Geburtstag: 12. August 1887
Todesdatum: 5. Januar 1961
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger war ein österreichischer Physiker und Wissenschaftstheoretiker.
Schrödinger gilt als einer der Begründer der Quantenmechanik und erhielt für die Entdeckung neuer produktiver Formen der Atomtheorie gemeinsam mit Paul Dirac 1933 den Nobelpreis für Physik.
— Erwin Schrödinger
Brief an Franz Theodor Csokor, datiert Alpbach, 17. September 1960, zitiert in: Mein Leben, meine Weltansicht, mit einem Vorw. von Auguste Dick. - [Lizenzausg. ] - Zürich : Diogenes, 1989. (Diogenes Taschenbuch ; 21783) ISBN 3-257-21783-8 - innere Umschlagseite ohne Seitennummer
— Erwin Schrödinger
„Quantisierung als Eigenwertproblem (Erste Mitteilung)“, Annalen der Physik 79 (1926), s. 361-376, § 3, S. 372 thp. uni-koeln. de
— Erwin Schrödinger
Geist und Materie, Zsolnay Verlag, Wien 1986, 4. Kap., S. 90, ISBN 3-552-03810-8
— Erwin Schrödinger
Was ist ein Naturgesetz? Antrittsrede an der Universität Zürich am 9. Dezember 1922. In: Was ist ein Naturgesetz? Beiträge zum naturwissenschaftlichen Weltbild. Oldenbourg (Scientia nova) München 1997. S. 9-85. S. 85 books. google.
— Erwin Schrödinger
Geist und Materie, Zsolnay Verlag, Wien 1986, 4. Kap., S. 77, ISBN 3-552-03810-8
— Erwin Schrödinger
Context: 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
Context: I am born into an environment — I know not whence I came nor whither I go nor who I am. This is my situation as yours, every single one of you. The fact that everyone always was in this same situation, and always will be, tells me nothing. Our burning question as to the whence and whither — all we can ourselves observe about it is the present environment. That is why we are eager to find out about it as much as we can. That is science, learning, knowledge; it is the true source of every spiritual endeavour of man. We try to find out as much as we can about the spatial and temporal surroundings of the place in which we find ourselves put by birth…
— Erwin Schrödinger
Context: 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
Context: 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.
As quoted in The Observer (11 January 1931); also in Psychic Research (1931), Vol. 25, p. 91
— Erwin Schrödinger
Context: In itself, the insight is not new. The earliest records, to my knowledge, date back some 2500 years or more... the recognition ATMAN = 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 assimilate in their minds this grandest of all thoughts.
Again, the mystics of many centuries, independently, yet in perfect harmony with each other (somewhat like the particles in an ideal gas) have described, each of them, the unique experience of his or her life in terms that can be condensed in the phrase: DEUS FACTUS SUM (I have become God).
To Western ideology, the thought has remained a stranger... in spite of those true lovers who, as they look into each other's eyes, become aware that their thought and their joy are numerically one, not merely similar or identical...
"The I That Is God" as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber
— Erwin Schrödinger
Context: 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?
"Seek for the Road" (1925)
— Erwin Schrödinger
Context: I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.
— Erwin Schrödinger
Context: 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...
"The Mystic Vision" as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber
— Erwin Schrödinger
Context: In physics we have dealt hitherto only with periodic crystals. To a humble physicist's mind, these are very interesting and complicated objects; they constitute one of the most fascinating and complex material structures by which inanimate nature puzzles his wits. Yet, compared with the aperiodic crystal, they are rather plain and dull. The difference in structure is of the same kind as that between an ordinary wallpaper in which the same pattern is repeated again and again in regular periodicity and a masterpiece of embroidery, say a Raphael tapestry, which shows no dull repetition, but an elaborate, coherent, meaningful design traced by the great master.
— Erwin Schrödinger
Context: 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.
"The Fundamental Idea of Wave Mechanics", Nobel lecture, (12 December 1933)
