain that uncontaminated science can make a comeback in
Germany after the war. lf I abandoned them now, I would feel
like a traitor. The young, after all, cannot emigrate as easily as
we can-they would have a hard time finding jobs abroad, and I
would feel it quite improper to take advantage of my greater
experience. Let's just hope that the war will be a very brief one.
During the autumn crisis when I was a conscript, I noticed that
only a handful of our people are really in favor of war. It is quite
possible that, once the complete hypocrisy of Hitler's so-called
peace policy becomes plain, the German people will make short
shrift of Hitler and his followers. But I admit that it doesn't look
like that at the moment."
"There is another problem," Fermi said, "that you cannot
ignore. You know that Otto Hahn's discovery of atomic fission
may be used to produce a chain reaction. In other words, there is
now a real chance that atom bombs may be built. Once war is
declared, both sides will perhaps do their utmost to hasten this
development, and atomic physicists will be expected by their
respective governments to devote ali their energies to building
the new weapons."
''That danger is, of course, real enough," I replied, "and you
are only too right in what you say about our participation and
responsibility. But is emigration really the answer? In any case, I
have the certain feeling that atomic developments will be rather
slow however hard governments clamor for them; I believe that
the war will be over long before the first atom bomb is built. Of
course, no one can look into the future, but major technical
developments usually take quite a few years, and the war will
certainly be finished before then."
"Don't you think it possible that Hitler may win the war?''
asked Fermi.
"No. Modern wars call for vast technological resources, and
because Hitler has chosen to cut off Germany from the rest of the
world, our technical potential has grown incomparably smaller
 BEHA VIOR IN THE F ACE OF POLITICAL DISASTER 1 71

than that of our probable opponents. This situation is so obvious

that I sometimes have the vague hope it may even filter through
to Hitler himself, and that he may have second thoughts about
starting a war. But this is probably pure wishful thinking on my
part. For Hitler is irrational and simply shuts his eyes to any-
thing he does not want to see."
"And you still want to return to Germany?"
"I don't think I have much choice in the matter. I firmly
believe that one must be consistent. Every one of us is born into a
certain environment, has a native language and specific thought
patterns, and if he has not cut himself off from this environment
very early in life, he will feel most at home and do his best
work in that environment. Now history teaches us that, sooner or
later, every country is shaken by revolutions and wars; and whole
populations obviously cannot migrate every time there is a threat
of such upheavals. People must learn to prevent catastrophes, not
to run away from them. Perhaps we ought even to insist that
everyone brave what storms there are in his own country, because
in that way we might encourage people to stop the rot before it
can spread. But then that might be going too far in the other
direction. For, try as he may, the individual can often do nothing
whatever to prevent the great mass of people from taking the
wrong path. U nder the circumstances, it would be wrong to
expect him to sink or swim with those who have scorned his
advice. In short, there are no general guidelines to which we can
cling. We have to decide for ourselves and cannot tell in advance
whether we are doing right or wrong. Probably a bit of both.
Now I myself decided a few years ago to stay on in Germany-
and even if my decision was wrong, I believe I ought to stick to
it. For I knew even then that there would be a great deal of
injustice and misfortune."
"That's a great pity,'' Fermi said. "Let's just hope we will meet
again after the war .''
Before leaving New York, I had a similar conversation with
G. B. Pegram, an experimental physicist from Columbia Univer-
sity, who was older and more experienced than I, and whose ad-
vice meant a great deal to me. I was most grateful for the obvious
concern with which he advised me to emigrate to America, but
rather unhappy about my failure to get him to see my point of
172 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

view. He found it quite incomprehensible that anyone in his

right senses should wish to return to a country of whose immi-
nent <lefeat he was firmly convinced.
The Europa, which took me back home early in August 1939,
was almost empty, and its very emptiness served to underline ali
the arguments Fermi and Pegram had used.
We spent the second half of August in Urfeld, getting our new
country house ready. Then, early on September 1, when I went
down to the post office, the landlord of the hotel Zur Postran up
to n1e and said exci tedly: "Do you know that war against Poland
has started?" When he saw my horrified face, he added by way of
consolation: "Don't worry, Herr Professor, it will ali be over and
done with in three weeks' time."
A few days later, I received my call-up papers. Quite unex-
pectedly I was ordered to report, not to the Mountain Rifles,
with whom I had done my training, but to the Army Ordnance
Department in Berlin. There I, like severa! of my colleagues, was
told to work on the technical exploitation of atomic energy. Carl
Friedrich had been given similar orders, which meant that we
would have ample opportunity to meet in Berlin and to discuss
our respective positions and attitudes. I shall try to sum up our
conclusions in retrospect, as if they had been reached during a
single conversation.
"So you, too, are a member of our uranium club," I may have
begun, "and must have thought a great deal about the task we
have been set. First of all, we are, of course, working in a very
interesting branch of physics, and if we were at peace and noth-
ing else were involved, we should probably be very happy to
work at a project of such wide scope. But we happen to be at war,
and everything we do may cause untold harm to others. So we
had best watch our step very carefully."
"You are absolutely right, of course, and I have already
thought of ways and means of getting out of this trap in one way
or another. It ought not to prove too difficult to volunteer for
front-line service or perhaps to work in a less alarming field. But
in the end I decided to stick to our uranium problem, precisely
because it has such vast possibilities. If the technical exploitation
of atomic energy is still a very, very long way off, then it can do
no harm to work in what you call the 'uranium club.' lndeed,
 BEHAVIOR IN THE FACE OF POLITICAL DISASTER 173
doing so gives us a chance to protect all those talented young
people whom we have been able to interest in atomic physics
during the last decade. Again, if atomic technology is, so to
speak, knocking at the gate, then it is far better to have sorne
influence over developments than leave it all to others or to pure
chance. Of course, we can't tell how long we as scientists can keep
control, but there is likely to be quite a long intermediate stage
in which physicists must have the last word."
"I feel this would be possible only if there were sorne kind of
trust between the Ordnance Department and us. As it is, I was
questioned by the Gestapo severa! times last year, and I hate to
be reminded of the cellar in Prinz Albrecht Strasse, or of the ugly
inscription painted on one of the walls: 'Breathe deeply and
quietly.' "
"There can never be confidence or trust between officials, only
between men. And why should there be no men of goodwill in
the Ordnance Office, men who would meet us without prejudice
and who would be ready and willing to talk things over with us?
After ali, it is in our common interest."
"Perhaps, but it's a very dangerous game just the same."
"There are many different degrees of trust. We may be able to
get just enough to thwart the most irrational developments. But
what do you think about the purely physical aspects of our
problem?''
I tried to give Carl Friedrich a brief account of the very tenta-
tive theoretical studies I had begun during the first weeks of the
war, and which amounted to Iittle more than a physical tour of
inspection.
"It looks very much as if no chain reaction can be triggered off
by the bombardment of natural uranium with fast neutrons, in
other words, that no atom bombs can be made with natural
uranium," I began. "That's a bit of luck. A chain reaction can
only be produced in pure or at least very strongly enriched
uranium 235, and getting that-if it is possible at all-calls for
an altogether enormous technical effort. There may, of course, be
other substances, but these are just as diffi.cult to obtain. Atom
bombs using these materials cannot possibly be built in the near
future-nei ther by the English nor by the Americans nor by us.
But if natural uranium is combined with a moderating substance
1 74 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

which slows down all the neutrons liberated in the fission process,
i.e., reduces them to the velocity of Brownian motion, then it
may well be possible to start a chain reaction capable of yielding
controllable amounts of energy. The moderator must not, of
course, be allowed to capture too many neutrons. In other words,
it must be a substance with a very small neutron absorption.
Ordinary water will not do, but perhaps heavy water or pure
carbon, possibly in the form of graphite, may be suitable. We
shall have to test all this experimentally in the near future. I
believe that we can work with a clear conscience-even in our
relations with the officials-on chain reactions in this type of
uranium pile and can leave the business of getting uranium 235
to others. The separation of isotopes, if it is possible at all, can
only produce significant technical effects in the distant future."
"Do you really think that a uranium pile calls for much less
technical effort than an atom bomb?"
"I am quite positive of that. The separation of two heavy
isotopes, whose masses differ as little as those of uranium 235 and
uranium 238, and their production in such quantities as will
yield at least severa! kilograms of uranium 235, is a gigantic
technical feat. In the uranium pile, on the other hand, all that is
needed is a few tons of very pure natural uranium, together with
graphite or heavy water. That calls for a very much smaller
effort, differing by a factor of a hundred or perhaps as much as a
thousand. I think your Kaiser Wilhelm lnstitute in Berlin and
our group in Leipzig would do well to work on this problem."
"What you say seems reasonable enough," Carl Friedrich
retorted, "and most reassuring, the more so as work on the
uranium pile might prove very useful in the postwar period. If
there is to be such a thing as a peaceful atomic technology, then
it will have to be based on the uranium pile. Piles will provide
energy for power stations, ships and the like, and we shall have
done a good job by training a team capable of handling them.
"However, all of us must make a point in all our dealings with
the Ordnance Department of saying little or nothing about the
possibility of building atom bombs. N aturally, we ~hall have to
keep this possibility constantly in mind, if only to be prepared
for what the other side may have up their sleeves. However, I
think it most unlikely, not least for historical reasons, that the
 BEHAVIOR IN THE FACE OF POLITICAL DISASTER 175
outcome of the present war will be decided by atom bombs. So
many irrational forces are at work, so many utopian hopes and so
many bitter grudges, that if the issue were really settled with
atom bombs, the outcome would be less satisfactory than one
based on genuine understanding or even on sheer exhaustion.
But the postwar world might well be constructed under the aegis
of atomic technology and similar technical advances."
"So you, too, are discounting any possibility that Hitler might
win the war?" I asked.
"To be quite honest, I am of two minds. People whose politi-
cal judgment I respect, my own father chief and foremost among
them, do not believe that Hitler has the least chance of winning
the war. My father has always looked upon Hitler as a fool anda
criminal who is bound to come to a bad end, and he has never
wavered in this belief. But if that is the whole truth, how can we
possibly explain Hitler's successes so far? Hitler's liberal and
conservative critics have completely failed to grasp one decisive
factor: his hold over the minds of the masses. I don't understand
it myself, but I can certainly feel it. He has often enough con-
founded all his critics with his successes, and-who knows?-
perha ps he will do it again."
"No," I replied, "not if the power game is played to the bitter
end. For the technical and military potential of the British and
the Americans is incomparably greater than ours. There is, of
course, a vague chance that the other side may be afraid to go to
the bitter end, lest they create a power vacuum in Central
Europe, but horror at the crimes of the N ational Socialist system,
particularly in racial matters, will probably outweigh all such
scruples. Of course, no one can say just when the war will be
over. Perhaps I am underestimating the powers of resistance of
the political machine Hitler has built up. But, in any case, in
doing our work, we must concentrate on the postwar period."
"You may be right," Carl Friedrich said in the end. "It is quite
possible that I have unconsciously fallen victim to wishful think-
ing. For while no one in his senses can hope for Hitler's victory,
no German can wish for the complete defeat of his country with
all the terrible consequences that would entail. Still, with Hitler
in the saddle there can' t even be a com promise peace. God knows
how it will all end, though I agree with you that we must pre-
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

pare ourselves for the postwar period. That much at least is

certain."
Experimental work on the new project was begun soon after-
ward, both in Leipzig and in Berlin. I was mainly involved in
experiments to determine the properties of heavy water, which
Robert Dopel had prepared most meticulously in Leipzig, but I
often went to Berlin to follow the work done by various old
colleagues and friends at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Physics in Dahlem. Chief among them, apart from Carl Friedrich,
was Karl Wirtz.
It was a great disappointment to me that I could not persuade
Hans Euler to work on the uranium project. Just before the war,
while I was away in America, Euler had become a close friend of
Gronblom, one of my senior pu pils. Gronblom was a Finn,
unusually healthy and strong-looking, with a ruddy complexion,
full of optimism, and convinced that, when ali was said and
done, the world was a good place to live in and full of challenges.
As the son of a leading Finnish industrialist he was perhaps
surprised to find himself so strongly drawn to a staunch Com-
munist, but since human qualities counted for much more with
him than opinions or creeds, he took Euler as he found him, with
the openness and unstinting warmth so typical of youth. When
war broke out, Euler was sadly shaken to find that Stalin had
allied himself with Hitler in the division of Poland. And a few
months later, when Russian troops invaded Finland, and Gron-
blom joined his regiment to defend his country's independence,
Euler was a changed person. He spoke little, and I felt that he
was deliberately cutting himself off, not only from me, but from
every one of his friends, in fact from the whole world.
Euler himself had not been called up so far, no doubt because
of his poor health. I was afraid, however, that they might send
for him yet, and I accordingly asked him one day whether I
should not try to get him an official transfer to our "uranium
club." To my surprise, he told me that he had volunteered for
the Luftwaffe. Since he noticed my agitation, he began to explain
his reasons.
"You know that I have not volunteered because I want Ger-
many to win. First of all, I don't believe in that possibility, and
 BEHA VIOR IN THE F ACE OF POLITICAL DISASTER I 77
second, a victory by Nazi Germany would be as great a disaster as
a Russian victory over the Finns. The unbridled cynicism with
which our rulers cast all their principles to the winds if only they
can score the least advantage fills me with utter despair. I have
not, of course, volunteered for a unit in which I might be asked
to kill people. I hope to join the reconnaissance branch of
the Luftwaffe; there I may get shot down myself but will never
have to fire a gun or throw a bomb, and that is all right. And
in this ocean of senselessness, I can't really see what good I would
do by working with you on the exploitation of atomic energy."
"As for the present catastrophe, we can do nothing about it," I
objected, "neither you nor l. But after the war life will have to
go on, here, in Russia, in America, everywhere. Before then very
many people will have died, good people and bad, innocent men
and guilty. And the survivors will have to try to build a better
world. It won't be a particularly good one either, and people will
quickly realize that the war has solved few problems. But they
will nevertheless try to avoid sorne of the worst mistakes and do a
couple of things better. Wouldn't you like to help?"
"I am not blaming anyone who sets himself that task. Those
who have always been willing to take the world as they have
found it, however inadequate, who have always preferred the
painstaking path of gradual reforms to revolution, may find that
they have been right all along, and that it is to them that the
task of building a new world will fall. But as far as I am con-
cerned, things are rather different. I had hoped that Communism
would lead to the construction of a truly fraternal society. I have
been proved wrong, and that is precisely why I don't want to
take the easy way out now, why I don't wish to be treated better
than any of the innocent people who are being slaughtered on all
the fronts, be it in Poland, in Finland or elsewhere. Here in the
Leipzig Institute there are many who wear the N ali badge and so
bear a somewhat greater responsibility for this war than the rest
of us. And yet they have becn exempted from military service. I
find this quite intolerable, and I, for one, wish to re1nain true to
myself. If you want to turn the world into a n1elting pot, then
you must be ready to throw yourself into itas well. You must see
my point."
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

''Indeed, Ido only too well. But let us stick to your metaphoric
melting pot. There is no reason to think that the molten mass,
once it solidifies again, will assume the forras you might wish it
would. For the forces presiding over the solidification result from
the wishes of all the people concerned, not just from our own."
"If I shared your hopes, I should act differently, believe me.
As it is, the present strikes me as so utterly futile as to rob me of
what little courage I may have had in the past. But I do admire
your optimism."
Soon afterward Euler went on a training course to Vienna, and
the tone of his letters, which at first were as somber as our con-
versation, gradually became more relaxed. A few months later,
when I delivered a lecture in Vienna, Euler invited me to take
sorne new wine with him in a country inn, up beyond Grinzing.
He refused to discuss the war. As we were looking down on the
city, an airplane suddenly flew overhead, only a few yards above
our heads. Euler smiled. It belonged to his own squadron, and
had come to salute us.
At the end of May 1941, Euler wrote me a letter from the
south. His squadron was flying reconnaissance missions from
Greece over Crete and the Aegean. The letter seemed happy and
almost abandoned; past and future seemed no longer to matter:

After fourteen days in Greece, we have forgotten everything that

happens outside the glorious South. We can't even tell what <lay of the
week it is. We are quartered in the Bay of Eleusis, and, whenever we
are off duty, we live a glorious life, what with the blue waves and the
wonderful sun. We have acquired a sailboat as well, and have lots of
fun picking up meat and oianges. All of us wish we could stay here
forever. There is little enough time left to dream between the old
marble columns, but while we remain here, beneath the mountains and
near the waves, past and present seem to have become as one.

