Erwin Schrodinger — "What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variati…"
What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space.
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More from Erwin Schrodinger
"I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it."
"The world is built on a plan, a pattern, a structure that is mathematically beautiful."
"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."
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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
From 'Nature and the Greeks', a philosophical statement on the fundamental nature of reality.
Date: 1954
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Everything we perceive as solid matter and physical forces is not actually made of tiny independent things. Instead, what looks like objects and pushes and pulls are really patterns, ripples, and geometric distortions within space itself. The universe is not a collection of separate particles bouncing around in empty void; it is one continuous fabric, and what we call stuff is just how that fabric bends, vibrates, and arranges itself locally.
Relevance to Erwin Schrodinger
Schrodinger built wave mechanics in 1926, replacing the picture of electrons as tiny billiard balls with continuous wavefunctions spread through space. His famous equation describes matter as standing waves, not points. Philosophically inclined and steeped in Vedantic monism, he resisted the particle interpretation and believed reality was fundamentally unified. This quote captures his lifelong conviction that matter is a manifestation of underlying continuous structure, not discrete substance.
The era
In the 1920s and 1930s, physics was being rewritten. Einstein's general relativity (1915) had already recast gravity as curvature of spacetime, and quantum mechanics was dissolving the classical atom. Schrodinger worked amid Bohr, Heisenberg, and Born, debating whether reality was waves, particles, or probability. Europe between the wars was also a hotbed of philosophical reexamination, and physicists openly speculated about the metaphysical implications of their equations.
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