Berkeley Redivivus (Review of W. Heisenberg’s Natural Law and the Structure of Matter [Rebel, London, 1970]) [1970c]

Abstract

In 1919, during the street fighting in Munich, while the din of shooting filled the air, a schoolboy called Werner Heisenberg, installed on the roof of the seminar building, was reading the Timaios — a near enough approximation to the prophet receiving the law on the mountain amid thunder and lightning. In 1964, with a prodigious career of creative work behind him, Werner Heisenberg chose to ascend another height, this time the very Hill of Pnyx, to proclaim from this hallowed ground the final triumph of Plato. This sermon has been preached before, by a famous bishop of Cloyne, among others, who thought he had routed atheism, just as Heisenberg now fancies he has liquidated its modern avatar, dialectical materialism. Berkeley’s judgment was dimmed by his new theory of vision: Heisenberg is led astray by his new theory of matter.