Erica

What kind of relation can there be between a wave, which spreads out, and a particle that remains compact, following a fixed, defined trajectory? Think of a beam of light from a laser: it seems to follow a neat trajectory, like a beam of particles. But it is made of light, which is a wave, an oscillation of the electromagnetic field. The precise line described by the trajectory of a ray of light is an approximation, concealing its dispersion and spread.

Schrödinger is captivated by the idea that the trajectories of elementary particles are also approximations of the behavior of an underlying wave.

Schrödinger, too, is a product of that lively early-twentieth-century Viennese philosophical and intellectual milieu: a friend of the philosopher Hans Reichenbach, he is fascinated by Asian thought, in particular Vedanta Hinduism, and passionate (as Einstein was) about the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, which interprets the world as “representation.” Unconstrained by conformism, having no fear of conventional opinion, of “what people will think,” he has no qualms about replacing a world of solid matter with a world of waves.