>>14210946It might be a bad translation, but it’s not far from what he actually thought.
I’m doubtful that this quote is properly attributed to Schrödinger. At best, it is a bad translation. For Schrödinger, the mind is not in the universe. On the contrary, the universe is in the mind. So, as stated, this quote does not quite fit with the views he held. He did, however, write that “the over-all number of minds is just one” in the following passage:
“I submit that both paradoxes will be solved (I do not pretend to solve them here and now) by assimilating into our Western build of science the Eastern doctrine of identity. Mind is by its very nature a singulare tantum. I should say: the over-all number of minds is just one. I venture to call it indestructible since it has a peculiar timetable, namely mind is always now. There is really no before and after for mind. There is only a now that includes memories and expectations. But I grant that our language is not adequate to express this, and I also grant, should anyone wish to state it, that I am now talking religion, not science.” —Schrödinger, What is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches, p. 134–135
Schrödinger held the view that there is just one consciousness. For example, he has written
We never in fact have any experience anywhere of a plurality of consciousness but always and everywhere only of consciousness in the singular. This is the one and only perfectly certain piece of knowledge.
—Schrödinger, Erwin. My View of the World. (Woodbridge, Connecticut: Ox Bow, 1983). p. 34.
and
The mystical teaching of the ‘identity’ of all minds with each other and with the supreme mind...is clinched by the empirical fact that consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular.
—Schrödinger, Erwin. What is Life & Mind and Matter. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967). p. 140.
