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 picture, is that our bodies are in the picture.
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"The scientific method is a powerful tool, but it is not the only way to gain knowledge."
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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.
Philosophical reflection on consciousness and the objective world.
Date: Mid 20th century
GeneralFound in 1 providers: gemini
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We are not truly part of the physical universe that science describes and measures. Our consciousness exists outside the material picture — we observe reality rather than inhabit it. Our sense of being embedded in the world is an illusion created because our bodies appear in that physical picture, but our experiencing self remains fundamentally separate from the matter-and-energy world science maps.
Schrödinger, who formulated wave mechanics and the famous cat thought experiment, spent his career probing the boundary between observer and observed. His work in quantum mechanics forced confrontation with the measurement problem — how observation collapses wave functions — leading him naturally to philosophical questions about consciousness. His book 'What is Life?' and essays on mind reveal a lifelong conviction that consciousness lies outside physics entirely.
Writing in the mid-20th century, Schrödinger witnessed quantum mechanics demolish classical determinism, revealing an observer-dependent reality that unsettled scientific materialism. The Copenhagen interpretation made the observer central to physics for the first time. Simultaneously, logical positivism dominated philosophy, reducing mind to brain. Schrödinger pushed back, drawing on Vedantic philosophy to argue consciousness could never be fully captured by the scientific world-picture it paradoxically creates.
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