The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists.
— What Is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches
Erwin Schrödinger was an Austrian theoretical physicist who developed fundamental results in quantum theory. He is best known for the Schrödinger equation, which provides a way to calculate the wave function of a system and how it changes over time. He coined the term "quantum entanglement" in 1935, and he shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Paul Dirac for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory.
He also wrote on statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, the physics of dielectrics, colour theory, electrodynamics, general relativity and cosmology, and made several attempts to build a unified field theory. In a short book on the nature of life, he approached the problems of genetics by looking at life from the point of view of physics. My View of the World is among his most quoted works in our library.
He also wrote on statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, the physics of dielectrics, colour theory, electrodynamics, general relativity and cosmology, and made several attempts to build a unified field theory. In a short book on the nature of life, he approached the problems of genetics by looking at life from the point of view of physics. My View of the World is among his most quoted works in our library.
Most quoted works
- What Is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches 4
- A Life of Erwin Schrödinger 3
- My View of the World 2
Our creed [atheism] is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferior, indeed abominable. There is that little difference. We adhere to ours in practice, you don't.
— A Life of Erwin Schrödinger
By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were.
— A Life of Erwin Schrödinger
— Science and Humanism, Physics In Our Time
We have inherited from our forefathers the keen longing for unified, all-embracing knowledge.
— What Is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches
Our [Western] science has cut itself off from an adequate understanding of the Subject of Cognizance, of the mind. This is precisely the point where our present way of thinking needs to be amended, perhaps by a bit of blood-transfusion from Eastern thought.
— What Is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches
Briefly summarising, we can express the proposed law thus: consciousness is bound up with learning in organic substance; organic competence is unconscious. Still more briefly, and put in a form which is admittedly rather obscure and open to misunderstanding: Becoming is conscious, being unconscious.
— My View of the World
When in the puppet-show of dreams we hold in hand the strings of quite a number of actors, controlling their actions and their speech, we are not aware of this being so. Only one of them is myself, the dreamer. In him I act and speak immediately, while I may be awaiting eagerly and anxiously what another one will reply
— What Is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches
Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.
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.