Erwin Schrodinger is known for his many contributions to the world of quantum theory and physical science. He still inspires many across the field of quantum theory. Here are some Erwin Schrodinger Quotes.
Short biography of Erwin Schrodinger
Erwin Schrodinger is known for receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics (1933) and much more. From Our Image of Matter, compiled by Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Erwin Schrodinger, Pierre Auger, On Modern Physics (1961), 50. Shortly after entering the faculty of the University of Oxford in England, Schrödinger learned that he had received an award. Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933, sharing the prize with another quantum theorist, Paul A. M. Dirac. Erwin Schrödinger was well known for his observational theories, but he was certainly overlooked when it came to his brilliant words about unity and consciousness.
This is one of his many contributions to the world of quantum theory and physical science. Erwin Schrödinger was an Austrian Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose groundbreaking wave equation changed the face of quantum theory. In 1933 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics with British physicist P.A.M. Dirac, who later became director of the Irish Institute for Advanced Study. Schrödinger’s Wave Equation Schrödinger’s next six years as a professor at the University of Zurich proved to be one of the most important periods of his career as a physicist.
During this period, Schrödinger promoted the idea of the wave in quantum physics. “I think it’s very interesting that you can see the [psi] functions of Schrödinger’s wave mechanics using X-ray studies of crystals. The more I think about the physical part of Schrödinger’s theory, the more repulsive it seems to me.
It makes sense; it takes an intelligent person to fully understand that everything in the universe is one gigantic being, and he certainly had no lack of intelligence. This quote is often (obviously) mistakenly attributed to Erwin Schrödinger, for example, in the book by Alan L. McKay (edited by Schrödinger, wave mechanics is not a physical theory, but a gimmick, and also a very good gimmick. Of the most important achievements of the twentieth century and revolutionized quantum mechanics and in all physics and chemistry.
I thought that the basic principles of quantum mechanics allowed us to combine these functions of the Schrödinger equation in a different way. The following quotes from Schrödinger are inspiring and are worth reading a couple of times (which I had to do) to fully appreciate the seriousness of their meaning. In a subsequent letter to Pauli, he called Dirac’s theory scientific nonsense. As Schrödinger noted, it is a miracle that, despite the overwhelming complexity of the world, some patterns of events can be discovered
“Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind”
“Quantum physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe.”
“The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists.”
“Every man’s world picture is and always remains a construct of his mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence.”
“The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.”
“I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experiences in a magnificently consistent order, but is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, god and eternity.”
“For eternally and always there is only one now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.”
“There is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction The only solution to this conflict insofar as any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishad.”
“We must not wait for things to come, believing that they are decided by irrescindable destiny. If we want it, we must do something about it.”
“The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories. It is convenient to regard it as existing objectively on its own. But it certainly does not become manifest by its mere existence.”
“If a man never contradicts himself, the reason must be that he virtually never says anything at all.”
“The present is the only things that has no end.”
“The verbal interpretation, on the other hand, i.e. the metaphysics of quantum physics, is on far less solid ground. In fact, in more than forty years physicists have not been able to provide a clear metaphysical model.”
“Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems a blunt tautology – we are quite unable to imagine the contrary…”
“I insist upon the view that ‘all is waves’.”
“The self is not so much linked to its ancestors, it is not so much the product, and merely the product, of all that, but rather, in the strictest sense of the word, the same thing as all that: the strict, direct continuation of it, just as the self aged fifty is the continuation of the self aged forty.”
“In an honest search for knowledge, you quite often have to abide by ignorance for an indefinite period.”
“Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown. There is only one thing and that which seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing, produced by a deception, the Indian maya, as in a gallery of mirrors.”
“The task is not to see what has never been seen before, but to think what has never been thought before about what you see everyday.”
“Consciousness is a singular for which there is no plural.”
“Our mind, by virtue of a certain finite, limited capability, is by no means capable of putting a question to Nature that permits a continuous series of answers. The observations, the individual results of measurements, are the answers of Nature to our discontinuous questioning.”
“No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The ‘I’ is chained to ancestry by many factors… This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory.”
“The material world has only been constructed at the price of taking the self, that is, mind, out of it, removing it; mind is not part of it…”
“The plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real. Vedantic philosophy… has sought to clarify it by a number of analogies, one of the most attractive being the many-faceted crystal which, while showing hundreds of little pictures of what is in reality a single existent object, does not really multiply that object…”
“The great revelation of the quantum theory was that features of discreteness were discovered in the Book of Nature, in a context in which anything other than continuity seemed to be absurd according to the views held until then.”
“In this communication I wish first to show in the simplest case of the hydrogen atom (nonrelativistic and undistorted) that the usual rates for quantization can be replaced by another requirement, in which mention of “whole numbers” no longer occurs. Instead the integers occur in the same natural way as the integers specifying the number of nodes in a vibrating string. The new conception can be generalized, and I believe it touches the deepest meaning of the quantum rules.”
“No self is of itself alone”
“The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the West.”
“Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon mother earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you.”
“Inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason – you and all other conscious beings as such – are all in all. Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole. Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon mother earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you.”
“The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one.”
“What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space.”
“A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement.”
“For a solitary animal egoism is a virtue that tends to preserve and improve the species: in any kind of community it becomes a destructive vice.”
“I don’t like it, and I’m sorry I ever had anything to do with it.”
“An animal that embarks on forming states without greatly restricting egoism will perish.”
“The mathematical framework of quantum theory has passed countless successful tests and is now universally accepted as a consistent and accurate description of all atomic phenomena.”
“Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, of why and how an old song can move us to tears.”
“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”
“I belong to those theoreticians who know by direct observation what it means to make a measurement. Methinks it were better if there were more of them.”
“From all we have learnt about the structure of living matter, we must be prepared to find it working in a manner that cannot be reduced to the ordinary laws of physics. And that not on the ground that there is any “new force” or what not, directing the behavior of the single atoms within a living organism, but because the construction is different from anything we have yet tested in the physical laboratory.”