For that matter, it is surprising how many historiologists have appropriated explanations of temporality foreign to their interpretive scheme, without feeling the need to clarify (from their theory) how it is that representation of the world in general and the historical world in particular is configured.

We note that the clarification carried out above is a condition for the subsequent development of ideas and not simply one more step that we can happily do without. This is one of the prerequisites for historiological discourse and cannot be discarded simply by labeling it as “psychological” or “phenomenological” (that is to say, Byzantine). Placing ourselves in opposition to those prepredicates from which designations such as the aforementioned derive, we maintain, with even greater audacity, that the category “landscape” is applicable not only to historiology but also to any vision of the world, since it allows us to emphasize the look of the one who observes the world. It is, then, a concept necessary for science in general. (29)

(29) So indispensable is the concept of “landscape” that it appears as something obvious in the writings of contemporary physicists. Erwin Schrödinger, an eminent representative of this field, says:

What is matter? How are we to picture matter in our mind?

The first form of the question is ludicrous. (How should we say what matter is—or, if it comes to that, what electricity is—both being phenomena given to us once only?) The second form already betrays the whole change of attitude: matter is an image in our mind—mind is thus prior to matter (notwithstanding the strange empirical dependence of my mental processes on the physical data of a certain portion of matter, viz. my brain).

During the second half of the nineteenth century matter seemed to be the permanent thing to which we could cling. There was a piece of matter that had never been created (as far as the physicist knew) and could never be destroyed! You could hold on to it and feel that it would not dwindle away under your fingers.

Moreover this matter, the physicist asserted, was with regard to its demeanor, its motion, subject to rigid laws—every bit of it was. It moved according to the forces which neighboring parts of matter, according to their relative situations, exerted on it. You could foretell the behavior, it was rigidly determined in all the future by the initial conditions.

This was all quite pleasing, anyhow in physical science, insofar as external inanimate matter comes into play. When applied to the matter that constitutes our own body or the bodies of our friends, or even that of our cat or our dog, a well-known difficulty arises with regard to the apparent freedom of living beings to move their limbs at their own will. We shall enter on this question later.… At the moment I wish to try and explain the radical change in our ideas about matter that has taken place in the course of the last half-century. It came about gradually, inadvertently, without anybody aiming at such a change. We believed we moved still within the old ‘materialistic’ frame of ideas, when it turned out that we had left it.” Nature and the Greeks and Science and Humanism, E. Schrödinger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 115–116).

in: Historiological Discussions, Silo

Chapter 3: History and Temporality, 3.2 Horizon and Temporal Landscape

Erwin Schrödinger (1887 - 1961)

He was born and died in Vienna. He was an Austrian theoretical physicist who contributed to the wave theory of matter and other fundamentals of quantum mechanics. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 with British physicist P.A.M. Dirac.

Schrödinger entered the University of Vienna in 1906 and graduated in 1910, after which he accepted a research position at the university's Second Physics Institute. He did his military service in World War I and in 1921 moved to the University of Zurich, where he remained for six years. There, in 1926, at the age of 39, a remarkably late age for the original work of theoretical physicists, he wrote the papers that laid the foundations of quantum wave mechanics. In it, he described his partial differential equation, which is the basic equation of quantum mechanics and has the same relationship to atomic mechanics as Newton's equations of motion have to planetary astronomy. Taking up a suggestion made by Louis de Broglie in 1924, according to which matter particles have a dual nature and behave like waves in some situations, Schrödinger put forward a theory that describes the behaviour of such a system with the help of a wave equation that is now known as the Schrödinger equation. The solutions of the Schrödinger equation, unlike those of the Newton equations, are wave functions that can only be associated with the probable occurrence of physical events. The definite and easily imaginable sequence of events as in Newton's planetary orbits is replaced in quantum mechanics by the more abstract concept of probability.