As I mused about the change in Hans Euler's life, my thoughts

were forced back to my conversation with Niels on the Oresund,
and to Schiller's poem, which Niels had quoted on that occasion:
Laughing at fears, he casts away
All traces of terror and sorrow.
He mocks at Fate's contrarious play.
Let her strike today or tomorrowl
 BEHAVIOR IN THE FACE OF POLITICAL DISASTER 179
And if by chance she should delay,
Again he will toast the glorious day.
A few weeks later, German troops crossed the Russian border.
Euler's plane never returned from its first reconnaissance flight
over the Sea of Azov. His friend Gronblom was killed a few
months later.
 15
Toward a
New Beginning (1941-1945)

Toward the end of 1941 our "uranium club" had, by and large,
grasped the physical problems involved in the technical exploita-
tion of atomic energy. We knew that naturally occurring ura-
nium, and heavy water, could be used to build a nuclear reactor
which would supply energy and yield a disintegration product of
uranium 239, which, like uranium 235, could serve as an explo-
sive. Previously, i.e., toward the end of 1939, I had suspected, for
theoretical reasons, that carbon could be used as the moderator
in the place of heavy water. However, a measurement of the
absorptive power of carbon had erroneously led to too high a
value. Since this measurement had been made in another well-
known institute, we had not bothered to repeat it and so had
abandoned the whole idea prematurely. As for the production of
uranium 2 35, we knew of no feasible methods that could have
yielded significant quantities in Germany under war conditions.
In short, though we knew that atom bombs could now be
produced, in principle and by what precise methods, we over-
estimated the technical effort involved. Hence we were happily
able to give the authorities an absolutely honest account of the
latest development, and yet feel certain that no serious attempt
to construct atom bombs would be made in Germany-the tech-
nical effort needed to achieve what seemed a very distant goal
appeared so tremendous that Hitler could not possibly have
decide<l on it in the tense situation our country now faced.
Nevertheless, we all sensed that we had ventured onto highly
 TOWARD A NEW BEGINNING

dangerous ground, and I would occasionally have long discus-

sions particularly with Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker, Karl
Wirtz, Johannes Jensen and Friedrich Houtermans as to whether
we were doing the right thing. I can clearly remember one con-
versation with Carl Friedrich in my room in the Kaiser \Vilhelm
Institute for Physics in Dahlem. Jensen had just left us, and Carl
Friedrich said something like this:
"At present, we don't have to worry about atom bombs, simply
because the technical effort seems quite beyond our resources.
But this could easily change. That being so, are we right to
continue working here? And what may our friends in America be
doing? Can they be heading full steam toward the atom bomb?"
I tried to put myself into their position.
"The psychological situation of American physicists, and par-
ticularly of those who have emigrated from Germany and who
have been received so hospitably, is completely different from
ours. They must ali be firmly convinced that they are fighting for
a just cause. But is the use of an atom bomb, by which hundreds
of thousands of civilians will be killed instantly, warrantable even
in defense of a just cause? Can we really apply the old maxim
that the ends sanctify the means? In other words, are we entitled
to build atom bombs for a good cause but not for abad one? And
if we take that view-which has unfortunately prevailed
throughout history-who decides which cause is good and which
bad? It's easy enough to see that Hitler's cause is a very bad one,
but is the Americans' good in every respect? Must we not judge
it, too, according to the means by which it is pursued? Of course,
even the good fight invariably involves sorne bad means, but is
there not a point beyond which we cannot go under any circum-
stances? During the last century people tried to set a limit to the
use of evil means through pacts and conventions. But in the
present war these conventions are probably being ignored by
Hitler no less than by his opponents. Ali in all, I think we may
take it that even American physicists are not too keen on build-
ing atom bombs. But they could, of course, be spurred on by the
fear that we may be doing so."
"It might be a good thing," Carl Friedrich told me, "if you
could discuss the whole subject with Niels in Copenhagen. It
would mean a great deal to me if N iels were, for instance, to
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

express the view that we are wrong and that we ought to stoF
working with uranium."
In the autumn of 1941, when we thought we had a fairly clear
picture of the technical possibilities, we asked the German Em-
bassy in Copenhagen to arrange a public lecture for me there. I
think I arrived in Denmark in October 1941, and when I visited
Niels in his home in Carlsberg, I did not broach the dangerous
subject until we took our evening walk. Since I had reason to
think that Niels was being watched by German agents, I spoke
with the utmost circumspection. I hinted that it was now possible
in principie to build atom bombs, but that a tremendous techno-
logical effort was needed, and that physicists ought perhaps to
ask themselves whether they should work in this field at ali.
Unfortunately, as soon as I mentioned the mere possibility of
making atom bombs, Niels became so horrified that he failed to
take in the most important part of my report, namely, that an
enormous technical effort was needed. Now this, to me, was so
important precisely because it gave physicists the possibility of
deciding whether or not the construction of atom bombs should
be attempted. They could either advise their governments that
atom bombs would come too late for use in the present war, and
that work on them therefore detracted from the war effort, or else
contend that, with the utmost exertions, it might just be possible
to bring them into the conflict. Both views could be put forward
with equal conviction, and, in fact, during the war it turned out
that even in America, where conditions were incomparably more
favorable for the attempt than in Germany, the atom bomb was
not made ready before V-E Day.
Niels, as I have said, was so horrified by the very possibility of
producing atomic weapons that he did not iollow the rest of my
remarks. Perhaps he was also too filled with justifiable bitterne~s
at the brutal occupation of his country by German troops to
entertain any hopes of international understanding among
physicists. I found it most painful to see how complete was the
isolation to which our policy ha<l brought us Germans, and to
realize how war can cut into e\'en the most long-standing friend-
ships, at least for a time.
Despite this failure of my mission to Copenhagen, the German
"uranium club" was in a relatively simple situation. The govern-
 TOWARD A NEW BEGINNING

ment decided (in June 1942) that work on the reactor project
must be continued, but only on a modest scale. No orders were
given to build atom bombs, and none of us had cause to call for a
different decision. As a result, our work helped to pave the way
for a peaceful atomic technology in the postwar period, and as
such it was to bear useful fruits, despite and after all the destruc-
tion. It was perhaps no accident that the nucleus of the first
atomic power station sent abroad (to Argentina) by a German
firm was based on natural uranium and heavy water, just as we
had planned it shoulcl be during the war.
In this connection, I clearly remember a conversation that
brought me into closer contact with Aclolf Butenandt, at the
time a biochemist in one of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes in
Dahlem. Although both of us had participated in a series of
lectures on biology and atomic physics, we did not have a lengthy
talk until the evening of March 1, 1943, when after an air attack
we walked back from the center of Berlin to Dahlem.
We had just attended a meeting of the Academy for Aero-
nautics in the Air Ministry, off the Potsdamer Platz. Hubert
Schardin had been lecturing on the physiological effects of
moclern bombs, mentioning, among other things, that the sudden
build-up of air pressure due to an explosion in one's immediate
vicinity might lead to a relatively painless death from an em-
bolism. Toward the end of the meeting, the alert had been
sounded and all of us had made for the Ministry shelter, fitted
out with cam p beds and paillasses. This was our first experience
of very heavy bombing. Severa! bombs hit the building of the
Ministry, we heard the colla pse of walls and ceilings, and for a
time we did not know whether the corridor between our shelter
and the outside world was still open. The lights had gone out
shortly after the start of the raid, and there were occasional
gleams of a flashlight. A groaning woman was brought in and
tended by two medica! orderlies. At first we had all been talking
and even laughing, but gradually we fell silent; the only sound
then was the occasional thud as yet another bomb dropped
nearby. After two particularly violent bursts, with pressure waves
that shook the whole shelter, I heard Otto Hahn pipe up in a
corner: "I bet Schardin doesn't believe in his own theories right
now." With that, the atmosphere grew justa shade less somber.
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

When the raid was over, we managed to scramble out over a

jumble of concrete block and twisted steel. Outside we were met
by a fantastic view. The whole square in front of the Ministry
was lit up by red flames from the upper floors of the surrounding
buildings. Here and there, the fire had spread to the ground floor
as well, and there were blazing pools of phosphorus in the middle
of the street. The square was crowded with people anxious to get
back to their homes, and vainly hoping for transport to the
suburbs.
Butenandt and I had left the shelter together and decided to
keep each other company while making for our homes in Fichte-
berg and Dahlem. At first we consoled ourselves with the thought
that the raid might have been confined to the heart of the city
and that the suburbs had been spared. Then we saw that the
Potsdamer Strasse was flanked by garlands of flames for many
miles ahead. In sorne places the fire brigade had set to work, but
for ali the good that did, they might as well have tried to empty a
lake with a teaspoon.
We had to reckon on at least one and a half hours' brisk
walking from the Potsdamer Platz to Dahlem, and so we had
time far a fairly long conversation, not about Germany's present
situation-that was only too obvious all around us-but about
our hopes and plans for the postwar period.
Butenandt a~ked me: "What do you think are our chances of
doing scientific research in Germany after the war? Many of our
best institutes will have been destroyed, many young scientists
will have been killed, and our people will be far too poor to put
scientific development high on their list of priorities. Yet scien-
tific research is probably a prerequisite of economic revival-
without it Germany has little chance of taking her place in the
European community."
"I think there is good reason to hope," I replied, "that many
Germans will remember the work of reconstruction after the
First \Vorld War, and that sorne of the most important contribu-
tions, for instance in the chemical or optical industries, resulted
from the co1nbined efforts of scientists and engineers. Our people
will probably come to see quite quickly that modcrn life is
impossible without fundamental research, and they will probably
realize that Nazi neglect of science was one of the reasons for
Germany' s preseut collapse. Of coune, that's by no means the
 TOWARD A NEW BEGINNING

whole story. The root of the evil lies considerably deeper. What
we see befare us is only the natural consequence of that myth of
the twilight of the gods, of that 'ali or nothing' philosophy to
which the German people have time and again fallen prey. Their
faith in a Führer, a hero destined to lead them out of danger
and misery into a brigh ter and nobler future, free of all externa!
constraint, or else, if fat~ should have decided against them,
ready to march resolutely to their doom-this terrible creed is
our greatest scourge. It replaces reality with a gigantic illusion,
and prevents any real understanding between us and the nations
with whom we have to live. And so I would prefer to put your
question like this: Once our illusions have been completely and
remorselessly shattered by reality, can scientific research help us
Germans to arrive ata sober and critica! view of the world and of
our own position in it? In other words, I am thinking more of the
educational than of the economic aspects of science, of its pos-
sible role in the development of critica! thought. Of course, the
number of people who can play an active part in science will
never be very large, but scientists have always been highly
respected in Germany; their counsels have generally been
heeded, so their views may be expected to receive a fair hearing."
"Education for rational thought," Butenandt said, "is cer-
tainly a worthwhile task, and we must do our utmost to bring it
about after the war. In fact, the way things have gone, people's
eyes ought to have been opened to reality long since, for in-
stance, to the fact that faith in the Führer is no substitute for
raw materials, verbiage no viable alternative to scientific and
technical achievements. A glance at the map, at the gigantic
territories under the control of the United States, Great Britain
and the Soviet Union, and at the tiny little area that is Germany,
ought to have been enough to warn us against military adven-
turism. But we Germans find it extremely difficult to think logi-
cally and soberly. We are certainly not lacking in intelligent in-
dividuals, but as a nation we are inclined to be dreamers, to
prize the imagination above the intellect, to exalt emotion above
reason. Hence there is an urgent need to bring scientific thought
back into honor, and that should not be too difficult during the
unromantic times that are boun<l to follow this war."
We were still walking up the Potsdamer Strasse, and its con-
tinuation-Hauptstrasse, Rheinstrasse and Schlossstrasse-be-
186 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

tween rows of burning houses. Often we had to skirt piles of

burning or red-hot timber, or im provised fences around unex-
ploded bombs. At one point I walked into sorne liquid phos-
phorus and my right shoe began to burn. I quickly stepped into a
puddle and so saved my precious footwear.
"We Germans," I tried to continue, "tend to look upon logic
and the facts of nature-and even this debris all around us is
nothing but natural fact-as a sort of straitjacket which we must
wear, but only for lack of anything better. We think that free-
dom lies only where we can tear this jacket off-in fantasy and
dreams, in the intoxication of surrender to sorne sort of utopia.
There we hope, at long last, to realize the absolute whose exis-
tence we dimly suspect and which spurs us on to ever greater
achievements, for instance in art. But we fail to appreciate what
'realization' means. lts very basis is reality; it can only be
attained through the combination of facts or thoughts in ac-
cordance with the laws of nature. But even making due allow-
ance for our strange propensity for indulging in fantasy and
mysticism, I really cannot see why so many of our compatriots
should find the scientific approach dull and disappointing. lt is a
common mistake to think that all that matters in science is logic
and the understanding and application of fixed laws. In fact,
imagination plays a decisive role in science, and especially in
natural science. For even though we can hope to get at the facts
only after many sober and careful experiments, we can fit the
facts themselves together only if we can feel rather than think
our way into the phenomena.
"Perhaps we Germans, of all people, have a special part to play
in this area precisely because the absolute exerts so strange a
fascination on us. Abroad, pragmatism is far more widespread
than it is here, and we need only look at our neighbors or at
history-that of Egypt, Rome or the Anglo-Saxon world-to
appreciate how successful this approach can prove in technology,
economics or politics. But in science and art those philosophical
principles which the ancient Greeks developed to such magnifi-
cent effect have proved more successful still. If Germany has
made scientific or artistic contributions that have changed the
world-we have only to think of Hegel and Marx, of Planck and
Einstein, of Beethoven and Schubert-then it was thanks to this
love of the absolute, thanks to the pursuit of principles to their
 TOWARD A NEW BEGINNING

ultimate consequences. But only when the hankering after the

absolute is subordinated to appropriate forms-in science to
logical thought; in music to the rules of harmony and counter-
point-only then, only under this extreme constraint, can it
reveal its full power. The moment we try to explode these forms,
we produce the kind of chaos we can see ali around us. And I
myself am not pre pared to glorify this chaos wi th such concepts
as the twilight of the gods or Armageddon."
As I was speaking, my right shoe had caught fire again, and it
took me quite sorne time to scrape off ali the phosphorus.
Watching me, Butenandt said: "It wouldn't be a bad thing if
we simply bothered about the facts that stare us in the face. As
for the future, we can only hope that Germany will develop the
kind of politicians who can add imagination to a sense of reality,
and so create halfway decent conditions of life for the German
people. As far as science is concerned, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society
will probably make a good basis for the reviva} of German re-
search. The universities, after ali, have been far less successful in
escaping political interference than the Society, and will accord-
ingly run into much greater trouble. For though our Society has
also been forced to compromise, for instance by collaborating in
military projects, many members have nevertheless kept up
friendly relations with foreign scientists, with men who appreci-
ate the importance of sober, reflective thought in Germany no
less than in their own countries, and who might therefore be
prepared to help us. Is that true in your branch of science as
well? And what do you think of the chances of peaceful inter-
national cooperation in it?"
"There will certainly be the peaceful exploitation of atomic
energy, based on the method of uranium fission discovered by
Otto Hahn. Since we have good reason to believe that no atom
bombs will be built before this war is over-the technical effort
involved is much too great-there is hope for fruitful interna-
tional collaboration in the postwar period. After ali, the decisive
step was Hahn's discovery, and, when ali is said and done, atomic
physicists throughout the world have always worked peacefully
together."
"Well, we shall just have to wait and see. In any case, we in
the Kaiser Wilhelm Society will have to stick together."
We parted on this note, Butenandt making for Dahlern and I
188 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

for Fichteberg, where I had been staying with Elisabeth's parents

for sorne time. I had recently brought my two oldest children to
Berlin for their grandfather's birthday, and I was understand-
ably anxious to find out how they and the old people had fared
during the air raid. My hopes that Fichteberg might have been
spared were quickly dispelled-from a distance I could see that
the house flanking ours was ablaze, and that flames were leaping
from our own roof as well. \-Vhen I ran past the house next door,
I heard cries for help, but I felt I had first to look after my own
children and their grandparents. Our house had been badly hit;
doors and shutters were blown in, and to my horror I discovered
that there was no sign of life inside. It was only when I raced up
into the attic that I spotted my wife's brave mother, wearing a
steel helmet as protection against the falling rubble and fighting
the flames with all her strength. She told me that the children
had been taken in by the neighbors on the Botanical Garden side
and that they were sleeping peacefully there in the care of their
grandfather and Minister Schmidt-Ott and his wife. In our own
house most of the flames had already been put out, so that all I
had to do was to pull down a few smoldering rafters.
Only then did I go to the aid of the burning house next <loor.
Most of the roof had collapsed, and the garden was strewn with
burning beams. The whole upper floor was ablaze. On the
ground floor, I discovered the young woman who had been call-
ing for help. She told me that her old father was still up in the
attic fighting a losing battle against the Hames wi th buckets of
water which he kept filling from one of the few taps that was not
yet stopped up. The staircase had collapsed, and she did not
know how he could possibly be brought down. Luckily I had put
on an ol<l, tight-fitting track suit that allowed me maximum
freedom of movement. I scaled the walls to the roof, where,
behind a wall of fire, I could see a white-haired old gentleman,
scattering water almost mindlessly as he tried to stand his ground
in an ever-diminishing circle of flarne. I leaped across to him, and
I could see how completely taken aback he was by the sudden
appearance of a complete stranger, blackened with soot from
head to toe. He immediately put the bucket down, straightened
his back, bowed politely and said: "My name is von Enslin; most
kind of you to come to my aid." He had the characteristic Prus-
 TOWARD A NEW BEGINNING 189
sian attitude I had always admired: simplicity, discipline and
few words. I suddenly remembered my walk with Niels on the
shores of the oresund, but I had no time to reflect on the power
of ancient exam ples now-action was urgently needed. And, in
fact, I did manage to get the old man down along the same route
I had clambered up.
A few weeks later, I moved my family from exposed Leipzig to
Urfeld, as I had planned to do just before the war. Our Kaiser
Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Dahlem had also received orders
to move from its vulnerable quarters to a textile factory in the
small town of Hechingen in southern Württemberg.
Of the chaotic last years of the war I retain only too few clear
memories. But since these became part of the background against
which I later based my opinions on general political questions, I
feel that I must mention them in brief.
An1ong the most enjoyable aspects of my lite in Berlin were the
meetings of the so-called Wednesday Society, whose members
included General Ludwig Beck, Minister .Johannes Popitz, the
famous surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Ambassador Ulrich von
Hassel, Eduard Spranger, Jens Jessen, Count von der Schulen-
burg and others. I remember one evening at Sauerbruch's, who,
after delivering a lecture on pulmonary surgery, treated us to
what, at the time, was a princely dinner with glorious wine,
so that after the dessert von Hassel jumped onto the table and
sang student songs. I also recall our last get-together in J uly
1944, at which I acted as host. In the afternoon I had been pick-
ing raspberries in the Institute gardens, and the management of
Harnack House had contributed milk and a little wine to my
frugal entertainment. I spoke to my guests about atomic energy
in the stars and of its technical exploitation on earth-or rather
about those aspects that were not on the top-secret list. Beck
grasped immediately that ali the old military ideas would have
to be changed, and Spranger put into words what we physicists
had been thinking for a long time, namely, that the development
of atomic physics might cause far-reaching changes in man's so-
cial and philosophical atti tudes.
On July 19, I took the minutes of that meeting to Popitz, and
then boarded the nigh t train to M unich and Kochel. From there,
it was a two-hour walk to Urfeld. On the way, I met a soldier
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

