The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, because that barrier does not exist.
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.
"We are all part of the same cosmic dance."
"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 …"
"The world is not made of atoms, it is made of stories."
"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 human mind is a universe in itself."
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.
Found in 1 providers: grok
1 source checked
Reality isn't divided into two versions — one that objectively exists out there and one we perceive internally. We each encounter the world once, as a unified whole. The observer and the observed are inseparable; consciousness and matter aren't two distinct things bridged by perception. The division between self and world is a mental construct, not a feature of reality. There was never a wall to break down, because no wall ever existed.
Schrödinger developed wave mechanics, where quantum systems exist as superpositions until measured — making the observer inseparable from what's observed. His famous cat paradox dramatized this collapse of objectivity. He was deeply influenced by Vedantic philosophy, particularly the Upanishads' teaching that individual consciousness and universal reality are one. His book 'What is Life?' extended this into biology. This quote mirrors both his quantum physics insights and his lifelong conviction that mind and world cannot be cleanly separated.
The 1920s–1940s saw quantum mechanics overturn classical physics' assumption of an observer-independent reality. The Copenhagen interpretation placed measurement — and therefore the observer — at the center of determining physical outcomes. Simultaneously, Western intellectuals were engaging Eastern philosophy seriously. Amid two World Wars, the old Cartesian split between mind and matter felt increasingly untenable. Physics itself seemed to confirm what mystics had long claimed: subject and object were never truly distinct categories to begin with.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].
Your cart is empty
