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In an interview of Heisenberg by Thomas Kuhn:

When Pauli had died, I was asked to write this memorial volume. Weisskopf had asked me. Then, actually, originally I had written an article on Pauli's philosophical views, but this article was not accepted. Weisskopf said, "Well, this article is very nice, but you know we don't like to discuss this side of Pauli so much. We want to see Pauli as a physicist." So actually I was a bit angry about Weisskopf, but, well, I had to take his opinion, and apparently other people agreed. Afterwards I did publish my article of Pauli's philosophical views. I first then published it in German. May I give you a copy? Later on it did appear in a rather obscure periodical in the United States because there were still some people in America who were still interested in it, but not the physicists. These were people of a different structure. Still, I like this article on Pauli's philosophical views. I think that I had succeeded in describing very accurately how Pauli's mind was constructed. I also hoped that I had made it clear to many people that I liked this kind of mind, and that my own mind is not so very different from that of Pauli. I may just have it here.

Any detail of this article (title, name of journal of publication,...) would be really appreciated.

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  • $\begingroup$ Interesting question (although clearly off-topic here). It seems that Pauli held rather mystic views, and disputed quite a bit with Heisenberg. E.g., arxiv.org/pdf/1003.3223.pdf, halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00992725/document But I haven't found the original article - neither in German, nor in English. Perhaps, you could look, if there is a citation in the book? $\endgroup$
    – Vadim
    Jul 24, 2020 at 9:39
  • $\begingroup$ It might be Ref 29 in this article:arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0010003.pdf $\endgroup$
    – Vadim
    Jul 24, 2020 at 9:43
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you @Vadim, before posting my question I did already search the first document (a dissertation supervised by Roger H. Stuewer) and found no reference to that article. As for the second link you provided I could not find any reference either. $\endgroup$
    – Sha
    Jul 24, 2020 at 9:51
  • $\begingroup$ @Vadim I am not sure, I am afraid Ref 29 is the memorial volume Heisenberg himself talked about, which Weisskopf asked him to write and did not accept the inclusion of the article we are searching for $\endgroup$
    – Sha
    Jul 24, 2020 at 10:02

2 Answers 2

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I think the article in question is:

I found it via citation in this article.

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    $\begingroup$ Oh that is it! Thank you very much @Vadim $\endgroup$
    – Sha
    Jul 24, 2020 at 10:21
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The English translation by Kurt Leidecker is referenced as "Wolfgang Pauli's philosophical views", in Main Currents in Modern Thought, volume 17, pages 51-54 (1961). The paper is also cited as "Wolfgang Pauli's philosophical views. Towards a new understanding of the unitary order of the cosmos," pp.38-41. The journal is indeed quite obscure and I'm not able to locate a copy of that issue in any library.

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    $\begingroup$ The University of California system has a copy. Unfortunately everything is shut down now ... $\endgroup$
    – Diagon
    Jul 29, 2020 at 8:48

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