To the best of our understand, particles are fundamentally wavelike in nature. For example, if you shoot electrons through closely spaces slits, they will form interference patterns just like light does (There are lots of other experiments you can do to demonstrate this as well, but this is perhaps the most straightforward one). So, if the wavelike nature of particles is fundamental (which we believe to be true), then the Uncertainty Principle is also fundamentally true. In fact, the Uncertainty Principle can be derived, without any reference to “measurement” at all.

There are actually many different uncertainty relations- the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle being the most famous one- that there is an uncertainty between the position and momentum of a particle. But really, any two observables (observable being a quantum mechanics word for “something you can measure”) which do not commute will have an uncertainty relation. What does this mean? So, when something commutes, it means order of operations doesn’t matter. For instance, A + B = B + A. Addition commutes. Multiplication sometimes commutes. For instance, if x and y are just numbers, then xy = yx. But, if x and y are matrices, then x*y ~= y*x. In Quantum Mechanics, operators (or functions which operate on the wavefunction) sometimes commute and sometimes don’t. Ones that don’t (like position and momentum), will always have an associated uncertainty principle.

Position and Momentum are part of the canonical commutation relation. This means if the position operator (P) operates on the wavefunction (W) first, and then the momentum operator (M), you get a different answer than if the momentum operator operates first, and then the position. Or in math: [XP – PX]*W = i*h_bar, where i is the imaginary number, and h_bar is Plank’s constant divided by 2*pi. Another common pairing that shares this relationship is Energy and Time, thus they also have an uncertainty principle.

While perhaps this got pretty far into the weeds, the Wikipedia article summarizes it nicely:

> Historically, the uncertainty principle has been confused with a related effect in physics, called the observer effect, which notes that measurements of certain systems cannot be made without affecting the system, that is, without changing something in a system. Heisenberg utilized such an observer effect at the quantum level (see below) as a physical "explanation" of quantum uncertainty. It has since become clearer, however, that the uncertainty principle is inherent in the properties of all wave-like systems, and that it arises in quantum mechanics simply due to the matter wave nature of all quantum objects. Thus, the uncertainty principle actually states a fundamental property of quantum systems and is not a statement about the observational success of current technology. Indeed the uncertainty principle has its roots in how we apply calculus to write the basic equations of mechanics. It must be emphasized that measurement does not mean only a process in which a physicist-observer takes part, but rather any interaction between classical and quantum objects regardless of any observer.