C. F. von Weizsaecker's Reconstruction of Physics: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

Abstract

Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker's thinking has always crossed the borders between physics and philosophy. Being a physicist by training he still feels at home in the physics community, as a philosopher by passion, however, his mind cannot stop thinking at the limits of physics. His physical ideas are based on the general conceptual and methodological preconditions of physical theories. Such a line of reasoning about the foundations of physics has brought Weizsaecker into an abstract program of a possible reconstruction of physics in terms of yes-no-alternatives, which he called "ur-theory." I shall start this paper with a review of the basic ideas of ur-theory: the definition of an ur and the connection between ur-spinors and spacetime. I then go over to some of ur-theory's present borders: the construction of quantized spacetime tetrads and the difficulties to incorporate gravity and gauge theories. Finally, I shall discuss the possible prospects of ur-theory -- partly with a view to modern quantum gravity approaches, but mainly in connection with its philosophical implications. Here, one of the crucial questions is, whether form, or, modern, information is an entity per se and what particular consequences this may have.