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 experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us.
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"The number of children born to a marriage ought to be limited, and that a man who has already had some children should be sterilized."
"The world is not something that exists independently of us. It is something that we create."
"The number of children born from educated parents is much too small."
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."
"The present is the only thing that has no end."
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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Science constructs a coherent, factual model of reality but remains completely silent on consciousness, love, meaning, suffering, and beauty — the experiences humans actually care about most. The more thorough science becomes, the more glaring its void on inner life. Schrödinger is expressing astonishment that humanity's most powerful intellectual tool is entirely mute about everything that makes existence feel meaningful and worth living.
Schrödinger won the 1933 Nobel Prize for wave mechanics yet spent decades writing about consciousness and biology. His book What is Life? (1944) directly inspired the DNA double-helix discovery. He studied Vedanta philosophy, believing consciousness was singular and universal. This quote captures his lifelong conviction that physics, however complete, cannot account for the observer experiencing it — the central paradox he wrestled with throughout his career.
The mid-20th century was the apex of scientific confidence — quantum mechanics and relativity had revolutionized physics, while logical positivism insisted only empirically verifiable claims were meaningful. Yet two world wars had shattered faith in progress. Existentialism was asking what science couldn't answer: meaning, mortality, and freedom. Schrödinger was directly challenging the dominant view that science alone could provide a complete account of human reality.
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