Erwin Schrodinger — "The world is not to be understood by reason alone. It is also to be understood b…"
The world is not to be understood by reason alone. It is also to be understood by intuition and feeling.
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About Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961)
Austrian physicist who shared the 1933 Nobel for the wave equation that bears his name and the famous cat thought-experiment. Closely associated with Werner Heisenberg (matrix-mechanics rival who reached the same physics by different math) and Albert Einstein (his pen-pal on quantum interpretation). For an intellectual contrast, see Niels Bohr, Danish physicist and architect of the Copenhagen interpretation — Schrödinger's cat thought-experiment was specifically designed to ridicule Bohr's 'observer-dependent reality' reading of quantum mechanics — Schrödinger thought the Copenhagen interpretation was absurd; the cat was meant as reductio ad absurdum.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Rational analysis alone cannot give you a complete picture of reality. To truly understand existence—its nature, its wholeness—you must also engage intuitive perception and felt experience. This rejects pure scientism or cold logic as the only valid path to truth, arguing instead that wisdom requires multiple modes of knowing: reasoned thought working alongside gut understanding and emotional intelligence.
Relevance to Erwin Schrodinger
Schrödinger was deeply immersed in Vedantic Hindu philosophy alongside his quantum physics work, writing on consciousness and the unity of mind in books like "My View of the World." The Schrödinger equation itself emerged from intuitive leaps beyond classical mechanics. His famous cat paradox reveals a thinker who used imaginative, felt reasoning as much as formal proof to probe nature's deepest limits.
The era
The 1920s–1950s saw quantum mechanics demolish Newtonian certainty that pure reason could map all reality. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and wave-particle duality made determinism untenable, opening space for non-rational modes of knowing. Simultaneously, two World Wars shattered confidence in rational progress, while existentialism and renewed Western interest in Eastern mysticism directly challenged Enlightenment rationalism's supremacy. Science's own foundations had become deeply mysterious.
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