This aspect of quantum theory angered Schrödinger and other physicists so much that they spent much of their lives formulating philosophical objections to the commonly accepted interpretation of the theory that he himself had worked so hard to develop. His most famous objection was the 1935 thought experiment that later became known as Schrödinger's cat. A cat is locked in a steel box with a small amount of a radioactive substance in such a way that after an hour there is an equal probability that an atom will or will not decay. If the atom decays, a device will explode a vial of toxic gas, killing the cat. Until the box is opened and the atom's wave function collapses, however, the atom's wave function is in a superposition of two states: decay and non-decay. Thus, the cat is in a superposition of two states: alive and dead. Schrödinger found this result ‘rather ridiculous’, and when and how the fate of the cat is determined has been the subject of much discussion among physicists.

In 1927, Schrödinger accepted an invitation to succeed Max Planck, the inventor of the quantum hypothesis, at the University of Berlin, joining a very distinguished faculty that included Albert Einstein. He remained at the university until 1933, when he decided he could no longer live in a country where the persecution of Jews had become national policy. He then embarked on a seven-year odyssey that took him to Austria, Great Britain, Belgium, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome and finally, in 1940, to the Institute for Advanced Study in Dublin, which had been founded under the influence of Prime Minister Eamon de Valera, who had been a mathematician before becoming a politician. Schrödinger remained in Ireland for the next 15 years, conducting research in both physics and the philosophy and history of science. During this time, he wrote What is Life? (1944), an attempt to show how quantum physics could be used to explain the stability of genetic structure. Although much of what Schrödinger said in this book has been modified and extended by later advances in molecular biology, his book remains one of the most useful and illuminating introductions to the subject. Schrödinger retired in 1956 and returned to the University of Vienna as emeritus professor.

Of all the physicists of his generation, Schrödinger was distinguished by his extraordinary intellectual versatility. He was at home in the philosophy and literature of all Western languages, and his popular science writings in English, which he had learned as a child, are among the best of their kind. His study of ancient Greek science and philosophy, summarised in Nature and the Greeks (1954), earned him both admiration for the Greek invention of the scientific worldview and scepticism about the importance of science as a unique tool for unlocking the ultimate secrets of human existence. Schrödinger's own metaphysical vision, as expressed in his last book, My World View (1961), was closely related to Vedanta mysticism.

Thanks to his extraordinary talent, Schrödinger was able to make important contributions to almost all branches of science and philosophy during his lifetime – an almost unique achievement at a time when the trend in these disciplines was towards increasing technical specialisation.

Topics

Wave mechanics: Schrödinger developed wave mechanics, a central theory of quantum mechanics, and formulated the Schrödinger equation, which is named after him.

• Quantum mechanical states and superpositions: He examined the nature of quantum mechanical states and is known for the thought experiment ‘Schrödinger's cat’, which illustrates the superposition of states.

• Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics: Schrödinger conducted research into the fundamentals of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, which is reflected in his analysis of probability processes in physical systems.

• Biophysics and genetics: In his book What is Life? (1944), he posed fundamental questions about the role of physics in understanding genetics and life processes, which influenced molecular biology.

• Philosophical aspects of science: Schrödinger reflected on the philosophical implications of physics, including questions about consciousness and reality.

Major works

• ‘Quantisation as Eigenvalue Problem’ (1926): A series of articles in which Schrödinger introduced wave mechanics and the Schrödinger equation – the cornerstones of quantum mechanics.

• ‘What is Life?’ (1944): a seminal book that raises questions about the molecular basis of life and genetic information. This work inspired many developments in molecular biology.

• ‘The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics’ (1935): Article in which Schrödinger introduces the famous thought experiment ‘Schrödinger's cat’ to illustrate the problem of quantum superposition.

• ‘Nature and the Greeks’ (1954): A philosophical work that deals with the influence of ancient Greek thought on modern science.

• ‘My World View’ (1961): Schrödinger's autobiographical and philosophical reflection on consciousness, reality and the unity of life.

Influence

Erwin Schrödinger had a significant influence on modern physics, particularly through his development of wave mechanics and the Schrödinger equation, which remains a cornerstone of quantum mechanics to this day. His thought experiment ‘Schrödinger's cat’ remains a central image for explaining the characteristics of superposition and measurement in quantum mechanics. With his book What is Life?, he influenced the emerging field of molecular biology and inspired researchers such as Watson and Crick in their discovery of the structure of DNA. Schrödinger's interdisciplinary approaches and philosophical considerations continue to have an impact on physics, biology and the philosophy of science to this day.