dragging his luggage up the Kesselberg in a handcart. I added

my heavy suitcase and helped him pull. The soldier told me he
had just heard on the radio that an attempt had been made on
Hitler's life. Hitler himself had received slight injuries, but the
army command in Berlin was now in open revolt. When I asked
him cautiously how he felt about it ali, he only said: "It's time
something was done." A few hours later I was sitting in front of
my radio, and heard that General Beck had been killed in Army
HQ in Bendler Strasse. Popitz, Hassel, Schulenburg and Jessen
were mentioned as his accomplices, and I knew what that meant.
Adolf Reichwein, who had visited me in Harnack House early in
July, had also been arrested.
A few days later I went to Hechingen, where I found most
members of my Berlin Institute assembled. We prepared to set
up our atomic reactor in a cave in picturesque little Haigerloch,
underneath the rock on which the church was built. My regular
bicycle tri ps between Hechingen and Haigerloch, the orchards
and the woods, in which we went searching for mushrooms
during holidays-all this brought the present as glowingly to life
for us as the waves in the Bay of Eleusis must have done for Hans
Euler. For whole days, we could forget past and future. In April
1945, when the fruit trees began to blossom, the war was nearing
its end. I arranged with my colleagues that, as soon as the Insti-
tute and its members were out of immediate danger, I would
leave Hechingen on my bicycle and join my family in Urfeld.
In the middle of April, the last German stragglers passed
through Hechingen heading east. One afternoon we could hear
the first enemy tanks. In the south, the French had probably
advanced well past Hechingen, as far as the ridge of the Rauhe
Alb. It was high time I was gone. Toward midnight, Carl Fried-
rich returned from a bicycle reconnaissance tour of Reutlingen.
We held a brief farewell celebration in the air-raid shelter of the
Institute, and at about 3 A.M. I set off in the direction of Urfeld.
By dawn I had reached Gammertingen, and it seemed that I was
well past the front line. The only threat now carne from low-
flying aircraft, and to avoid them I traveled mostly at night,
resting and foraging for food while the sun was up. I remember a
hill near Krugzell, where I went to sleep in the shelter of a
hedge, after a short repast in the warm sun. Beneath the cloud-
 TOWARD A NEW BEGINNING

less sky, the whole Alpine chain lay stretched out before me-
Hochvogel, Madelegabel and all the peaks I had climbed as a
mountain rifleman seven years earlier. Below, the cherry trees
were now in full blossom. It was real spring, and as I sank into a
deep sleep, my confused thoughts seemed filled with light and a
new hope.
A few hours later, I was awakened by something like a
thunderclap, and when I opened my eyes I could see thick clouds
of smoke rising from distant Memmingen. The barracks had just
been bombed out of existence. The war was not yet over, and I
had to keep going east. And so it was not until three days after I
had set out that I reached Urfeld, and found my family well and
unharmed. We spent the next week dragging sandbags in front
of the cellar windows and laying in what stores of food we could
get hold of. Ali our neighbors had fled to the opposite shore of
the lake. The forest was full of scattered Wehrmacht and SS
units, and its floor was littered with abandoned guns and ammu-
nition, from which the children had to be kept away. In the
daytime, we had to be on our guard against stray bullets that
were still being fired ali around us, and at night, too, we felt
most uncomfortable in our no-man's land. On l\.fay 4, when
Colonel Pash, leading a small U .S. detachment, carne to take me
prisoner, I felt like an utterly exhausted swimmer setting foot on
firm land.
Snow had fallen during the night, and as I left, the spring sun
shone down upon us out of a dark blue sky, spreading its
brilliant glow over the snowy landscape. When I asked one of my
American captors, who had fought in many parts of the world,
how he liked our mountain lake, he told me it was the most
beautiful spot he had ever seen.
 16
The Responsibility of
the Scientist (1945-1950)

After brief stops in Heidelberg, Paris and Belgium my captors

finally took me to Farm Hall, where I was reunited with a few
old friends and young collaborators of the uranium club. They
included Otto Hahn, Max von Laue, Walther Gerlach, Carl
Friedrich von Weizsacker and Karl Wirtz. Farm Hall lies at the
edge of Godmanchester, sorne twenty-five miles from the old
English university city of Cambridge, and I was familiar with the
landscape from earlier visits to the Cavendish Laboratory. This
time there were ten of us, and we ali carne to look u pon Otto
Hahn, whose attractive personality and quiet, reflective attitude
in a difficult position we greatly admired, as our obvious spokes-
man. He would negotiate with our captors whenever it was
necessary, and this was not very often; the officers in charge of us
did their job with extraordinary tact and humanity, so that after
only a short while our relationship became one of complete
mutual trust. We had been asked very little about our atomic
researches, and we thought it rather odd that they should take so
little interest in our work and yet guard us so carefully and
prevent us from making even the slightest contact with the out-
side world. When I asked whether the American and the British
had also been studying the uranium problem, I was told by the
American physicists who had been sent to interrogate us that,
unlike us, Allied scientists had devoted ali their attention to
tasks connected with the immediate war effort. This seemed
quite plausible, in view of the fact that throughout the war there
 THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE SCIENTIST 1 93

had been not the slightest hint of American work on nuclear

fission.
On the afternoon of August 6, 1945, Karl Wirtz suddenly
rushed in to tell me about a special news flash: an atom bomb
had been dropped over Hiroshima. At first I refused to believe it,
for I was convinced that the construction of atom bombs in-
volved enormous technical efforts and probably the expenditure
of many thousands of millions of dollars. I also found i t psycho-
logically implausible that scientists whom I knew so well should
have thrown their full weight behind such a project. Under the
circumstances, I was much more inclined to believe the American
physicists who had interrogated us than sorne radio announcer
who had perhaps been ordered to broadcast sorne sort of propa-
ganda story. Moreover, Wirtz had told me that the word "ura-
nium" had not been mentioned in the bulletin; this seemed to
suggest that if any bombs had been dropped, they could not have
been "atom bombs" in the sense that I used that term. But later
in the evening, when the newscaster described the gigantic
technical efforts that had been made, I had reluctantly to accept
the fact that the progress of atomic physics in which I had
participated for twenty-five long years had now led to the death
of more than a hundred thousand people.
Worst hit of all was Otto Hahn. Uranium fission, his most
important scientific discovery, had been the crucial step on the
road toward atomic power. And this step had now led to the
horrible destruction of a large city and its population, of a host
of unarmed and mostly innocent people. Hahn withdrew to his
room, visibly shaken and deeply disturbed, and all of us were
afraid that he might do himself sorne injury. That night we said
many ill-considered things, and it was not until next morning
that we managed to put sorne order into our confused thoughts.
Behind Farm Hall, an old red-brick building, was a somewhat
neglected lawn on which we used to play fist hall. Between the
lawn and the ivy-covered wall that was our boundary lay an
elongated rose ganlen, tended chiefly by Gerlach. It was sur-
rounded by a path which we used muchas medieval monks must
have used the cloister. It was just the place for serious tete-a-tetes.
On the morning after the terrifying news Carl Friedrich and I
walked up and down in it for hours, thinking and talking. We
1 94 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

began by voicing our anxiety about Otto Hahn, and Carl Fried-
rich then expressed the thought that was oppressing all of us:
"It is easy to see why Hahn should be dejected. His greatest
scientific discovery now bears the taint of unimaginable horror.
But should he really be feeling guilty? Any more guilty than any
of us others who have worked in atomic physics? Don't ali of us
bear part of the responsibility, a share of his guilt?"
"I don't think so," I told him. "The word 'guilt' <loes not
really apply, even though ali of us were links in the causal chain
that led to this great tragedy. Otto Hahn and ali of us have
merely played our part in the development of modern science.
This development is a vital process, on which mankind, or at
least European man, embarked centuries ago-or, if you prefer
to put it less strongly, which he accepted. We know from experi-
ence that it can lead to good or to evil. But ali of us were
convinced-and especially our nineteenth-century rationalist
predecessors with their faith in progress-that with growing
knowledge good would prevail and evil could be kept under
control. The possibility of constructing atom bombs never seri-
ously occurred to anyone before Hahn's discovery; nothing in
physics at the time pointed in that direction. To have played a
part in so vital a scientific endeavor cannot possibly be con-
sidered a form of guilt."
"There will, of course, be quite a few," Carl Friedrich re-
marked, "who will contend that science has gone far enough.
They will argue that there are far more important social, eco-
nomic and political tasks to be done. They may, of course, be
right, but ali those who think like them fail to grasp that, in the
modern world, man's life has come to depend on the develop-
ment of science. If we were to turn our backs on the continuous
extension of knowledge, the number of people inhabiting the
earth in the fairly near future would have to be cut down radi-
cally. And that could only be done by means as horrible as the
atom bomb or perhaps even worse.
"And then knowledge is power. As long as power struggles
continue on earth-and at the moment their end is not even in
sight-we must also fight for knowledge. Perhaps one day we may
have a world government-and let us hope that it will be as free
as possible-under which the search for further scientific knowl-
 THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE SCIENTIST 1 95

edge does not have to be quite so frantic. But that is not our
problem today. For the present, the development of science is a
vital need of ali mankind, so that any individual contributing
toward it cannot be called guilty. Our task, now as in the past, is
to guide this development toward the righ t ends, to extend the
benefits of knowledge to ali mankind, not to prevent the devel-
opment itself. Hence the correct question is: What can the indi-
vidual scientist do to help in this task; what are the precise
obligations of the scientific research worker?"
"If we look upon the development of science as an historical
process on a world scale," I replied, "your question reminds me
of the old problem of the role of the individual in history. It
seems certain that in either field the individual is replaceable. lf
Einstein had not discovered relativity theory, it would have been
discovered sooner or later by someone else, perhaps by Poincaré
or Lorentz. lf Hahn had not discovered uranium fission, perhaps
Fermi or Joliot would have hit upon it a few years later. I don't
think we detract from the great achievement of the individual if
we express these views. For that very reason, the individual who
makes a crucial discovery cannot be said to bear greater responsi-
bility for its consequences than ali the other individuals who
might have made it. The pioneer has simply been placed in the
right spot by history, and has done no more than perform the
task he has been set. As a result, he may possibly be able to exert
just a little extra influence on the subsequent progress of his
discovery, but that is ali. In fact, Hahn invariably made a point
of speaking out in favor of the exclusive application of uranium
fission to peaceful purposes; in Germany he was loud in his warn-
ings and counsels against any attem pts to use atomic energy in
war. Of course, he had no influence on developments in
America."
"What is more," Carl Friedrich continued, "we must probably
make a clear distinction between the discoverer and the inventor.
As a rule, the former cannot predict the practica! consequences of
his contribution before he actually makes it, the less so as many
years may go by before it can be exploited. Thus Galvani and
Volta could have had no conception of the subsequent course of
electrical enginecring, nor can the slightest responsibility be
attache<l to them for the uses and abuses of subsequent develop-
196 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

ments. Inventors seem to be in quite a different position. They

have a definite, practica! goal in view, and ought to be able to
judge its merits. Hence we can apparently hold them answerable
for their contributions. Yet it is precisely the inventor who can be
seen to act not so much on his own behalf as for society at large.
The inventor of the telephone, for instance, knew that society
was anxious to speed up communication. In much the same way
the inventor of firearms may be said to have acted on the orders
of a society desirous of increasing its military strength. Hence no
more than partial blame can be attached to him either, the less so
as neither he nor society can foresee ali the consequences of his
invention. A chemist, for instance, who discovers an agricultura}
pesticide can tell you no more than the farmer what the ultimate
consequences will be in regard to changes in the insect popula-
tion due to his intervention. In short, we can ask no more of the
individual than that he should try to set his own objectives in a
wider context, that he should not thoughtlessly endanger the
many for the sake of the few. All we can really ask of the indi-
vidual is that he pay careful and scrupulous attention to the
wider framework into which ali scientific and technical progress
must fit, even when this does not seem to further his immediate
interests."
"If you draw a line between invention and discovery, where
precisely do you pu t the atom bomb, the most recent and terrify-
ing product of technical progress?"
"Hahn's fission experiments were a discovery, the manufacture
of the atom bomb an invention. The physicists who built the
bomb in America were inventors; they were not acting on their
own behalves but on the overt or implicit orders of a warring
group anxious to obtain the maximum striking power for its
army. You once said that, for purely psychological reasons, you
could not imagine that American physicists would put their
whole hearts into the production of the atom bomb. Only yester-
day you were still reluctant to accept the truth of the Hiroshima
story. What do you think of our colleagues in America now?"
"Perhaps U.S. physicists were afraid that Germany might be
the first to produce atom bombs. And understandably so, for,
after ali, uranium fission was discovered by Hahn, and atomic
physics had reached a very high standard in Germany before
 THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE SCIENTIST 197
Hitler drove out so many of our most capable physicists. A Nazi
victory with the atom bomb must have seemed so ghastly a threat
that anything seemed justified to stop it, even an atom bomb of
one's own. I don't think any of us could really object to that,
particularly if we consider what happened in the concentration
camps. After the end of the war in Europe, no doubt, many
American physicists advised against the use of this terrible
weapon, but by that time they no longer had a decisive say. In
this respect, too, we cannot really criticize them, for which one of
us was able to prevent any of the revolting crimes our own
government has committed? The fact that we did not know the
full extent of these crimes is no excuse, for we ought to have
made greater efforts to find out.
"The worst thing about it ali is precisely the realization that it
was ali so unavoidable. Throughout history, people have acted
on the principie that right must be defended by might. Or in
more evil and blatant form: that the end justifies the means. And
what alternative could we put up against that attitude?"
"We have already said," Carl Friedrich replied, "that we
might expect the inventor to fit his aim into the wider context of
technical progress on earth. Let us look at the implications.
Immediately after ma jor catastrophes, people tend to draw u p
rather rash balance sheets. This time they may say that the atom
bomb helped to end the war more quickly, that there might have
been many more victims had the carnage been allowed to con-
tin ue more slowly. I think you mentioned this argument yourself
last night. But ali such calculations are quite unsatisfactory, for
none of us can predict the political repercussions of the bomb.
May not the bitterness caused by it pave the way for later wars
that will demand even more sacrifices? Will the new wea pons
produce a change in the balance of power, which, once all the
great powers own atom bombs, may have to be rectified at the
cost of untold lives? No one can predict these developments, so
ali such balance sheets are a waste of time. Why not start from
quite a different principie, one we have often discussed, namely,
that it is the choice of the means which determines whether a
cause is good or bad?"
"Scientific and technical progress will undoubtedly lead to the
constant expansion of an ever-diminishing number of super-
198 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

powers," I replied. "The result will be centralization on an

unprecedented scale, and we can only hope that it will leave the
individual and the individual nation sorne freedorn of action.
This sort of developrnent seems quite unavoidable to me; the
only question is whether or not rnany fre~h disasters will happen
before the world finally settles down to a more stable order. In
any case, we may take it that those few superpowers that will
rernain after this war will try to extend their spheres of influence
as far as possible. This they can only do by way of alliances based
on comrnon interests, similarities in their social systerns or in the
values to which they subscribe, or else by exerting economic or
political pressure. Whenever a weaker country outside the im-
mediate sphere of influence of a great power is threatened or
oppressed by a stronger country, the great power is likely to
intervene in favor of the weaker and so increase its own influ-
ence. That is how we ought to look upon U.S. intervention in the
two world wars, and there is no reason to think that this trend
will stop now, nor can I see why we should object to it.
"Of course, sorne will brand all great powers engaging in
this type of expansionist policy as imperialists, but here more
than elsewhere the choice of means seems to me the decisive
criterion. A great power that does not wield the big stick but
prefers normal economic and cultural methods in its foreign
dealings, and avoids the least suspicion of wishing to interfere
with the life of its neighbors, will be much less open to reproach
than one that can -be seen to use force. And the political system
of that great power which eschews all forms of undue pressure is
likely to become the model for the world of the future. Now
many people have come to look upon the United States as a
bastion of liberty, as having the kind of social system in which
the individual can develop his personality most fully. The fact
that Americans enjoy complete freedom of expression, value
personal initiative, respect individual views, treat prisoners of
war better than most other countries-all this and many other
facts had given rise to high hopes that the American political
system provided the rest of the world with just the rnodel it
needed. The American Government ought to have rernembered
this hope when it decided whether or not to order the dropping
of an atom bomb over Japan. I fear these hopes have been struck
 THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE SCIENTIST 1 99

