Pragmatic Positivism: Werner Heisenberg's Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics

An exploration of Werner Heisenberg's philosophical ideas regarding quantum mechanics. Heisenberg was one of the great physicists of the early twentieth-century. His contributions were paralleled only by Einstein, Bohr and a handful of others. The philosophical foundations of Heisenberg's approach to science have been a matter of debate for decades. One philosopher that emerged after the great physics discoveries of quantum mechanics and relativity was Harvard professor Willard Van Orman Quine. This comparison of Quine's philosophy to that of Heisenberg's casts the empirical and theoretical issues of modern science in a new light, one which raises the possibility of productive engagement between philosophers and physicists.