One may say that in a state of science where fundamental concepts have to be changed, tradition is both the condition for progress and a hindrance. Hence, it usually takes a long time before the new concepts are generally accepted.
Interpretation
Tradition can both aid and impede scientific progress.
Heisenberg's quote speaks to the dual role of tradition in the realm of science. While established concepts and beliefs provide a foundation upon which new ideas can be built, they can also create resistance to change, making it difficult for innovative thoughts to gain acceptance. This tension highlights the challenge of reconciling the old with the new in scientific advancement.
In practice
In a lecture on the evolution of scientific theories, one might quote Heisenberg to emphasize the challenges of adopting new ideas.
Although the theory of relativity makes the greatest of demands on the ability for abstract thought, still it fulfills the traditional requirements of science insofar as it permits a division of the world into subject and object (observer and observed) and, hence, a clear formulation of the law of causality.
It was about three o'clock at night when the final result of the calculation [which gave birth to quantum mechanics] lay before me ... At first I was deeply shaken ... I was so excited that I could not think of sleep. So I left the house ... and awaited the sunrise on top of a rock.
It is generally believed that our science is empirical and that we draw our concepts and our mathematical constructs from the empirical data. If this were the whole truth, we should, when entering into a new field, introduce only such quantities as can directly be observed, and formulate natural laws only by means of these quantities.
When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity ? And why turbulence ? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.
The end of the First World War had thrown Germany's youth into great turmoil. The reins of power had fallen from the hands of a deeply disillusioned older generation, and the younger ones drew together in larger and smaller groups to blaze new paths or, at least, to discover a new star to steer by.
The Same organizing forces that have shaped nature in all her forms are also responsible for the structure of our minds.
Somehow, knowing that Alzheimer's is coming mocks all one's aspirations - to tell stories, to think through certain issues as only a novel can do, to be recognised for one's accomplishments and hard work - in a way that old familiar death does not.
You say somebody’s guilty, everybody believes you. You say they’re innocent, nobody cares.
An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay, And glides in modest innocence away.
There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed. All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contains and conceals His divine action.
Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
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