And even the great Heisenberg could not decode Pauli's utterance.
Great expert of Pauli's scientific heritage Hans Primas wrote to me
Dear Yuri Danoyan,
The original German quotation is:
"Zweiteilung und Symmetrievemindeung, das ist des Pudels Kern. Zweiteilung ist ein sehr altes Attribut des Teufels. (Das Wort Zweifel soll urspünglichch Zweiteilung bedeutet haben)."
It is in a letter by Pauli to Heisenberg, who quote it (without given the date of the letter) in:
W. Heisenberg, Wolfgang Paulis philosophische Auffassungen, Die Naturwissenschaften, vol. 46 (1959), pp.661-663.
It is again quoted in W. Heisenberg, Der Teil und das Ganze , Piper Verlag , Muenchen (1969), p.317. In the English translation of this book (Physics and Beyond, Harper and Row, New York (1974), p.234) it is translated as:
"Division and reduction of symmetry, this then is the kernel of the
brute! The former is an ancient attribute of the devil."
It is notoriously difficult to translate Pauli's striking and succinct German in another language. Here Pauli refers to Goethe's Faust, part 1, second scene "Faust's study":
"Das war also des Pudels Kern ... "
In German, this phrase has become proverbial, known to everyone (even if to people who do not know the Faustian context), essentially in the sense "that is the crux of the matter".
The phrase you quote "WHERE ACTUALLY THE DOG LIES EXACTLY BURIED !" seems to me not to be a literal translation of a remark by Pauli, but a translation of the German saying: "da liegt der Hund begraben". This saying is probably more then 400 years old, and the authoritative "Deutsches Woerterbuch" by Grimm leave the question of the origin of this saying open. Probably "Hund" does not refer to "dog", but to the Middle High German "hunte" (meaning "centum", "hundred coins"), or more generally "booty" or "treasure". Nevertheless, the present-day meaning is clear to every German-speaking child. It means roughly: "that is the crux of the matter".
I hope that these explanations are a bit helpful. Wit my best regards
Hans Primas
Dear Dr.Primas
I OFTEN MEET SOME ENIGMATIC AND MISTERIOUS PHRASE OF WOLFGANG PAULI
''DIVISION (INTO TWO) AND REDUCTION OF SYMMETRY..WHERE ACTUALLY THE DOG LIES EXACTLY BURIED !"
I READ THIS PHRASE IN RUSSIAN ,BUT NOT READ IN GERMAN.ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH AUTHENTIK TEXT?
WHAT MEAN PAULI TO YOUR OPINION?
THANK YOU FOR ANSWER.
Yuri Danoyan
--
Hans Primas
Kusenstrasse 21, CH-8700 Kuesnacht (Switzerland).
Phone: 01 9107167. E-mail: primas@ggaweb.ch