a bitter blow by the use of that bomb. Now all America's rivals
will raise the cry of 'imperialism,' and their voices are bound to
carry sorne weight. Precisely because the atom bomb was no
longer needed for victory, its use will be interpreted as a show of
naked power, and it is indeed difficult to see how we can proceed
from here to a genuinely free world order."
"In other words," Carl Friedrich repeated, "you do think that
the technical possibilities of the atom bomb ought to have been
viewed against the wider context, that is, as part of a universal
process of scientific and technical development leading inexor-
ably to the establishment of a unified world order. In that case, it
would have been obvious to one and all that the use of the bomb
at a time when victory was already assured was a step in the
wrong direction, weakening confidence in America's good faith
and casting doubt on America's world mission. The existence of
an atom bomb as such is no disaster, though it will help to
restrict complete political independence to a few large powers
with gigantic economic reserves. The smaller states will lose sorne
of their independence, but that does not necessarily mean a re-
striction of individual freedom and may be considered the price
we have to pay for the general improvement of living conditions.
"However, we are straying from the real problem. We were
wondering about the behavior of the individual interested in
technical progress while living in a world of conflicting ideas,
passions and delusions. Our ideas on this subject seem to be
rather hazy."
"We are nevertheless agreed," I countered, "that the indi-
vidual tackling a scientific or technical task, however important,
must nevertheless try to think of the broader issues. And, indeed,
if he did not, why did he exert himself in the first place? More-
over, he will arrive at the correct answer more readily, the more
he bears the wider connections in mind."
"In that case, if he wants to act for the best and not just leave
it at noble thoughts, he will probably have to play a more de-
liberate part in public life, try to have a greater say in public
affairs. Perhaps we should welcome this trend, for inasmuch as
scientific and technical advances serve the good of society, those
responsible for them will be given a greater say than they cur-
rently enjoy. Obviously, this does not mean that physicists or
200 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

technicians could make better political decisions than the politi-

cians themselves. But their scientific work has taught them to be
objective and factual, and, what is more important, to keep the
wider context in view. Hence they may introduce a measure of
logical precision into politics, of greater objectivity and of respect
for the facts. If we believe that, then we cannot but blame
American physicists for not having tried hard enough to make
their voices heard in public and for leaving to others the decision
to use the atom bomb long before they had to do so. For I have
no doubt at all that the evil consequences of dropping the bomb
must have been quite obvious to them from the start."
"I don't know whether the word 'blame' is appropriate in this
context. I simply feel that in this particular respect we happened
to be luckier than our friends across the Atlantic."
We were released in January 1946, and returned to Germany.
At last we could throw ourselves into the work of reconstruction
of which we had thought and spoken so much ever since 1933,
but which, as it turned out, proved more arduous than we had
expected. The Kaiser Wilhelm Society could not be resusci tated
either in its old form or in its old home, partly because the
political future of Berlin was too uncertain, and partly because
the Allies disapproved of the name, or any other reminder of the
hated Kaiser. However, the British were kind enough to make
the buildings of the former Aerodynamic Research Institute in
Gottingen available for our purposes, and so we moved to the
city in which I had met Niels Bohr twenty years earlier, and
where I had later studied under Born and Courant. Max Planck,
now almost ninety years old, had also been taken to Gottingen at
the end of the war, and now helped us to set upa successor to the
Kaiser Wilhelm Society, i.e., a scientific body that could coordi-
nate the work of research institutes, old and new. I was fortunate
enough to find a house for my family in the immediate vicinity of
Planck's residence, and he would often chat with me across the
garden fence and occasionally come over to listen to chamber
mus1c.
In those days, much effort and work had to be expended to
satisfy the most primitive personal needs, and, in the Institute,
on getting even the simplest equipment. But they were happy
days for all that. No longer were we told, as we had been
 THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE SCIENTIST 201

throughout the preceding twelve years, that this or that was

impossible; everything seemed possible once again, and we could
feel, in both scientific and private life, that things were getting
better almost month by month, as people worked side by side
with joyful enthusiasm. The great help we were given by various
representatives of the occupying power proved of more than
purely material benefit; it gave us the chance to feel part of a
larger community once again, of a community desirous of build-
ing a better world, shaped by reasonable hopes for the future
rather than by regrets about the past.
This change in emphasis was driven home to me by two con-
versations that have remained fresh in my memory. One was my
first postwar meeting with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. The rea-
son for my visit was rather absurd, and I only mention it here
so as to convey sorne idea of the atmosphere in Gottingen in
those summer months of 1947. The British Secret Service had
been tipped off by a source unknown to us that the Russians
were planning to kidnap Otto Hahn and me into the Russian
Zone, justa few miles away. When the British had good reason to
believe that the Russian agents had already moved in, they at
once transferred Hahn and me to Herford, which was near the
administrative center of the British Zone. There I learned that,
while awaiting further developments, the occupying authorities
had made plans for me to visit N iels in Denmark. I was further
informed that Ronald Fraser, the British officer who was our
friendly custodian in Gottingen, wanted to talk to Bohr and
myself about my visit to Niels in October 1941. A British military
plane took us from Bückeburg to Copenhagen airport, whence
we continued by car to Niels' country house in Tisvilde. And
there we were, sitting down once again before the same fireplace
that had witnessed so many discussions on quantum theory,
walking along the same sandy forest paths on which, twenty years
earlier, we had ambled down to the beach holding N iels' chil-
dren by the hand. But when we tried to reconstruct what had
been said during our conversation in the autumn of 1941, we
noticed that both our memories had become blurred. I was con-
vinced that I had broached the critica! subject during a noc-
turnal walk on Pileallé, while Niels seemed certain that I had
done so in his stu<ly in Carlsberg. All Niels could remember was
202 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

the fright my carefully chosen phrases had given him, but he had
completely forgotten my reference to the nearly insuperable
technical problems and my question of what he thought physi-
cists ought to do in this situation. After a while, we both carne to
feel that it would be better to stop disturbing the spirits of the
past.
As once upon a time in the Bavarian mountains, it was the
progress of physics that turned our thoughts from the past to the
future. C. F. Powell in England had just sent Niels photographs
of the tracks of what appeared to be previously unidentified
elementary particles. Powell had, in fact, discovered the 1r-meson,
which has played so important a role in the physics of elementary
particles ever since. We at once discussed the possible connection
between it and the forces in the atomic nucleus and, since the
lifetime of the new particle seemed to be shorter than that of ali
known ones, we thought it possible that there might be many
others as well, which had simply escaped observation because
they were too short-lived. We thus saw ourselves facing a vast
field of interesting research, to which we and the young people
we had gathered around us would be able to devote our atten-
tion for many years to come. I, for one, was determined to do just
that in the Institute that was being built in Gottingen.
When I returned home, Elisabeth informed me that there had
been sorne substance in the kidnaping story after ali. Two
Hamburg dock workers had been arrested outside my house one
night. Someone had apparently promised them large sums of
money if they carried me off to a motorcar parked in the vicinity.
I was struck by the fact that the whole plot had been so amateur-
ish. The reason was discovered by British lntelligence sorne six
months la ter. A disgruntled ex-Nazi, una ble to find a job, had
hit upon the whole scheme as a means of insinuating himself into
the good books of the Allies. It was he who had recruited the two
dock workers only to inform the British of the impending
"abduction." He took everyone in for a while, though, like most
schemers, not for long. We often had occasion to laugh about the
whole story.
The second conversation I remember brought home to me how
urgent it was to turn from the past toward the future. After l\fax
Planck's death, Otto Hahn became the leading spirit in rebuild-
 THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE SCIENTIST 203

ing our organization, now christened the Max Planck Society,

and later became its first president. At the time, I was helping
the Gottingen physiologist Hermann Rein to set up a Research
Council that would act as a link between the Federal administra-
tion and scientific research. It was quite obvious that scientific
progress and the resulting technological developments would
have an extraordinarily important effect not only on the recon-
struction of our own cities and industries, but also on the social
structure of Europe as a whole. But as I had told Butenandt
during our walk through burning Berlin, I was not exclusively
concerned with getting the maximum government aid for scien-
tific research; I was equally anxious to ensure for science a wider
degree of influence over government decisions. I was firmly
convinced that those responsible for running the new Germany
must constantly be reminded that their job called for more than
the balancing of conflicting interest; that there were unpleasant
realities rooted in the very structure of the modern world, escape
from which into emotional thinking could only lead to catas-
trophe. In other words, I wished to procure for science sorne right
to take the initiative in public affairs. Adenauer, with whom I
had many talks on the matter, promised me his full support. At
the same time, many university and local government officials
were trying to resurrect the Emergency Society for German Sci-
ence which had been led by Schmidt-Ott in the twenties and
which had rendered inestimable services to German science after
the First World War. I felt unhappy about this attempt to
recapture the past-the old idea that the government ought to
support scientific research financially but that otherwise the two
must go their separate ways struck me as completely out of step
with the age. On this subject, which gave rise to many heated
discussions, I remember particularly my lengthy conversation
with the jurist, Ludwig Raiser, who later became president of the
Scientific Council and held that office for many years. When I
contended that the Temporary Association he supported might
help to foster the deep-rooted German tendency to shut out
unpleasant realities and to withdraw to the safety of our own
ivory towers, Raiscr said quite simply: "The two of us can't
possibly hope to change the German character." I felt at once
that he was right, that it was rarely the intention of individuals,
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

but only hard pressure from the outside, that changed the out-
look of large groups. And in fact, despite Adenauer's support, my
own plans carne to nothing: I failed to win the university and
educational authorities over to the new ideas. It took ten years
before externa} pressures led to the creation of a Research
Ministry, which, by appointing consultative committees, helped
to implement at least part of the suggestions I and so many like-
minded colleagues had put forward. The Max Planck Society was
much more easily brought into step with the needs of the modern
world. Beyond that, our only consolation was that the much-
needed educational reforms might yet be introduced, although
only in the wake of protracted struggles and disputes.
 17
Positivism, Metaphysics
and Religion (1952)

The resumption of international contacts once again brought

together old friends. Thus, in the early summer of 1952, atomic
physicists assembled in Copenhagen to discuss the construction of
a European accelerator. I was most interested in this project
because I was hoping that a large accelerator would help us to
determine whether or not the high-energy collision of two ele-
mentary particles could lead to the production of a host of
further particles, as I had assumed; whether, indeed, we were
entitled to assume the existence of many new particles and, if so,
whether, like the stationary states of atoms or molecules, they
differed only in their symmetries, masses and lifetimes. The main
topic of the meeting was thus a matter of great personal concern,
and if I do not report it here, it is simply because I must relate a
conversation with Niels and Wolfgang on that occasion. Wolf-
gang had come over from Zurich, and the three of us were sitting
in the small conservatory that ran from Bohr's offi.cial residence
down to the park. We were discussing the old theme, namely,
whether our interpretation of quantum theory in this very spot,
twenty-five years ago, had been correct, and whether or not our
ideas had since become part of the intellectual stock-in-trade of
all physicists. Niels had this to say:
"Sorne time ago there was a meeting of philosophcrs, most of
them positivists, here in Copenhagen, during which members of
the Vienna Circle played a prominent part. I was asked to
address them on the interpretation of quantum theory. After my
206 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

lecture, no one raised any objections or asked any embarrassing

questions, but I must say this very fact proved a terrible disap-
pointment to me. For those who are not shocked when they first
come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.
Probably I spoke so badly that no one knew what I was talking
about."
Wolfgang objected: "The fault need not necessarily have been
yours. It is part and parcel of the positivist creed that facts must
be taken for granted, sight unseen, so to speak. As far as I re-
member, Wittgenstein says: 'The world is everything that is the
case.' 'The world is the totality of facts, not of things.' Now if you
start from that premise, you are bound to welcome any theory
representative of the 'case.' The positivists have gathered that
quantum mechanics describes atomic phenomena correctly, and
so they have no cause for complaint. What else we have had to
add-complementarity, interference of probabilities, uncertainty
relations, separation of subject and object, etc.-strikes them as
just so many embellishments, mere relapses into prescientific
thought, bits of idle chatter that do not have to be taken seri-
ously. Perhaps this attitude is logically defensible, but, if it is, I
for one can no longer tell what we mean when we say we have
understood nature."
"The positivists would probably claim," I remarked, "that
'understanding' is tantamount to 'predictive ability.' If we can
predict just a few special events, we have merely understood a
small segment of nature, but if we can predict a large range of
events, our understanding is correspondingly greater. There is a
continuous scale from understanding very little to understanding
almost everything, but there is no qualitative difference between
predictive ability and understanding."
''Do you yourself believe there is such a difference?"
"Yes, I am convinced of it," I replied, "and I think we dis-
cussed it all sorne thirty years ago, on our bicycle tour round
Lake W alchensee. Let me use an analogy. If we see an airplane
in the sky, we can predict with a limited degree of certainty
where it will be a second later. We shall assume either that it will
continue in a straight line or, if it has begun to bank, that it will
describe an are. Though we shall be right most times, we still
cannot claim that we have 'understood' the path. Only if we have
 POSITIVISM, METAPHYSICS AND RELIGION 207

spoken to the pilot beforehand and have learned from him how
he intends to navigate can we claim to have understood his
flight."
Niels was not entirely satisfied. "I think you may find it diffi-
cult to apply your analogy to physics. For my part, I can readily
agree with the positivists about the things they want, but not
about the things they reject. Let me explain. Their approach, as
we know it particularly from England and America, and which
is, in fact, little more than a systematization of earlier ideas, is
rooted in the very ethos that presided over the dawn of modern
science. Until then philosophers had concentrated on the great
universal issues, analyzing them in the light of the teachings of
the old authorities-chiefly Aristotle and Church doctrine. Ex-
periential details were brushed asirle as being unimportant; only
the broader picture mattered. As a result, all sorts of supersti-
tions crept in and philosophy made no progress: after all, the old
authorities were dead. Early in the seventeenth century carne
emancipation from these masters, and a turning toward experi-
ence, that is, toward experimental studies of specific details.
"People tell us that, when such famous scientific institutes as
the Royal Society in London were first founded, they tried to
eradicate superstition by designing experiments to refute the
claims of the most popular magic books. One such claim was that
if a stag beetle was put in a chalk circle while certain magical
formulae were recited at midnight, it would become spellbound.
Scientists accordingly drew a circle on a table, recited the requi-
site formulae, placed the beetle into the center and let everyone
see how quickly it escaped. In other famous academies, the
members had to pledge that they would never discuss the great
universals, but only specific facts. Theories about nature hence-
forth had to bear on individual groups of phenomena, not on
their wider connections. A theoretical formula became a kind of
guide to action-analogous to the notebook of the modern
engineer, which contains a host of useful data on, say, the tensile
strength of rods. Even Newton's well-known statement-'I do not
know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to
have been only a hoy playing on the seashore, and diverting
myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier
shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all
208 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

undiscovered before me' -even this statement expresses the ethos

presiding over the dawn of modern science. Needless to say,
Newton did very much more than this modest claim would sug-
gest. He was able to express the fundamental laws governing a
great many natural phenomena in mathematical terms. But this,
he felt, was something 'whereof one m ust be silent.'
"It is quite understandable that, in their rebellion against
authority and superstition, scientists should often have gone too
far. There were, for instance, many old reports about stones
falling out of the sky, and several monasteries and churches had
even preserved such stones as relics. N ow in the eighteenth
century all these reports were dismissed as rank superstition, and
the monasteries were asked to throw their worthless stones away.
The French Academy even passed a special resolution to reject
all further reports about stones dropping out of the sky, and it
did not relent until a very large number of meteorites carne
down in the vicinity of Paris. I mention this fact merely to draw
attention to the mental attitude typical of the dawn of modern
science. There is no need to remind you how many new ex peri-
ments and how much scientific progress have sprung from pre-
cisely this attitude.
"Now, all the positivists are trying to do is to provide the
procedures of modern science with a philosophical basis, or, if
you like, a justification. They point out that the notions of the
earlier philosophies lack the precision of scientific concepts, and
they think that many of the questions posed and discussed by
conventional philosophers have no meaning at all, that they are
pseudo problems and as such best ignored. Positivist insistence
on conceptual clarity is, of course, something I fully endorse, but
their prohibition of any discussion of the wider issues, simply
because we lack clear-cut enough concepts in this realm, does not
seem very usef ul to me-this same han would prevent our under-
standing of quantum theory."
"When you say it would prevent our understanding of quan-
tum theory," Wolfgang said, "do you mean that physics does not
simply consist of experiment and mathematical formulae but
that it must also philosophize where the two meet? In other
words, that we must use everyday language to explain the precise
interplay of experiment and mathematics? I myself have a strong
 POSITIVISM, METAPHYSICS AND RELIGION 209

