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.
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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."
"Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown; that there is only one thing and that what seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing."
"The idea that there is a 'mind' or 'consciousness' that is separate from the physical world is a delusion. It is a product of our language and our limited way of thinking."
"We are thus faced with the following dilemma: either the cells of the organism contain a highly efficient 'memory' for all the details of previous events, or they are, in some mysterious way, able to …"
"I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the 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…"
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, often cited in discussions of his philosophical views, though specific written source can be elusive.
Date: Unknown
Nature & WorldFound in 1 providers: grok
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The quote argues that consciousness is not manufactured by the brain the way a factory produces goods. Instead, consciousness exists as a primary, irreducible feature of reality itself — built into the fabric of the universe. The brain's role is passive: a receiver, like a radio tuning into a signal that exists independently of the device. Destroy the radio and the signal remains; damage the brain and consciousness persists elsewhere.
Schrödinger genuinely wrestled with consciousness in 'What is Life?' (1944) and 'Mind and Matter' (1958). Deeply influenced by Hindu Vedanta, he wrote that 'consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown' — meaning one universal consciousness, not billions of private ones. His quantum work showed that observation affects physical reality, making the observer's mind scientifically non-trivial. This quote directly echoes his Vedantic belief in unified, fundamental awareness.
Schrödinger worked during quantum mechanics' revolutionary emergence in the 1920s–1950s, when the observer's role in collapsing wave functions made consciousness scientifically unavoidable. Classical materialism — the brain-as-machine view — dominated Western science, yet Eastern philosophy was gaining Western intellectual traction. Against Cold War-era scientific reductionism, thinkers like Schrödinger pushed back, arguing physics itself demanded rethinking mind's relationship to matter at the universe's deepest level.
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