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Erwin Schrödinger

62 quotes

“This life of yours which you are living is not merely apiece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi , this is you. Or, again, in such words as "I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, I am this entire world.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in Moore, Walter J., Schrödinger: Life and Thought Cambridge University Press (1992). pp.170-73. quoted from Malhotra, R., & Infinity Foundation (Princeton, N.J.). (2018). Being different: An Indian challenge to western…
“'If finally we look back at that idea of [Ernst] Mach [1838-1916], we shall realize that it comes as near to the orthodox dogma of the Upanishads as it could possibly do without stating it expressis verbis . The external world and consciousness are one and the same thing.'”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Schrödinger, Erwin. My View of the World. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1964. quoted from Malhotra, R., & Infinity Foundation (Princeton, N.J.). (2018). Being different: An Indian challenge to western universali…
“Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents — their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Writings of July 1918, quoted in A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (1994) by Walter Moore
“No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The "I" is chained to ancestry by many factors … This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Writings of July 1918, quoted in A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (1994) by Walter Moore
“The stages of human development are to strive for: (1) Besitz [Possession] (2) Wissen [Knowledge] (3) Können [Ability] (4) Sein [Being]”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Writings of August 1918, quoted in A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (1994) by Walter Moore
“For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours? What was the necessary condition for making the thing conceived this time into you, just you and not someone else?”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Seek for the Road" (1925)
“\frac{\partial \psi}{\partial t} = -\frac{2 \pi i}{h} E \psi”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The "Schrödinger equation", equation (3') in "Quantisierung als Eigenwertproblem, Vierte Mitteilung", Annalen der Physik (1926)
“Although I think that life may be the result of an accident, I do not think that of consciousness. Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Observer (11 January 1931); also in Psychic Research (1931), Vol. 25, p. 91
“If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the conditions of the "Schrödinger's cat" thought-experiment, as presented in The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics (1935), translated by John D. Trimmer
“God knows I am no friend of probability theory, I have hated it from the first moment when our dear friend Max Born gave it birth. For it could be seen how easy and simple it made everything, in principle, everything ironed and the true problems concealed. Everybody must jump on the bandwagon [Ausweg]. And actually not a year passed before it became an official credo, and it still is.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Albert Einstein (13 June 1946), as quoted by Walter Moore in Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989)
“we never experiment with just one electron or atom or (small) molecule. In thought-experiments we sometimes assume that we do.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Are There Quantum Jumps? Part II (1952)
“I insist upon the view that 'all is waves'.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to John Lighton Synge (9 November 1959), as quoted by Walter Moore in Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989)
“The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the way.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Eye of Shiva: Eastern Mysticism and Science (1981) by Amaury de Riencourt
“Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind...”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Oneness of Mind", as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber
“Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems a blunt tautology — we are quite unable to imagine the contrary...”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Oneness of Mind", as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber
“The plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real. Vedantic philosophy... has sought to clarify it by a number of analogies, one of the most attractive being the many-faceted crystal which, while showing hundreds of little pictures of what is in reality a single existent object, does not really multiply that object...”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Mystic Vision" as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber
“Our mind, by virtue of a certain finite, limited capability, is by no means capable of putting a question to Nature that permits a continuous series of answers. The observations, the individual results of measurements, are the answers of Nature to our discontinuous questioning.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989) by Walter Moore
“Some blood transfusion from the East to the West is a must to save Western science from spiritual anaemia.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: source: Long Walk to Enlightenment, Dr Thillayvel Naidoo. Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.
“The laws of physics and chemistry are statistical throughout.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is these chromosomes … that contain in some kind of code-script the entire pattern of the individual's future development and of its functioning in the mature state. Every complete set of chromosomes contains the full code...”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have just introduced the term gene for the hypothetical material carrier of a definite hereditary feature...”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In Darwin's theory, you just have to substitute 'mutations' for his 'slight accidental variations' (just as quantum theory substitutes 'quantum jump' for 'continuous transfer of energy'). In all other respects little change was necessary in Darwin's theory...”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How would we express in terms of the statistical theory the marvelous faculty of a living organism, by which it delays the decay into thermodynamical equilibrium (death)?... the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness... really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must therefore not be discouraged by the difficulty of interpreting life by the ordinary laws of physics. For that is just what is to be expected from the knowledge we have gained of the structure of living matter. We must also be prepared to find a new type of physical law prevailing in it. Or are we to term it a non-physical, not to say a super-physical, law?”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only possible alternative is simply to keep to immediate experience that 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, produced by a deception (the Indian MAJA); the same illusion is produced in a gallery of mirrors, and in the same way Gaurisankar and Mt Everest turned out to be the same peak seen from different valleys.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From the early great Upanishads, the recognition ATHMAN = BRAHMAN (the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self) was in Indian thought considered, far from being blasphemous, to represent the quintessence of deepest insight into the happenings of the world. The striving of all the scholars of Vedanta was, after having learnt to pronounce with their lips, really to assimilate in their minds this grandest of all thoughts.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted from Malhotra, R., & Infinity Foundation (Princeton, N.J.). (2018). Being different: An Indian challenge to western universalism.
“Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular […] The only possible alternative is simply to keep to the immediate experience that 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, produced by a deception (the Indian MAYA); the same illusion is produced in a gallery of mirrors, and in the same way Gaurisankar and Mt Everest turned out to be the same peak seen from different valleys.’”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in : Bhaskar Kamble, The Imperishable Seed: How Hindu Mathematics Changed the World and why this History was Erased, Garuda Prakashan Private Limited, 2022 ISBN 9798885750189
“Not one word is said here of acausality, wave mechanics, indeterminacy relations, complementarity, … etc. Why doesn’t he talk about what he knows instead of trespassing on the professional philosopher’s preserves? Ne sutor supra crepidam. On this I can cheerfully justify myself: because I do not think that these things have as much connection as is currently supposed with a philosophical view of the world.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The unphilosophical and philosophical attitudes can be very sharply distinguished (with scarcely any intermediate forms) by the fact that the first accepts everything that happens as regards its general form, and finds occasion for surprise only in that special content by which something that happens here today differs from what happened there yesterday; whereas for the second, it is precisely the common features of all experience, such as characterise everything we encounter, which are the primary and most profound occasion for astonishment.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The self is not so much linked to its ancestors, it is not so much the product, and merely the product, of all that, but rather, in the strictest sense of the word, the same thing as all that: the strict, direct continuation of it, just as the self aged fifty is the continuation of the self aged forty.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I try to hold on the currently predominant view and derive the unity of my self, … I find myself with an impenetrable thicket of questions. … Why is it precisely at this intermediate level in the hierarchy of successively superimposed unities (cell, organ, human body, state)—why, I ask, it is precisely at the level of my body that unitary self-consciousness comes into the picture, whereas the cell and the organ do not as yet possess it and the state possesses it no longer?”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as "I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, I am this entire world.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction... The only solution to this conflict insofar as any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishad.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seems plain and self-evident, yet it needs to be said: the isolated knowledge obtained by a group of specialists in a narrow field has in itself no value whatsoever, but only in its synthesis with all the rest of knowledge and only inasmuch as it really contributes in this synthesis toward answering the demand, "Who are we?”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I consider it extremely doubtful whether the happiness of the human race has been enhanced by the technical and industrial developments that followed in the wake of rapidly progressing natural science.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You may ask — you are bound to ask me now: What, then, is in your opinion the value of natural science? I answer: Its scope, aim and value is the same as that of any other branch of human knowledge. Nay, none of them alone, only the union of all of them, has any scope or value at all, and that is simply enough described: it is to obey the command of the Delphic deity: gnothi seauton... get to know yourself!”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. Our bodies belong to it. Not only my own body, but those of my friends, also of my dog and cat and horse, and of all the other people and animals. And this is my only means of communicating with them.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, of why and how an old song can move us to tears.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The observing mind is not a physical system, it cannot interact with any physical system. And it might be better to reserve the term "subject" for the observing mind. … For the subject, if anything, is the thing that senses and thinks. Sensations and thoughts do not belong to the "world of energy.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In particular, and most importantly, this is the reason why the scientific worldview contains of itself no ethical values, no esthetical values, not a word about our own ultimate scope or destination, and no God, if you please. Whence came I and whither go I?”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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, for this barrier does not exist.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we were bees, ants, or Lacedaemonian warriors, to whom personal fear does not exist and cowardice is the most shameful thing in the world, warring would go on forever. But luckily we are only men — and cowards.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousnesses. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The material world has only been constructed at the price of taking the self, that is, mind, out of it, removing it; mind is not part of it...”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Matter and energy seem granular in structure, and so does "life", but not so mind.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nature has no reverence towards life. Nature treats life as though it were the most valueless thing in the world.... Nature does not act by purposes.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sensation of colour cannot be accounted for by the physicist's objective picture of light-waves.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But it is quite easy to express the solution in words, thus: the plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real. Vedantic philosophy, in which this is a fundamental dogma, has sought to clarify it by a number of analogies, one of the most attractive being the many-faceted crystal which, while showing hundreds of little pictures of what is in reality a single existent object, does not really multiply the object... 'You may suddenly come to see, in a flash, the profound rightness of the basic conviction of Vedanta: … knowledge, feeling and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sentient beings.'”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in 'The Mystic Vision' as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber, Shambala Publications, Boston. quoted from Malhotra, R., & Infinity Foundation (P…
“Conditions are admittedly such that we can always manage to make do in each concrete individual case without the two different aspects leading to different expectations as to the result of certain experiments. We cannot, however, manage to make do with such old, familiar, and seemingly indispensable terms as "real" or "only possible"; we are never in a position to say what really is or what really happens, but we can only say what will be observed in any concrete individual case. Will we have to be permanently satisfied with this...? On principle, yes. On principle, there is nothing new in the postulate that in the end exact science should aim at nothing more than the description of what can really be observed. The question is only whether from now on we shall have to refrain from tying description to a clear hypothesis about the real nature of the world. There are many who wish to pronounce such abdication even today. But I believe that this means making things a little too easy for oneself.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Fundamental Idea of Wave Mechanics", Nobel lecture, (12 December 1933)