suspicion that all the difficulties of quantum theory will be found

to reside in this meeting, a fact most positivists choose to ignore,
precisely because their narrow concepts break down at this point.
The experimental physicist must be able to talk about his ex-
periments and therefore he is forced to employ the concepts of
classical physics, although he realizes full well that they provide
an inadequate description of nature. This is his fundamental
dilemma, and one he cannot simply dismiss."
"Positivists," I tried to point out, "are extraordinarily prickly
about ali problems having what they call a prescientific charac-
ter. I remember a book by Philipp Frank on causality, in which
he dismisses a whole series of problems and formulations on the
ground that all of them are relics of the old metaphysics, vestiges
from the period of prescientific or animistic thought. For in-
stance, he rejects the biological concepts of 'wholeness' and
'entelechy' as prescientific ideas and tries to prove that all
statements in which these concepts are commonly used have no
verifiable meaning. To him 'metaphysics' is a synonym for 'loose
thinking,' and hence a term of abuse."
"This sort of restriction of language doesn't seem very useful to
me either," Niels said. "You all know Schiller's poem, 'The
Sentences of Confucius,' which contains these memorable lines:
'The full mind is alone the clear, and truth dwells in the deeps.'
The full mind, in our case, is not only an abundance of experi-
ence but also an abundance of concepts by means of which we
can speak about our problems and about phenomena in general.
Only by using a whole variety of concepts when discussing the
strange relationship between the formal laws of quantum theory
and the observed phenomena, by lighting this relationship up
from ali sides and bringing out its apparent contradictions, can
we hope to effect that change in our thought processes which is a
sine qua non of any true understanding of quantum theory.
"For instance, it is often said that quantum theory is unsatis-
factory because, thanks to its complementary concepts of 'wave'
and 'particle,' it prohibits ali but dualistic descriptions of nature.
Yet ali those who have truly understood quantum theory would
never even dream of calling it dualistic. They look upon it as a
unified description of atomic phenomena, even though it has to
wear different faces when it is applied to experiment and so has
210 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

to be translated into everyday language. Quantum theory thus

provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can
fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in
images and parables. In this case, the images and parables are by
and large the classical concepts, i.e., 'wave' and 'corpuscle.' They
do not fully describe the real world and are, moreover, comple-
mentary in part, and hence contradictory. For ali that, since we
can only describe natural phenomena with our everyday lan-
guage, we can only hope to grasp the real facts by means of these
1mages.
"This is probably true of ali general philosophical problems
and particularly of metaphysics. We are forced to speak in images
and parables which do not express precisely what we mean. Nor
can we avoid occasional contradictions; nevertheless, the images
help us to draw nearer to the real facts. Their existence no one
should deny. 'Truth dwells in the deeps.' This claim is no less
true than the first proposition of Schiller's poem.
"You mentioned Philipp Frank's book on causality. Philipp
Frank was one of the philosophers to attend the congress in
Copenhagen, and he gave a lecture in which he used the term
'metaphysics' simply as a swearword or at best as a euphemism
for unscientific thought. After he had finished, I had to explain
my own position, and this I did roughly as follows:
"I began by pointing out that I could see no reason why the
prefix 'meta' should be reserved for logic and mathematics-
Frank had spoken of metalogic and metamathematics-and why
it was anathema in physics. The prefix, after ali, merely suggests
that we are asking further questions, i.e., questions bearing on
the fundamental concepts of a particular discipline, and why ever
should we not be able to ask such questions in physics? But I
should start from the opposite end. Take the question 'What is
an expert?' Many people will tell you that an expert is someone
who knows a great deal about his subject. To this I would object
that no one can ever know very much about any subject. I would
much prefer the following definition: an expert is someone who
knows sorne of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject,
and how to avoid them. Hence Phili pp Frank ought to be
called an expert on metaphysics, one who knows how to avoid
sorne of its worst mistakes-1 was not quite sure whether Frank
was very happy about my praise, though I was certainly not
 POSITIVISM, METAPHYSICS AND RELIGION 211

offering it tongue in cheek. In all such discussions what matters

most to me is that we do not simply talk the 'deeps in which the
truth dwells' out of existence. That would mean taking a very
superficial view."
That same evening Wolfgang and I continued the discussion
alone. It was the season of the long nights. The air was balmy,
twilight lasted until almost midnight, and as the sun traveled
just beneath the horizon, it bathed the city in a subdued, bluish
light. And so we decided to walk along the Langelinie, a beauti-
ful harbor promenade, with freighters discharging their cargo on
either side. In the south, the Langelinie begins roughly where
Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid rests on a rock be-
side the beach; in the north it is continued by a jetty that
swings out into the basin and marks the entrance to Frihavn with
a small beacon. After we had been looking at the toing and
froing of the ships in the twilight for quite a while, Wolfgang
askedme:
"Were you quite satisfied with Niels' remarks about the posi-
tivists? I gained the impression that you are even more critica! of
them than Niels himself, or rather that your criterion of truth
differs radically from theirs. And I'm not quite sure to what
extent Niels would be prepared to agree with you."
"I can't tell either, of course. After all, Niels grew up at a time
in which it needed great strength of character to slough off
nineteenth-century middle-class ideas and the teachings of Chris-
tian philosophy in particular. And since he has made this effort,
it is hardly surprising that he should be reluctant to use freely
the language of traditional philosophy, let alone of theology. You
and I are in quite a different boat-after being involved in two
world wars and two revolutions we are able to reject most tradi-
tions without very much effort. I should consider it utterly
absurd-and Niels, for one, would agree-were I to close my
mind to the problems and ideas of earlier philosophers simply
because they cannot be expressed in a more precise language.
True, I often have great difficulty in grasping what these ideas
are meant to convey, but when that happens, I always try to
translate them into modern terminology and to discover whether
they throw up fresh answers. But I have no principled objections
to the re-examination of old questions, much as I have no objec-
tions to using the language of any of the old religions. We know
212 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

that religions speak in images and parables and that these can
never fully correspond to the meanings they are trying to express.
But I believe that, in the final analysis, all the old religions try to
express the same contents, the same relations, and all of these
hinge around questions about values. The positivists may be
right in thinking that it is difficult nowadays to assign a meaning
to such parables. Nevertheless, we ought to make every effort to
grasp their meaning, since it quite obviously refers to a crucial
aspect of reality; or perhaps we ought to try putting it into
modero language, if it can no longer be contained in the old."
"lf you think about such problems in that way, then, quite
obviously, you cannot accept the equation of truth and predic-
tive power. But what is your own criterion of truth in science? At
Bohr's you hinted that it was somehow like the flight of an air-
plane, but I can't see precisely in what respect. What part of
nature is supposed to be analogous to the pilot's intentions or
orders?"
"Such terms as 'intentions' or 'orders,' " I tried to explain,
"apply to human behavior and can at most serve as metaphors
when applied to nature. We may find it more helpful to revert
to our old comparison between Ptolemy's astronomy and New-
ton's conception of planetary motions. If predictive power were
indeed the only criterion of truth, Ptolemy's astronomy would be
no worse than Newton's. But if we compare Newton and Ptolemy
in retrospect, we gain the clear impression that Newton's equa-
tions express the paths of the planets much more fully and
correctly than Ptolemy's did, that Newton, so to speak, described
the plan of nature's own construction. Or to take an example
from modero physics: when we learn that the principies of con-
servation of energy, charge, etc., have a quite universal character,
that they apply in all branches of physics and that they result
from the symmetry inherent in the fundamental laws, then we
are tempted to say that symmetry is a decisive element in the
plan on which nature has been created. In saying this I am fully
aware that the words 'plan' and 'created' are once again taken
from the realm of human experience and that they are meta-
phors at best. But it is quite easy to see that everyday language
must necessarily fall short here. I suppose that is all I can say
about my own conception of scientific truth."
 POSITIVISM, MET APHYSICS AND RELIGION 2 13
"Quite so, but positivists will object that you are making
obscure and meaningless noises, whereas they themselves are
models of analytic clarity. But where must we seek for the truth,
in obscurity or in clarity? Niels has quoted Schiller's 'Truth
dwells in the deeps.' Are there such deeps and is there any truth?
And may these deeps perhaps hold the meaning of life and
death?"
A few hundred yards away, a large liner was gliding past, and
its bright lights looked quite fabulous and unreal in the bright
blue dusk. For a few moments, I speculated about the human
destinies being played out behind the lit-up cabin windows, and
suddenly Wolfgang's questions got mixed up with it all. What
precisely was this steamer? Was it a mass of iron with a central
power station and electric lights? Was it the expression of human
intentions, a form resulting from interhuman relations? Or was it
a consequence of biological laws, exerting their formative powers
not merely on protein molecules but also on steel and electric
currents? Did the word "intention" reflect the existence merely of
these formative powers or of these biological laws in the human
consciousness? And what did the word "merely" mean in this
context?
My silent soliloquy now turned to more general questions. Was
it utterly absurd to seek behind the ordering structures of this
world a "consciousness" whose "intentions" were these very
structures? Of course, even to put this question was an anthro-
pomorphic lapse, since the word "consciousness'' was, after all,
based purely on human experience, and ought therefore to be
restricted to the human realm. But in that case we would also be
wrong to speak of animal consciousness, when we have a strong
feeling that we can do so significantly. We sense that the mean-
ing of "consciousness" becomes wider and at the same time vaguer
if we try to apply it outside the human realm.
The positivists have a simple solution: the world must be
divided into that which we can say clearly and the rest, which we
had better pass over in silence. But can anyone conceive of a
more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly
amounts to next to nothing? If we omitted all that is unclear, we
would probably be left with completely uninteresting and trivial
tautologies.
214 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

My train of thought was interrupted by Wolfgang:

"You said earlier that you were not a stranger to the images
and parables of religion and that, for that very reason, you were
unhappy about positivist restrictions. You also hinted that, de-
spite differences in their images, the old religions refer to much
the same facts, which, as you put it, are intimately bound up
with questions of value. Just what did you mean by that, and
what precisely have the facts of religion to do with your concept
of truth?"
"The problem of values is nothing but the problem of our acts,
goals and morals. It concerns the compass by which we must steer
our ship if we are to set a true course through life. The compass
itself has been given different names by various religions and
philosophies: happiness, the will of God, the meaning of life-to
mention justa few. The differences in the names reflect profound
differences in the awareness of different human groups. I have no
wish to belittle these differences, but I have the clear impression
that all such formulations try to express man's relatedness to a
central order. Of course, we all know that our own reality
depends on the structure of our consciousness; we can objectify
no more than a small part of our world. But even when we try to
probe into the subjective realm, we cannot ignore the central
order or look upon the forms peopling this realm as mere
phantoms or accidents. Admittedly, the subjective realm of an
individual, no less than a nation, may sometimes be in a state
of confusion. Demons can be let loose and do a great deal of
mischief, or, to put it more scientifically, partial orders that have
split away from the central order, or do not fit into it, may have
taken over. But in the final analysis, the central order, or the
'one' as it used to be called and with which we commune in the
language of religion, must win out. And when people search for
values, they are probably searching for the kind of actions that
are in harmony with the central order, andas such are free of the
confusions springing from divided, partial orders. The power of
the 'one' may be gathered from the very fact that we think of the
orderly as the good, and of the confused and chaotic as the bad.
The sight of a town destroyed by an atom bomb depresses our
spirits, a desert transformed into a blossoming meadow refreshes
us. In science, the central order can be recognized by the fact that
we can use such metaphors as 'Nature has been made according
 POSITIVISM, METAPHYSICS AND RELIGION 215

to this plan.' It is in this context that my idea of truth impinges

on the reality of religious experience. I feel that this link has
become much more obvious since we have understood quantum
theory. For quantum theory helps us to formulate orderly proc-
esses in a wide field by means of an abstract, mathematical
language. And if we try to express these orderly processes in
everyday terms, we have to fall back on parables, on comple-
mentary viewpoints involving paradoxes and apparent contra-
dictions."
"I can follow you most of the way/' Wolfgang said, "but just
what do you mean when you say that the central order must win
out? It either exists or it does not. What sense can there possibly
be in saying that it wins?"
"By that I mean something altogether commonplace, for in-
stance, the fact that as each winter passes, the flowers come into
blossom in the meadows, and that as each war ends, cities are
rebuilt. Time and again destruction makes way for order."
We walked on in silence and had soon reached the northern
tip of the Langelinie, whence we continued along the jetty as far
as the small beacon. In the north, we could still see a bright strip
of red; in these latitudes the sun does not travel far beneath the
horizon. The outlines of the harbor installations stood out
sharply, and after we had been standing at the end of the jetty
for a while, Wolfgang asked me quite unexpectedly:
"Do you believe in a personal God? I know, of course, how
difficult it is to attach a clear meaning to this question, but you
can probably appreciate its general purport."
"May I rephrase your question?" I asked. "I myself should
prefer the following formulation: Can you, or anyone else, reach
the central order of things or events, whose existence seems
beyond doubt, as directly as you can reach the soul of another
human being? I am using the term 'soul' quite deliberately so as
not to be misunderstood. If you put your question like that, I
would say yes. And because my own experiences do not matter so
much, I might go on to remind you of Pascal's famous text, the
one he kept sewn in his jacket. It was headed 'Fire' and began
with the words: 'God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-not of the
philosophers and sages.' I hasten to add that, in this particular
form, the text does not apply to me."
"In other words, you think that you can become aware of the
216 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

central order with the same intensity as of the soul of another

person?"
"Perhaps."
"Why did you use the word 'soul' and not simply speak of
another person?"
"Precisely because the word 'soul' refers to the central order, to
the inner core of a being whose outer manifestations may be
highly diverse and pass our understanding."
"I am not sure whether I am completely with you. After ali, we
must not exaggerate the importance of our own experiences."
"Certainly not, but science, too, is based on personal experi-
ence, or on the experiences of others, reliably reported."
"Perhaps I ought to have phrased my question differently. But
let's rather return to our original problem, the positivist philos-
ophy. It does not appeal to you, because it would prevent discus-
sion of any of the subjects we have just broached. But does that
mean that positivism is quite divorced from the world of values?
That it cannot include ethics on principie?"
"lt would look like that at first sight, but, historically speak-
ing, it was probably quite the other way round. After ali, modern
positivism has developed out of pragmatism, which teaches us not
to sit by with folded arms but to take responsibility for our own
actions, to lend a hand wherever we can, even if it does not mean
changing the world overnight. In this respect, pragmatism strikes
me as superior to many of the old religions. For the old doctrines
lead one far too easily into passive resignation and persuade one
to bow to the inevitable, when, in fact, one could improve a great
many things by one's own actions. Learning to walk before you
can run is a very good principie in the practica! world, and even
in science provided only you do not lose sight of the wider
reality. Newton's physics, too, was, after all, compounded of the
careful study of details and an over-all view of nature. U nfortu-
nately, modern positivism mistakenly shuts its eyes to the wider
reality, wants to keep it deliberately in the dark. I may be
exaggerating, but, at the very best, positivism does not encourage
people to reflect on this subject."
"Your critique is fair enough, but you have failed to answer
my question. If this mixture of pragmatism and positivism does
involve an ethical doctrine-and you are certainly correct that it
 POSITIVISM, MET APHYSICS AND RELIGION 2 17
does and that we can see it at work in America and England-by
what compass does it set its course? You have claimed that in the
final analysis our compass must be our relationship with a central
order, but where can you find such a relationship in prag-
matism?"
"I agree with Max Weber that, ultimately, pragmatism bases
its ethics on Calvinism, i.e., on Christianity. If we ask Western
man what is good and what is evil, what is worth striving for and
what has to be rejected, we shall find time and again that his
answers reflect the ethical norms of Christianity even when he
has long since lost all touch with Christian images and parables.
If the magnetic force that has guided this particular compass-
and what else was its source but the central order?-should ever
become extinguished, terrible things may happen to mankind,
far more terrible even than concentration camps and atom
bombs. But we did not set out to look into such dark recesses;
let's hope the central realm will light our way again, perhaps in
quite unsuspected ways. As far as science is concerned, however,
Niels is certainly right to underwrite the demands of pragmatists
and positivists for meticulous attention to detail and for se-
mantic clarity. It is only in respect to its taboos that we can
object to positivism, for if we may no longer speak or even think
about the wider connections, we are without a compass and
hence in danger of losing our way."
Despite the late hour, a small boat made fast on the jetty and
took us back to Kongens Nytorv, whence it was easy to reach
N iels' house.
 18
Scientificand Political
Disputes (1956-1957)

