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.
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"The world is not a machine, but a living organism."
"Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown."
"Our body is not a thing, but a process."
"The most important thing for a scientist is to be open to new ideas and to be willing to question established beliefs."
"I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it."
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, reflecting his monist views, but exact wording and source hard to pinpoint.
Date: Unknown
GeneralFound in 1 providers: grok
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The belief that your mind exists independently from the physical universe is an illusion we've constructed through imprecise language and cognitive habits. Consciousness isn't a ghost floating above matter — it's something embedded in the physical world. Our intuition that mind and body are separate things is a trick of how we describe experience, not a reflection of how reality actually works.
Schrödinger spent his career dissolving sharp boundaries — his wave equation replaced particle certainty with probabilistic fields. He wrote 'What is Life?' exploring how physics underlies biology and consciousness. He was deeply influenced by Vedantic philosophy, which similarly rejects subject-object dualism. For Schrödinger, physics and mind were not separate domains but facets of one unified reality he spent his life trying to articulate.
Mid-20th century quantum mechanics had shattered classical determinism, forcing physicists to confront the role of the observer in measurement. Meanwhile, philosophy of mind was debating Cartesian dualism versus materialism. Schrödinger wrote during an era when scientists increasingly encroached on questions previously owned by philosophy and theology, and his generation pioneered treating consciousness as a legitimate scientific problem rather than a metaphysical given.
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