Erwin Schrodinger — "The result of the experiment is that the cat is both dead and alive, like the fa…"
The result of the experiment is that the cat is both dead and alive, like the famous case of the young woman who was both a virgin and a mother.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Erwin Schrodinger
"We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the pic…"
"The world is a song, and we are the singers."
"The best way to escape from the problem is to solve it."
"We are thus faced with the following dilemma: either the organism is a purely statistical system, and then it is certainly not a quantum mechanical system, or it is a quantum mechanical system, and th…"
"The future is uncertain, but that is precisely what makes it interesting."
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.
Details
Letter to Albert Einstein, discussing the cat paradox. The second part is a less common, more provocative addition.
Date: July 1935
ShockingVerification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: grok
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
A quantum system exists in multiple states simultaneously until measured or observed. Just as a cat sealed in a box with a radioactive trigger is theoretically both alive and dead until you open the box, reality at the quantum level defies classical either/or logic. Observation itself collapses possibility into a single definite outcome, challenging our intuitive understanding of existence.
Relevance to Erwin Schrodinger
Schrödinger developed wave mechanics, mathematically describing particles as probability waves rather than definite objects. His famous 1935 cat thought experiment was designed to expose what he saw as absurdity in Copenhagen quantum interpretation. He used the paradox ironically, not to celebrate superposition but to criticize Bohr's framework — showing its logic, extended to everyday scale, produces ridiculous contradictions.
The era
The 1930s saw fierce debate among physicists over quantum mechanics' philosophical implications. The Copenhagen interpretation, championed by Bohr and Heisenberg, dominated but troubled many including Einstein and Schrödinger. Europe was politically fracturing — Schrödinger fled Nazi Germany in 1933 — while simultaneously physics was dismantling centuries of deterministic Newtonian certainty, forcing scientists to reckon with fundamental limits of knowledge.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].