Ten years after the end of the war the worst damage had been
repaired. The work of reconstruction, at least in West Germany,
had made so much headway that it became possible to think of
German participation in atomic energy projects. In the autumn
of 1954, on the orders of the Federal Government, I went to
Washington and took part in preliminary talks on the resump-
tion of this type of work in the Federal Republic. The fact that
Germany had made no attempts to build atom bombs during the
war, although she had not lacked the necessary skills and knowl-
edge, probably had a favorable effect on these negotiations; in
any case, we were given permission to build a small atomic
reactor, and it looked very much as if all restrictions on peaceful
atomic developments in Germany would soon be lif ted.
In these circumstances, the Federal Republic had to set fresh
guidelines. The first job, of course, was the construction of a
research reactor, in which physicists and engineers, and more
generally German industry at large, could study the new tech-
niques. It seemed obvious that our particular division of the
Gottingen Max Planck lnstitute for Physics and Astrophysics, led
by Karl Wirtz, would play an important role in this project, not
only because it was familiar with the wartime reactor program,
but also because its members had avidly followed subsequent
developments in the literature or at scientific meetings. For that
very reason, Adenauer quite often invited me to be present at
official discussions or at government negotiations with German
industry, so as to ensure that only scientifically sound plans
 SCIENTIFIC AND POLITICAL DISPUTES

would be adopted. For me, it was a completely new, though not

astonishing, experience to discover that even in a ~emocracy such
important decisions as the opening of an atomic branch of
industry cannot be based on efficiency alone, but call for the
delicate balancing of different interests, which are difficult to
discern and often prevent the adoption of the most effective solu-
tion. It would be unfair to blame the politicians for this state of
affairs; on the contrary, blending conflicting interests into a
harmonious and vital social whole is one of their most im portant
and praiseworthy tasks. However, I myself had no experience in
balancing economic or political interests, and I could therefore
contribute far less to the negotiations than I might have hoped.
From conversations with my closest collaborators, I had gained
the impression that it would be a good idea to build the first
research reactor in the immediate vicinity of our Institute. This
meant that the Institute itself would have to find a much larger
site, and I was in favor of a move to the environs of Munich.
Admittedly, I was so for personal motives as well-1 had the
happiest memories of the city from my early youth and student
days. But quite apart from that, the proximity of so important a
cultural center, one so open to new ideas, as Munich, struck me
as being eminently useful to the Institute. As for the relationship
between the Institute and the new-born Center of Atomic Tech-
nology, I felt that close collaboration was the best way of ensur-
ing that the experiences the Institute had gathered during the
war would be put to the best use, and that the atomic engineers
trained by our Institute would concentrate on peaceful develop-
ments and not be tempted to use the considerable resources of
the Center for other purposes. It did not, however, take me very
long to realize that the most influential industrialists in our
country did not wish to see such important work being done in
Bavaria; rightly or wrongly, they thought that Württemberg was
much more suitable, and their final choice accordingly fell on
Karlsruhe. At the same time, the Bavarian authorities offered a
new building to the Institute itself in Munich, but without Karl
Wirtz, who had been asked to take his reactor team to Karlsruhe.
Carl Friedrich was appointed professor of philosophy at the
U niversity of Hamburg.
I was not very happy about these developments, which, though
they met my personal wishes with respect to the Bavarian move,
220 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

completely ignored the advantages of practica! atomic research in

the proximity of our Institute. I was sad to see my close and long
collaboration with Carl Friedrich and Karl Wirtz coming to an
end, and I was worried that the new Karlsruhe Center might,
sooner or later, fall into the hands of people not primarily
concerned with the peaceful uses of atomic energy. I was also dis-
turbed to find that for those who had to make the most impor-
tant decisions the boundaries between peaceful and military
applications, no less than between applied and fundamental
research, were extremely fluid.
These anxieties were increased by the fact that politicians and
economists, unlike the man in the street, would occasionally
express the view that atomic weapons had become an accepted
means of national defense and as such had their part to play in
the Federal Republic just as they did in the rest of the world. I,
like most of my friends, on the other hand, was convinced that
atomic weapons would only weaken the international standing of
the Federal Republic, that by clamoring for atomic bombs we
should simply be damaging our cause. For the outside world still
remembered the war atrocities with horror, and public opinion
abroad would never have tolerated a Germany brandishing atom
bombs. I was therefore pleased to gather from the severa! talks I
had with the Federal Chancellor, that he, too, believed that the
Federal Republic should never do more in the field of rearma-
ment than her allies demanded of her. But in this area as well
the government had to try its best to balance what were often
widely opposed interests.
Of all my friends, Carl Friedrich was the one who returned to
this theme most consistently, and who eventually felt compelled
to step into the political limelight. One of our many conversa-
tions must have started when I asked him: "What do you really
think of the future of our Institute? I am very worried about the
decision to take the atomic energy project completely out of our
hands. Of course, I realize that there are plenty of other tasks for
us to tackle, but who wants this separation? Was it perhaps my
rather selfish proposal of a Munich site that was the root of all
the trouble? Or are there more factual reasons why the planned
Atomic Center should be cut off from the Max Planck Society?"
"In all such semipolitical questions," Carl Friedrich said, "it is
extremely difficult to tell what is factual and what is not. The
 SCIENTIFIC AND POLITICAL DISPUTES 221

technical developments we foresee are bound to cause far-

reaching economic changes in the particular area selected for the
new plant. Many people will find employment there, and quite
possibly new housing developments will have to be built, and
subsidiary industries will spring u p and get their order books
filled. Hence there are good 'factual' reasons why a particular
city or region should wish to be chosen for such developments.
No doubt, you still remember our discussion at Farm Hall on the
subject of the atom bomb. What we said there applies here as
well: the choice of a site must fit into the over-all scientific and
economic development plans of the Federal Republic. It is not
enough to ask where the reactors can be built most efficiently.
Other factors ensuring the smooth running of the whole economy
have to be taken into consideration as well."
"True enough. And do you think such considerations were, in
fact, paramount when Germany's atomic power projects were
drawn u p?" I asked.
"I don't honestly know, and that is where my real worries
begin. As you no doubt have realized from our many talks, it is
extremely diffi.cult for most outsiders to draw a sharp dividing
line between development plans and fundamental research or
weapon technology. Hence there will be attempts-though this
need not perhaps worry us too much-to open the Center to
basic research with no direct bearing on current technical de-
velopments. Again-and this would be much worse-there might
be attempts to encourage peaceful atomic projects for the sake of
their possible military applications, for instance, in connection
with the production of plutonium. Karl Wirtz will certainly do
his utmost to halt this trend, but there might well be powerful
forces pulling in the opposite direction, so powerful, in fact, that
no individual can stop them. Hence we ought to do everything in
our power to obtain a binding declaration from the government
that there will be no attempt to produce atomic weapons in
Germany. Needless to say, the government will want to keep all
their options open, and are most unlikely to let us tie them
down. We might issue a public declaration, but people may have
lost faith in such pronouncements. But then you and a number
of physicists got together on Mainau Island last year and signed a
joint declaration. Were you satisfied with the results?"
"I did sign the declaration, but I really hate that sort of thing.
222 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

To state publicly that you are for peace and against the atom
bomb is, after all, nothing but silly chatter. Every human being
in his right mind must obviously be for peace and against the
bomb, and he does not need us scientists to tell him so. The
government will simply include all such protests in their political
calculations. They will declare themselves wholly in favor of
peace and against the atom bomb, and simply add the subsidiary
clause that, of course, they mean the kind of peace that is favor-
able to, and honorable for, our own people, and that they are,
meanwhile, doing their utmost to defend us from the threat of
foreign atom bombs. And so we have not moved a single step
forward."
"N evertheless, the peo ple will be reminded of the horrors of an
atom war, and if that reminder had been pointless, you would
hardly have signed the Mainau declaration."
"Perhaps; still, the more general and less binding a declara-
tion, the less valuable it is."
"Very well, we shall just have to think of something better, but
we simply have to do something."
"Most people continue to look on the old politics-the expan-
sion of economic and political power, blackmail through threats
of armed force-as the most realistic approach, and this despite
the fact that it has long since become the very converse. Quite
recently I heard a member of our Federal Government say that if
France has atomic weapons, then the Federal Republic has the
right to ask for them, too. Needless to say, I contradicted him at
once. But the terrifying thing about this argument was not so
much his demandas his basic premise: he took it for granted that
the possession of atomic weapons is a great political advantage
and that the only problem is how to get them. He would have
looked on anyone who thought otherwise or even questioned his
premises as a hopeless dreamer-or a swindler hiding his own
political aspirations, for instance a desire to see the Federal
Republic absorbed by Russia."
"You exaggerate because the man annoyed you. The policy of
our government is certainly much more reasonable than that,
and, when ali is said and done, there are many intermediate
stages between having an atomic bomb of our own and complete
reliance on others. Still, we must do everything we can to prevent
things from moving in the wrong direction."
 SCIENTIFIC AND POLITICAL DISPUTES 223
"That will be very difficult. If I have learned anything from
developments during the last few months, it is this: you cannot
be a good politician and a good scientist at the same time. Nor
could it be otherwise. What matters in both is wholeheartedness;
anything short of that <loes no good at all. Hence I shall prob-
ably devote myself exclusively to science once again."
"If you do, you will be doing the wrong thing. Politics is no
longer the preserve of specialists, and if we want to prevent a
repetition of the 1933 disaster, every one of us must play his part.
We can't just abdicate; certainly not when what is at stake is the
development of atomic physics."
"Very well then. If you need me, you have only to say so."
In the summer of 1956, when this conversation took place, I
felt tired and utterly exhausted. Among other things, I was de-
pressed by an argument with Wolfgang Pauli, who refused to
share my views on an important scientific problem. During a
meeting in Pisa ayear earlier, I had made rather unconventional
suggestions regarding the possible mathematical formulation of a
theory of elementary particles, which Wolfgang could not accept.
He had even investigated the closely related mathematical model
constructed by the Chinese-American physicist, Lee, and had
reached the conclusion that I was barking up the wrong tree. I
refused to believe that, and Wolfgang criticized me with all the
severity he reserved for such occasions.
"These comments," he wrote to me from Zurich, "are mainly
intended to demonstrate to you that at the time of the Pisa
conference you understood next to nothing about your own
work."
At first, I was too exhausted to do justice to the mathematical
problems involved, and I accordingly decided on a fairly long
rest. To that end, I retired with my whole family to Liselje, the
small seaside resort on the island of Zealand, only sorne six miles
from Bohr's summer home in Tisvilde. I wanted to use the
opportunity to spend a great deal of time with Niels, without
having to make too severe demands on his hospitality. These
were happy weeks indeed. Mutual visits helped to cure my
fatigue and gave me a chance to restore the links with our
common past. As for my mathematical controversy with Wolf-
gang, Niels, understandably, did not wish to become involved-
he did not feel competent to pronounce on questions that were
224 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

more of a mathematical than of a physical nature. However, he

was in agreement with the general philosophical premises on
which I wanted to base the theory of elementary particles, and he
encouraged me to proceed in the direction I had set out on.
A few weeks after my return from Denmark, I fell seriously ill
and had to keep to my bed for quite sorne time. Working was out
of the question, nor could I be present at the political discussions
when Carl Friedrich and other friends hammered out our de-
mands to the government. The day I got up-it was the end of
November by then-the "18 Gottingers," as we were later called,
met in my house and drafted a letter to the then Minister of
Atomic Energy, Franz-Josef Strauss. In it we said that, unless we
received a satisfactory answer to our letter, we reserved the right
to put our views on atomic rearmament before the public. I was
glad now that Carl Friedrich had taken the initiative in this
matter, for all I myself was fit to do at the time was to watch and
give him my moral support.
In the following weeks, in which I recovered very slowly, I
tried to resolve my controversy with Wolfgang. Basically, it
hinged on my proposal to extend, for the formulation of the
physical laws governing the behavior of elementary particles, the
mathematical space that had served for this purpose ever since
the introduction of quantum mechanics, and to which physicists
referred somewhat loosely as the Hilbert space. The suggestion
that this space be extended by admitting a so-called "indefinite
metric" had come from Paul Dirac thirteen years earlier, but
Wolfgang had then proved that the magnitudes which quantum
mechanics interprets as probabilities can, in this case, occasion-
ally assume negative values and that the mathematical result
would no longer make physical sense. At about the time of the
Pisa conference, he had gone on to produce detailed mathemati-
cal objections to this attempt, using the model Lee had proposed.
I, for my part, had tried to resurrect Dirac's suggestion, claiming
that, in special cases, which I described, Wolfgang's objections
could be met. Wolfgang naturally refused to believe that this
was so.
I now decided to apply Wolfgang's own mathematical method,
namely, his analysis of Lee's model, in an attempt to demon-
strate that the difficulties could be avoided in the special case I
 SCIENTIFIC AND POLITICAL DISPUTES 225
had mentioned. It took me until the end of January before I was
ready to produce my proof in a letter to Wolfgang. At the same
time, unfortunately, my health deteriorated once again, to the
extent that the doctor advised me to leave Gottingen and to let
Elisabeth look after me in Ascona on Lake Maggiore until I had
fully recovered. My correspondence with Wolfgang from Ascona
remains a most painful memory. Both of us fought remorselessly
and summoned up all our mathematical resources in an attempt
to break the deadlock. At first, my proof was not yet fully clear
and Wolfgang could not see what I was getting at. Again and
again, I tried to re-present my arguments, and each time Wolf-
gang was incensed at my failure to see his objections. Finally his
patience was almost exhausted, and he wrote: "That was a
terrible letter you sent me. Nearly everything in it strikes me as
hopelessly mistaken .... You keep repeating your fixed ideas or
false conclusion, as if you never bothered toread what I write to
you. It seems I have just been wasting my time, and the best
thing I can do now is to put an end to this futile discussion." But
I refused to leave matters there, and though my illness kept
recurring, with serious attacks of vertigo and depression, I was
determined to make my point.
After nearly six weeks of the most intense effort, I finally
succeeded in breaching Wolfgang's defenses. He now realized
that, far from trying to produce a general solution of the mathe-
matical problems under discussion, I was merely offering a series
of special solutions for which I claimed only that they lent
themselves to a physical interpretation. We had taken the first
step toward a reconciliation, and after working through the
various mathematical details, both of us were finally satisfied that
the problem had been solved, or rather that the unconventional
mathematical schema on which I wanted to base the theory of
elementary particles did not contain any obvious self-contradic-
tions. Admittedly, this in itself was no proof that my scheme was
a useful one, but there were additional reasons for believing that
the solution had to be sought along the lines I had followed, and
that I was justified in continuing along them. On my return from
Ascona, I had a thorough medica! check-up at the University
Clinic in Zurich, and used the opportunity to fit in a meeting
with Wolfgang, which passed very amicably, so much so, in fact,
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

that Wolfgang concluded we had arrived at a "boring unanim-

ity." The Battle of Ascona, as he was to call it in our subsequent
correspondence, was definitely over.
I spent the next few weeks in our Urfeld home, where I made a
quick recovery. On my return to Gottingen, I learned that politi-
cal arguments over the atomic rearmament problem were moving
toward a crisis point. The authorities refused to take the path we
had proposed, and while we appreciated their reasons, we be-
carne increasingly anxious lest they move in the opposite direc-
tion. Imagine our consternation when Adenauer declared in
public that the acquisition of atomic weapons was nothing more
nor less than a strengthening of our artillery, and that there was
only a difference of degree between nuclear bombs and conven-
tional arms. To our mind this was nothing short of deception,
and we felt compelled to do something about it. Carl Friedrich
suggested that, as a first step, we make our views public.
All of us quickly agreed that we must not issue just another well-
meaning protest against the atom bomb ora vague declaration in
favor of peace, but that we should aim at definite objectives,
capable of being implemented under the current circumstances.
Two of these were quite obvious to us. To begin with, the
German people had to be fully informed about the full effects of
atomic weapons-they must be spared none of the horrors.
Second, we would have to force the Federal Government to
change its attitude toward atomic warfare, on the grounds that
ownership of atomic weapons, far from adding to our security,
put the very survival of the Federal Republic in jeopardy. Our
appeal was therefore specifically to the Germans-what other
governments or people thought about atomic weapons must be a
matter of complete indifference to us in this particular context.
Finally, we believed that we could lend weight to our declaration
if we, as individuals, solemnly refused every form of participation
in any atomic rearmament program. We felt even more entitled
to take this stand since we had succeeded in avoiding similar
commitments even during the war-admittedly, luck had been
on our side. The others worked out the details-I was still under
treatment and so was excused from attending most of the meet-
ings. The text of the declaration was drafted by Carl Friedrich
and, af ter modifications worked out during severa! meetings,
approved by all the eighteen Gottingen physicists.
 SCIENTIFIC AND POLITICAL DISPUTES

The manifesto was published in the press on April 16, 1957,

and obviously hada strong effect on the German public. Our first
objective was apparently attained after only a few days-no one
tried to suggest that we had exaggerated the effects of atomic
weapons. The Federal Government itself seemed divided. Ade-
nauer was upset by a campaign that ran counter to the course he
had carefully chosen, and he invited severa! of us, myself in-
cluded, to a discussion in Bonn. I refused, because I could not
imagine that any fresh or helpful ideas would emerge, and also
because, for health reasons, I felt that I ought to avoid strenuous
arguments. Adenauer telephoned and begged me to change my
mind, and we had a long political discussion, roughly along the
following lines:
Adenauer began by pointing out that we had always agreed on
all questions of principie, that peaceful atomic developments
were proceeding apace in the Federal Republic, and that our
appeal was probably based on a series of misunderstandings.
Under the circumstances he had a right to expect that we pay
careful attention to his arguments, to the reason why he was
demanding greater elbow room with respect to atomic weapons.
He was certain that, once we had heard these arguments, we
would quickly see his point, and it was very important to him
that this fact be given as much publicity as our original mani-
festo. I replied that I had been ill and that I did not yet feel
strong enough to argue with him on such critica! questions as
atomic rearmament. Nor did I believe that agreement could be
reached as quickly as he assumed, since all he was likely to tell us
was that the Federal Republic was suffering from military weak-
ness vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, and that it was immoral to expect
the Americans to defend us if we ourselves were not prepared to
make considerable sacrifices. Now we had thought very deeply
about all these arguments, and we were possibly in a better posi-
tion than most of our compatriots to judge how people in
America and England felt about us Germans. My travels during
the past few years had left me in no doubt that any attempt to
equip the German Army with atomic weapons would produce a
loud stream of protest, particularly in America, and that the re-
sulting drop of the political temperature, which was cold enough
as it was, would more than outweigh the possible military
advantage.
228 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

