The first thing to say is that of course I don't believe in the existence of 'my' cat, or 'your' cat, or 'the' cat. There is only one cat, which is the cat of the universe. And it's not even a cat, it's a wave function.
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"The world is a stage, and we are merely players."
"The idea that consciousness is a phenomenon of the brain is an illusion. Consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, and the brain is merely an antenna that tunes into it."
"The scientific method is a powerful tool, but it is not the only way to gain knowledge."
"The only constant in life is change."
"The greatest change will be in the thinking habits of the human race. It will learn to look at things in a new way. Quantum theory will force it to do so."
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.
Attributed, possibly apocryphal or paraphrased, but reflective of his views on wave function and identity.
Date: Unknown, likely 1930s-1940s
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Individual cats—'mine,' 'yours,' 'the'—are labels humans impose on an undivided quantum reality. There is no discrete object called 'a cat'; there is only a universal wave function encoding all possible configurations simultaneously. Personal ownership and physical boundaries are classical-physics conveniences, not fundamental truths. At the deepest level, what we call things are probability distributions, not objects with fixed, separate identities.
Schrödinger's 1935 cat paradox was designed to expose the absurdity of quantum superposition at macroscopic scales. This quote inverts that logic: rather than vindicating the classical cat, he dissolves it into the very formalism he pioneered. His 1926 wave equation earned the 1933 Nobel Prize and made wave functions central to physics. His book What Is Life? reveals a lifelong drive to unify physics with deeper ontological reality.
Quantum mechanics emerged in the 1920s–30s, shattering Newtonian certainty. The Copenhagen Interpretation held that particles lack definite properties until measured—a claim disturbing to Einstein ('God does not play dice') and Schrödinger alike. His 1935 cat paradox ridiculed superposition applied to everyday objects. Yet here he accepts the wave-function worldview fully, reflecting physics' gradual consensus that reality at every scale is probabilistic, not classically solid.
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