Adenauer replied that he knew we physicists were idealists who

believed in man's inherent goodness and detested the use of
force. He would have been in complete agreement with us had
we issued a world-wide appeal against atomic weapons and a
general call for the peaceful settlement of conflicts. These were
precisely his own aims. However, in addressing ourselves specifi-
cally to the German people, we had made it look as if we had set
out deliberately to weaken the Federal Republic. In any case,
this might well be the effect of our manifesto.
I took the stongest exception to this line. I was certain, I said,
that in this of all matters we had acted as sober realists, not as
idealists. We were convinced that the use of atomic weapons by
the Federal Army would dangerously weaken Germany's political
standing in the world; that our security, with which he was so
rightly concerned, would be most gravely endangered by atomic
rearmament. We were living in an age in which defense prob-
lems changed as radically as, for instance, they had during the
waning of the Middle Ages, and all of us ought to reflect deeply
about these changes before blithely reverting to the old thought
patterns. Our manifesto had no other aim than to make people
think along these lines and to prevent outmoded tactical con-
siderations from leading us astray once again.
Adenauer found it diffi.cult to follow my arguments, and
thought it improper that a small group of people, in this case
atomic physicists, should presume to interfere in plans he had so
carefully laid to accord with the interests of large political
groups. At the same time, he must have realized from the public
response to our manifesto that a considerable section of the
German people was on our side-no less than people in other
parts of the world-and that our manifesto could not simply be
swept under the rug. He tried once again to persuade me to come
to Bonn, but finally realized that he might be pressing me too
hard.
I cannot tell how annoyed with us Adenauer really was at the
time. A few years later he sent me a letter in which he said that
he was quite capable of respecting political opinions differing
from his own. But he was probably a skeptic at heart, and hence
quite clear about the narrow limit that is set to all political
actions. lt pleased him, moreover, to look for passable roads
 SCIENTIFIC AND POLITICAL DISPUTES 229
within these limits, and he was disappointed whenever these
proved rougher than he had imagined. His own com pass was not
set by the Prussian model of which I had spoken to N iels so many
years ago during our hike through Denmark, nor did he share
the libertarian views of the lcelandic sagas so dear to the British.
Adenauer's guideline was the Roman-Christian tradition as it
had survived in the Catholic Church, together with certain nine-
teenth-century social doctrines whose Christian roots he seemed
to recognize despite the apparent taint of Communism and
atheism. The Catholic faith contains a good dose of Eastern
wisdom, and it was precisely this wisdom from which Adenauer
drew strength in times of difficulty. I remember a conversation
about our severa! experiences in P.O.W. camps. Adenauer had
been incarcerated in a Gestapo prison with starvation rations,
while I myself had had a relatively pleasant time in England,
and so I asked him one day whether he had suffered a great deal.
"Well:' he said, "when you are Iocked up in a small cell for days,
weeks, months, and are never disturbed by telephone calls and
visitors, you can think back at leisure on the past and reflect
quietly on what may still be in store for you, and that is really
quite a nice thing to be able to do."
 19
The Unified
Field Theory (1957-1958)

In the harbor of Venice, opposite the Doge's Palace and the

Piazzetta, lies the Island of San Giorgio. It is owned by Count
Cini, who runs a school in which orphans and foundlings are
trained as sailors and craftsmen, and who has restored the famous
old Benedictine monastery on the island. A few glorious rooms
on the first floor of that monastery have been set aside as guest
rooms, and during the Atomic Physics Congress in Padua in the
autumn of 1957 the Count was kind enough to invite sorne of the
older delegates, including Wolfgang and myself, to stay on his
island. The quiet cloisters, in which the noise of the busy port
could only just be heard, and occasional drives to Padua gave us
many a good opportunity for conversations about current de-
velopments in atomic physics.
Chief among these was the work of the young Chinese-
American physicists Lee and Yang. These two had put forward
the suggestion that mirror or right-left symmetry, always con-
sidered an almost self-evident part of nature, could be disturbed
by such weak interactions as are, for example, responsible for
radioactive phenomena. And, in fact, Madame Wu's later experi-
ments demonstrated quite clearly that radioactive beta decay is
accompanied by deviations from that symmetry. It looked very
much as if the weightless particles emitted during beta decay-
the so-called neutrinos-existed in only one form, let us call it
the left-hand form, while antineutrinos occurred only in the
right-hand form. Wolfgang was particularly interested in the
 THE UNIFIED FIELD THEORY

properties of neutrinos because he had been the first to predict

their existence twenty years earlier. He had long since been
proved correct, but Lee's and Yang's discovery called for drastic
and exciting modifications of the old model. We, that is, Wolf-
gang and I, had always thought that the symmetries represented
by these simple weightless particles must also be properties of
the underlying natural law. Now, if these particles were indeed
devoid of mirror symmetry, then we had to reckon with the
possibility that the latter was not a primary aspect of the funda-
mental laws of nature but entered them secondarily by way of,
for example, interactions and the resulting mass. In that case,
mirror symmetry would originate in a subsequent doubling-up
process that could arise mathematically, for instance, through the
fact that an equation admits of two equivalent solutions. This
possibility seemed very exciting to us, simply because it
amounted to a simplification of the fundamental laws of nature.
We had long ago learned from our studies that whenever an
unexpected simplification appears during an experiment, we
must pay careful attention to it: for here we may have reached a
point from which we can catch a glimpse of the wider connec-
tions. In the present case, we had the feeling that the Lee-Yang
discovery might easily lead us to decisive new insights.
Lee himself happened to be at the Congress and seemed to
share this view: during a long conversation in our cloisters, he told
me that he, too, was hopeful that important new connections
were "just around the corner." Wolfgang was very confident
as well, partly because he was so familiar with the mathe-
matical structures associated with neutrinos and partly because
our earlier discussions during the "Battle of Ascona" had made
him optimistic about the construction of self-consistent relativ-
istic quantum field theories. He was particularly fascinated by
the process of doubling-up or division, which, he believed, was
responsible for the a ppearance of mirror symmetry-even though
it was still impossible to express this fact in concrete mathemati-
cal terms. It was thanks to this process that nature-in a way still
to be investigated-introduced a new symmetry property. As for
the subsequent disturbance of the symmetry, we were even
vaguer about it than about the division. Nevertheless, we would
occasionally express the view that the universe as a whole did not
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

necessarily have to be symmetrical with respect to the operations

under which natural laws remain invariant; in other words, that
the observed reduction in symmetry might possibly be the result
of a cosmic asymmetry. At the time, all such ideas were very
much less clear in our heads than they may look in writing. In
any case, they exerted a great fascination on us all, and once we
had begun to think about them, it became quite impossible to
shake them off. One day, when I asked Wolfgang why he laid so
much stress on the doubling process, he made the following
reply:
"In the earlier physics of the atomic shell we had to rely exclu-
sively on perceptual models taken from the arsenal of classical
physics. Bohr's correspondence principie stressed the usefulness,
however limited, of such models. But the mathematical descrip-
tion of what goes on in the atomic shell was always much more
abstract than such models. In fact, it is quite possible to attribute
quite different and mutually contradictory models, for example,
the particle and the wave models, to the same real process. In the
physics of elementary particles, however, all such models prove of
no practica! use at all, for that branch of science is even more
abstract. lf we wish to formulate the physical laws in this realm,
we must therefore base ourselves on the properties of symmetry
that nature herself has introduced here, or, to put it differently,
on the symmetry operations (for instance, displacements and
rotations) that open up nature's space. Now this forces us to ask
why there are these symmetry operations and no others. I think
that the concept of division or doubling will prove particularly
useful here, because it helps to extend nature in what seems to be
an unforced manner, and may thus introduce new symmetries. In
the ideal case, we could imagine that all real symmetries have
come about as a result of this kind of division."
Real work on these problems had, of course, to be deferred
until after our return from the Congress. Back in Gottingen I
concentrated my own efforts on a search for a field equation
governing the behavior of a material field with interna! inter-
actions and, if possible, representing all the symmetries that can
be observed in nature. As a model I used the interaction charac-
teristic of beta decay, which had received its simplest, and
probably definitive, form through the discovery of Lee and Yang.
 THE UNIFIED FIELD THEORY 2 33

In the late autumn of 1957, I had to give a lecture on these

and related problems in Geneva, and on my way back I stopped
briefly in Zurich for a discussion with Wolfgang, who encouraged
me to proceed in the direction I had taken. This was just what I
needed, and in the next few weeks I kept examining a host of
different forms in which the interna} interactions of the material
field could be represented. Quite suddenly, there appeared
among the fluctuating forms a field equation with a very high
degree of symmetry, and hardly more complicated than Dirac's
old electron equation. However, besides the space-time structure
of relativity theory, it also contained the proton-neutron sym-
metry of which I had first dreamed on our skiing holiday during
Easter 1933. Or, to put it in more mathematical terms, it con-
tained not only the Lorentz group but also the isospin group-in
other words, it seemed to account for a great many symmetries
found in nature. Wolfgang, whom I informed of the latest
development, was extremely excited as well: it really did look as
if, for the first time, we hada framework wide enough to include
the entire spectrum of elementary particles and their inter-
actions, and yet narrow enough to determine everything in this
field apart from contingent factors. And so we decided that both
of us would look into the question of whether or not this equa-
tion might serve as a basis for a unified field theory of elementary
particles. Wolfgang was hopeful that what few symmetries were
still missing might be added later by means of the division
process.
With every step Wolfgang took in this direction, he became
more enthusiastic-never before or afterward have I seen him so
excited about physics. And much as, in past years, he had been
critica! and skeptical of ali our theoretical efforts, which had
admittedly borne on no more than partial aspects of the physics
of elementary particles and not on their over-all connection, so
he was now determined to express that very connection by means
of the new field equation. He became firmly convinced that our
equation, unique in its simplicity and high symmetry content,
must be the right starting point for the unified field theory of
elementary particles. I, too, was fascinated by the new possibil-
ities, which looked like the golden key to the gate that had
hitherto barred access to the world of elementary particles. Just
234 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

the same, I was only too keenly aware of the many difficulties in
our path. Shortly before Christmas 1957, I received a letter from
Wolfgang. It reflected his great elation during those weeks:
... Division and reduction of symmetry, this then the kernel of the
brute! The former is an ancient attribute of the devil (they tell me that
the original meaning of "Zweifel" [doubt] was "Zweiteilung" [dichot-
omy]). A bishop in a play by Bernard Shaw says: "A fair play for the
devil, please." So let him join us for Christmas. If only the two divine
contenders-Christ and the devil-could notice that they had grown so
much more symmetrical! Please don't repeat this heresy to your children,
but you can mention it to Baron von Weizsacker.
Very, very cordially yours,
WoLFGANG PAULI

And a week later he scribbled over his salutation: "Ali the best
to you and your family for the New Year. Let's hope it will bring
us complete understanding of the physics of elementary par-
ticles." And in the letter itself, he said:

The picture keeps shifting all the time. Everything is in flux. Nothing
for publication yet, but it's all bound to turn out magnificently. No
one can tell just what marvels will appear. Wish me luck, I am learning
to walk. [And then the quotation:] Reason begins again to speak, again
the bloom of hope returns. The streams of life we fain would seek, ah,
for life's source our spirit yearns. Greet the dawn of 1958 before sun-
rise .... Enough for today. This is powerful stuff .... The cat is out
of the bag, and has shown its claws: division and symmetry reduction. I
have gone out to meet it with my antisymmetry-1 gave it fair play-
whereupon it made its quietus .... A very happy New Year. Let us
march toward it. It's a long way to Tipperary, it's a long way to go.
Cordially yours,
WOLFGANG PAULI

Needless to say, Wolfgang's letters also contained a great many

mathematical details, but this is hardly the place to discuss them.
A few weeks later, Wolfgang was due to leave for America,
where he had lecture engagements for three months. I did not
like the idea of this encounter between Wolfgang in his present
mood of great exaltation and the sober American pragmatists,
and tried to stop him from going. Unfortunately, his plans could
no longer be changed. We then prepared a draft for a joint
 THE UNIFIED FIELD THEORY 235
publication, and, as is customary, sent it to severa! interested
friends. Then we were divided by the Atlantic, and Wolfgang's
letters carne at greater and greater intervals. I thought I noticed
signs of fatigue and resignation in them, but otherwise Wolfgang
was apparently still determined to see our common project
through. Then, quite suddenly, he wrote me a somewhat brusque
letter in which he informed me of his decision to withdraw from
both the work and the publication. He added that he had in-
formed the recipients of the preliminary draft that its contents
no longer represented his present opinion. He gave me full
authority to do what I liked with the results. Then the corre-
spondence was broken off, and I failed to get any further infor-
mation from Wolfgang about his sudden change of mind, though
I assumed that he had become discouraged by the lack of clarity
of the thought processes involved. But this did not fully explain
his behavior. I myself was only too aware of the difficulties, but
we had often worked together in the dark, and as far as I myself
was concerned such situations had always struck me as the most
interesting.
I did not meet Wolfgang again until July 1958, when both of
us attended a congress in Geneva. I was due to give a report on
the current state of research into the disputed field equation, and
Wolfgang's attitude to me was almost hostile. He criticized many
details of my analysis, sorne, I thought, quite unreasonably, and
he could barely be persuaded to discuss matters with me at
greater length. Later, we had one more, fairly long meeting in
Varenna on Lake Como. Here, regular summer schools are held
in a villa, whose terraced gardens overlook the center of the lake,
and since the subject this time was the physics of elementary
particles, Wolfgang and I were among the invited guests. Wolf-
gang was cordial again, but I felt he was a changed man. We
would take long walks on the rose-bordered path separating park
and lake, or sit on a bench amid a profusion of flowers and look
across the blue water to the peaks of tall mountains. On one such
occasion, Wolfgang again referred to our common hopes.
"I think you are doing right to continue working on these
problems," he said. "You know how much remains to be done,
and things will no doubt come out right one day. Perhaps all our
hopes will be f ulfilled, and your optimism will be rewarded. As
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

forme, I have had to drop out, I just haven't the strength. Last
Christmas I still thought I was fit enough for anything, but I can
say that no Ionger. Let's hope you are still up to it, or else that
sorne of your younger colleagues will carry on the job. You seem
to have severa} excellent young physicists in your Institute. But
it's all quite beyond my strength, and that's that."
I tried to console him. I said that he was probably disap-
pointed to have found that he could not run as fast as he had
anticipated last Christmas, but that once he got down to the
work itself, his old courage would quickly return.
"I'm afraid not. Things have changed too much," was all he
said.
On one occasion, Elisabeth, who had accompanied me to
Varenna, expressed her deep anxiety about Wolfgang's health.
She thought he was terribly ill, but I failed to see it. We never
saw Wolfgang again.
Toward the end of 1958 I received the sad news that he had
died after a sudden operation. I cannot doubt but that the be-
ginning of his illness coincided with those unhappy days in
which he Iost hope in the speedy completion of our theory of
elementary particles. Ido not, of course, presume to judge which
was the cause and which the effect.
 20
ElementaryParticlesand
PlatonicPhilosophy (1961-1965)

When the Max Planck lnstitute for Physics and Astrophysics,

which my colleagues and I had helped to build up in Gottingen
after the war, moved to Munich in the autumn of 1958, a fresh
chapter was opened in all our lives. A new generation of physi-
cists was able to work on the problems that had engaged so much
of my attention in a modern, spacious building situated in the
northern part of the city, on the edge of the English Carden, and
designed by Sep Ruf, a friend from the Youth Movement. The
unified field theory of elementary particles became the special
concern of Hans Peter Dürr, who had grown up in Germany,
had trained in the United States and who, after working under
Edward Teller in California for a long time, had returned to his
native land. Teller must have told him about our Lei pzig circle,
and once back in M unich he acq uired a liking for the old tradi-
tions through conversations with Carl Friedrich, who spent a few
weeks in our Institute every autumn, lest his philosophical
studies lead to a complete neglect of physics. As a result, physical
and philosophical aspects of the unified field theory were the
subject of many discussions among the three of us, generally in
my study in the new Institute. I shall record one of these discus-
sions as a typical example.
Carl Friedrich: "Have you made progress with your unified
field theory since our meeting last year? I mean with regard to
the interpretation of the experiments, though I myself am of
course particularly interested in the philosophical aspects. But
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

then a theory like yours is solid physics or it is nothing at all.

Well, did you get any further, or, more specifically, have you
discovered anything new in connection with Pauli's idea of
'division and symmetry reduction'?"
Dürr: "We think that we have understood division in at least
one case, namely, mirror symmetry. It comes about because, in
relativity theory, the eigenvalue equation for the mass of an
elementary particle must be a quadratic equation and therefore
have two solutions. But the reduction of symmetry is more
interesting still. It seems that here we come face to face with very
general and most important relations that we had failed to take
into consideration. If one of nature's fundamental symmetries is
regularly found to be disturbed in the spectrum of elementary
particles, the only possible explanation is that the universe, i.e.,
the substratum where the particles originated, is less symmetrical
than the underlying physical law. Now that is perfectly possible
and can be reconciled with the symmetrical field equation. It
follows-1 do not wish to prove it now-that there must be forces
acting over long distances, or elementary particles of vanishing
inertial mass. This is probably the best way of interpreting
electrodynamics. Gravitation, too, could arise in this way, so that
here we may hope to find a bridge to the principies on which
Einstein wanted to base his unified field theory and cosmology."
Carl Friedrich: "If I have understood you correctly, you as-
sume that the forra of the universe is not absolutely determined
by the field equation. In other words, you believe that the
universe could exist in various forms, ali of them in accordance
with your field equation. That would mean, would it not, that
your theory contains a contingent element, i.e., that it involves
chance or rather an inexplicable and unique factor? This is not
at all astonishing from the viewpoint of the older physics since
there, too, the initial conditions are not determined by physical
laws but are contingent-that is, they might have been otherwise.
A mere glance at the present form of the universe, at the count-
less galactic systems with their random distribution of stars and
stellar systems, suggests almost irresistibly that things might have
been quite different, that the number and position of the stars,
the number and size of the galactic systems, might have had quite
different values, and yet the same physical laws could still apply.
 ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 239
Luckily, when dealing with the spectrum of elementary particles
we do not have to bother about details on the cosmic scale. But
you believe that the general symmetry properties of the universe
do have repercussions on that spectrum. Perhaps we could repre-
sent such general properties by simplified models of the universe,
as we do in general relativity. The underlying field equation
would admit sorne of these models and bar others, and the spec-
trum of elementary particles might look slightly different for
each one. In that case we could conclude from the spectrum of
the elementary particles as to the universal symmetries."
Dürr: "Yes, that is precisely what we hope to do. Quite re-
cently, for instance, we made certain assumptions about these
symmetries which were later refuted by new experiments involv-
ing certain elementary particles. We accordingly replaced the
original assumptions with others that did agree with the experi-
mental results. At present, it looks very much as if we can inter-
pret the whole of electrodynamics in terms of the asymmetry of
the universe vis-a-vis the proton-neutron exchange or more
generally vis-a-vis the isospin group. Here the unified field theory
seems to have enough flexibility to allow the inclusion of all the
observed phenomena into a general framework."
Carl Friedrich: "If one keeps thinking along these lines, one
arrives at a very interesting and diflicult problem. I think that in
the case of contingent processes we must make a basic distinction
between the unique and the accidental. The universe is unique,
so that in the beginning unique decisions were made about its
symmetries. Later, when a host of galactic systems and stars were
being formed, the same decisions had to be made over and over
again, decisions which, in a sense, may be called accidental,
precisely because they are so numerous and repeatable. Only to
them do the statistical laws of quantum mechanics truly apply.
Admittedly, the use of expressions such as 'in the beginning' and
'later' is questionable here, because the concept of time, too, is
only given a clear meaning by the actual model of the universe.
But perhaps we ought to ignore this objection for the purposes of
the present discussion. The unique decisions which, as it were,
come at the beginning, also include the laws of nature you are
trying to describe with your field equation. For we are entitled to
ask why these laws have a particular form and no other; just as
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

we are entitled to ask why the universe has certain symmetrical

properties and no others. Perha ps there are no answers to these
questions, but I find it rather unsatisfactory to take your field
equation for granted, even if it is distinguished from all others
by its great symmetry and simplicity. Perhaps your equation may
acquire an even deeper significance with the help of Pauli's 'divi-
sion and symmetry reduction.' "
"I am the last person to deny that," I said. "But for the
moment I should like once again to stress the uniqueness of the
first decisions. They determine symmetries once and for all, and
lay down forms that have a decisive effect on subsequent events.
'In the beginning was symmetry' is certainly a better expression
than Democritus' 'In the beginning was the particle.' Elementary
particles embody symmetries; they are their simplest representa-
tions, and yet they are merely their consequence. Accident carne
later on in the development of the universe, but it, too, fits
neatly into the original forros; it satisfies the statistical laws of
quantum theory. In the later, ever more complicated, course of
events this process can be repeated: unique decisions can once
again establish forros that will determine the subsequent events.
This, for instance, is what happened during the origin of Iife,
and I, for one, find the discoveries of modern biology extremely
illuminating in this respect. The special geological and climatic
conditions prevailing on our planet have led to the emergence of
a complicated carbon chemistry, with gigantic molecules in
which information can be stored. N ucleic acid has proved a
suitable store of information for statements about the structure
of living beings. With it, a unique decision was taken, and a
form established that determined ali subsequent biological proc-
esses. In these, however, accident once again played an important
role. If sorne planet in another stellar system had the same
climatic and geological conditions as prevail on earth, and if
there, too, carbon compounds led to the formation of nucleic-
acid chains, it still <loes not follow that precisely the same living
beings would people it as live on earth. But what beings there
are will have the same nucleic-acid structure. In saying this I am
reminded of Goethe's attempt to derive the whole of botany from
a single, primordial plant. That plant was said to be an object,
but at the same time to represent the basic plan on which all
 ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 241

other plants were constructed. Following Goethe, we could call

nucleic acid a primordial living being, for it, too, is an object
and at the same time represents a biological blueprint. lf we talk
like that, we are, of course, right back with Plato's philosophy.
Our elementary particles are comparable to the regular bodies of
Plato's Timaeus. They are the original models, the ideas of
matter. N ucleic acid is the idea of the living being. These primi-
tive models determine all subsequent developments. They are
representative of the central order. And though accident does
play an important part in the subsequent emergence and devel-
opment of a profusion of structures, it may well be that accident,
too, is somehow related to the central order."
Carl Friedrich: "I am not at all happy with your use of the
word 'somehow.' Perhaps you might care to elaborate. Do you
think that this sort of accident is completely pointless? Does it, so
to speak, merely put into practice what quantum laws express
statistically? Your remarks suggest that, over and above that, you
are thinking of a wider connection, a kind of superstructure that
lends meaning to the individual event. Am I right in saying
that?"
Dürr: "Any deviation from the frequency of events established
by quantum mechanics would make nonsense of our explana-
tions why phenomena should otherwise be governed by quantum
laws. Experience suggests that such deviations are quite impos-
sible. But you probably had something quite different in mind;
no doubt, you were thinking of events or decisions that are
essentially unique, i.e., to which statistical considerations do not
apply. Still, the use of the word 'meaning' in your question gives
it a somewhat unscientific twist."
There the conversation ended. However, a few days later it
had a sequel in which I was essentially a passive participant.
Konrad Lorenz, Erich von Holst and their collaborators had
begun to make a special study of the behavior of the local fauna
at the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Research, situated
beside a lake in the hilly and wooded country between Lake
Starnberg and Lake Ammer. They had been talking-and this is
the title of one of Lorenz' books-with cattle, birds and fishes.
The Institute held regular autumn conferences in which biolo-
gists, philosophers, physicists and chemists discussed various basic
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

and, above all, epistemological problems of biology. Wits called

it the body-soul colloquium. I would occasionally be present,
mostly as a listener because I knew very little about biology and
was anxious to learn more. I remember that, on the day in ques-
tion, the talk carne around to Darwin's theory in its modern
form, i.e., to mutation and selection, and that the speaker
contended that the origin of species was comparable to the origin
of human tools. Thus man's need to move across the water had
led him to invent the rowing boat, and suddenly lakes and
coastal waters had begun to teem with new objects. Then some-
one had the idea of exploiting the force of the wind by means of
sails, and sailing boats began to oust rowing boats. Finally, the
steam engine was invented and steamships displaced sailing boats
on all the oceans. The speaker went on to argue that false starts
were quickly suppressed in the course of technical progress. Thus
in the history of the light bulb, the Nernst lamp was replaced by
the incandescent lamp almost as soon as it had appeared. The
process of biological selection must be envisaged in much the
same way. Mutations occur by pure chance, just as quantum
theory would expect them to do, and selection then eliminates
most of these "natural experiments." Only a few forms, which
have proved themselves under the given circumstances, remain.
While thinking about this comparison, it occurred to me that
the process of technological advance differs from Darwinian
theory in one crucial respect, namely, just where Darwinian
theory introduces chance. Human inventions are the result never
of accident but of man's intention and thought. I tried to see
what would happen if the comparison were taken more seriously
than the speaker would have wished, and if something like in-
tention were associated with Darwinian mutation. But can one
really speak of intentions apart from man? At most, we may be
prepared to grant that a dog jumping onto the kitchen table "in-
tends" to eat up the sausage. But has a bacteriophage approach-
ing a bacterium the intention of entering it and of multiplying
inside? And even if we are still prepared to say yes, can we also
say that genes change their structure with the intention of
adapting to their environment? lf we did, we would obviously be
misusing the word "intention." But perhaps we could choose a
more careful formulation. We could ask whether the aim to be
 ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 243
reached, the possibility to be realized, may not influence the
course of events. If we do that, we are almost back with quantum
theory. For the wave function represents a possibility and not an
actual event. In other words, the kind of accident which plays so
important a role in Darwinian theory may be something very
much subtler than we think, and this precisely because it agrees
with the laws of quantum mechanics.
My chain of thought was interrupted by a clash of opinion on
the platform as to the relevance of quantum theory in biology.
Such arguments generally result from the fact that, whereas most
biologists are fully prepared to admit that the existence of atoms
and molecules can only be understood through quantum theory,
they nevertheless tend to look upon atoms and molecules as
objects of classical physics-that is, they treat them as if they
were so many bricks or grains of sand. This approach may quite
often lead to the correct results; but then the conceptual struc-
ture of quantum theory differs radically from that of classical
physics. Hence thinking along the old lines may occasionally
prove misleading. Still, I shall say no more about this part of the
"body-soul colloquium."
In my own Institute a number of young physicists were now
constantly engaged on problems related to the unified field
theory. The stormy disputes of the early years had long since
given way to calmer thought. The task before us now was to
advance the theory step by step and to fit the known phenomena
as coherently into itas we possibly could. Experiments with large
accelerators in Geneva and Brookhaven had revealed many fresh
details in the spectrum of elementary particles, and we were
anxious to ascertain whether or not the new results agreed with
our predictions. In this way, the unified field theory gradually
assumed a tangible physical form, and Carl Friedrich took a
growing interest in its philosophic foundations. Pauli's old theme
-division and symmetry reduction-was by no means dead and
forgotten. The exam ple discussed by Dürr-mirror symmetry-
had merely been a special case, one in which the essential traits
of the problem may only have been just discernible. Carl Fried-
rich now made a determined effort to get at the root of the wider
problem.
Many of our discussions during these years took place in
244 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

Urfeld. Things had grown more peaceful and quiet, and we had
more leisure for retiring to our house on Lake Walchen, par-
ticularly at weekends or during the holidays. From the terrace
we could look across the lake and the mountains, and delight in
the profusion of glowing colors that Lovis Corinth had so lov-
ingly captured on canvas forty years earlier. It was rare now that
I was reminded of that other, darker picture: Colonel Pash
kneeling behind the terrace wall, his machine pisto! at the ready;
the sound of shooting down on the road, the children in the
cellar behind sandbags. Those events now lay far behind us, and
we could once again meditate peacefully about the great ques-
tions Plato had once asked, questions that had perhaps found
their answer in the contemporary physics of elementary particles.
During one of his visits, Carl Friedrich explained the funda-
mental ideas of his current attempt: "All our thinking about
nature must necessarily move in circles or spirals; for we can only
understand nature if we think about her, and we can only think
because our brain is built in accordance with nature's laws. In
principie, therefore, we could start anywhere at all, but our
minds are made in such a way that it seems best to start with
what is simplest, namely, alternatives: yes or no, to be or not to
be, good or evil. Now, as long as we conceive of these altematives
in the way we do in daily life, that is all there is to it. But as we
know from quantum theory, an alternative does not simply
amount to a yes or no, but also involves other, complementary
answers in which the degree of probability of the yes or no is laid
down, as well as their mutual interference. As a result, we have a
whole continuum of possible answers or, mathematically speak-
ing, a continuous group of linear transformation of two complex
variables. This group contains the Lorentz group of relativity
theory. If we ask whether or not any one of these possible answers
applies, we are, in fact, asking questions about a space com-
parable to the space-time continuum of the real world. It is along
these lines that I am trying to develop the group structure you
have captured in your field equation-and with which the world
is, in a sense, unfolded-by the superposition of alternatives."
"In other words, you think it important," I interjected, "that
Pauli's division is not a dichotomy in the sense of Aristotelian
logic, but that it introduces complementarity in a crucial place.
 ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 245
Pauli was thus right to claim that division in Aristotle's sense was
an attribute of the devil; that its continuous repetition can lead
only to chaos. But then the new and third possibility, which has
appeared with complementarity, may bear fruit and, on repeti-
tion, lead us into the space of the real world. As you know, the
old mystics used to associate the number 3 with the divine
principle. Or if you dislike mysticism, you could think of the
Hegelian triplet: thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Synthesis need not
be a mixture, a mere compromise between thesis and antithesis;
it can prove extremely fruitful, but only when thesis and antithe-
sis combine to produce something qualitatively new."
Carl Friedrich was not altogether satisfied: "Yes, these are
pleasant enough philosophical musings, but I'm afraid we can't
leave it at that. I am hopeful that the new approach will lead us
to the real laws of nature. Your field equation, of which no one
can as yet say with certainty whether it represents nature cor-
rectly, looks as if it might have originated in this philosophy of
alternatives. But surely we ought to be able to establish this fact
with the necessary mathematical rigor."
"In any case," I said, "you want to construct the elementary
particles, and with them the world, from alternatives in the same
way as Plato tried to construct his regular bodies, and the world,
from triangles. Your alternatives are no more material than the
triangles of Plato's Timaeus. But if we start with the logic of
quantum theory, then alternatives become the basic forro from
which more com plicated forms are created by repetition. If I
understand you, the path leads from alternatives to symmetry
grou ps, that is, to properties. One or severa! properties are
represented by the mathematical forms symbolizing elementary
particles; these forms are, so to speak, the ideas of the elementary
particles on which the actual particles are modeled. I can follow
all this perfectly well. Moreover, I agree that alternatives are far
more fundamental structures of our thought than triangles. I
nevertheless think that your program will prove inordinately
difficult to carry out, for it calls for thought of such abstraction as
has never been used before, at least not in physics. I myself would
certainly find it too hard, but perhaps the younger generation
will take it all in their stride. In short, you and your collabo-
rators must certainly go ahead.º
 PHYSICS AND BEYOND

At this point, Elisabeth, who had been listening to us from the

other end of the terrace, said: "Do you really believe you can
interest the young generation in such difficult problems, prob-
lems, moreover, that impinge on the wider context of science and
life? From what you have occasionally said about physical re-
search in the great research centers here or in America, it looks
very much as if the young generation is almost exclusively pre-
occu pied with details, as if it had placed sorne sort of taboo on
even speaking about a wider context. It's all a bit like astronomy
in late antiquity, when the experts were quite content to predict
the next eclipse of the sun or the moon from superposed cycles
and epicycles, and completely forgot Aristarchus' helocentric sys-
tem. Might it not happen that interest in your general questions
will fade away as well?''
I myself did not feel nearly so pessimistic. "lnterest in details is
important and necessary," I said, "for, after all, we want to know
how things really work. You may remember Niels' oft repeated
quotation: 'Clarity is gained through breadth.' As for the taboo,
it is not really bad, for it is never intended to prohibit those
things of which one must not speak, but to guard them against
chatterers and scoffers. Its age-old justification is Goethe's 'Speak,
but only to the wise, for the crowd must needs despise.' So the
taboo need not really upset us. There will always be young people
enough to think about the wider context, if only because they
want to be absolutely honest in all things. And that being the case,
their number is unimportant.''

Those who have thought about Plato's philosophy will know

that the world is shaped by images. I would therefore like to
conclude this account of conversations over the years with a pic-
ture that is indelibly inscribed in my memory. There were four
of us-Elisabeth, our two oldest sons and I, and we were driving
past blossoming meadows up into hills between Lake Starnberg
and Lake Ammer on the way to Seewiesen, where we intended
to visit Erich von Holst in the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral
Research. Von Holst was not only an excellent biologist, but also
a fine viola player and violin maker, and we wanted to ask his
advice about a musical instrument. My sons, then young stu-
dents, had brought along their violín and cello in case there
 ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY 247
was a chance of playing. Von Holst showed us round his new
house, built and furnished most tastefully and imaginatively
largely by himself, and led us into a spacious living room into
which the sun streamed unobstructed through wide-open win-
dows and French doors. Outside we could see green beeches under
a blue sky, and a colorful display of wings by the lnstitute's
feathered charges. Von Holst fetched his viola, sat down between
the two young men and joined them in playing the D Major
Serenade, a work of Beethoven's youth. It brims over with vital
force and joy; faith in the central order keeps casting out faint-
heartedness and weariness. And as I listened, I grew firm in the
conviction that, measured on the human time scale, life, music
and science would always go on, even though we ourselves are no
more than transient visitors or, in Niels' words, both spectators
and actors in the great drama of life.
 About the Author

Werner Heisenberg was born in Würzburg, Germany,

in 1901. He was educated at the Universities of
Munich and Gottingen and in 1932 was awarded the
Nobel Prize for his work in theoretical atomic physics.
He is now Director of the Max Planck Institute for
Physics and Astrophysics in Munich.

About the Editor of This Series

Ruth N anda Anshen, philosopher and editor, plans
and edits World Perspectives, Religious Perspectives,
Credo Perspectives, Perspectives in Humanism and
The Science o/ Culture Series. She also writes and lec-
tures on the relationship of knowledge to the nature
and meaning of man and existence.