Schrödinger’s Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics

This text provides a comprehensive account of Erwin Schrodinger's successive interpretations of quantum mechanics, culminating in their final synthesis in the 1950s. It should be of interest to scientists, historians and philosophers who are involved in the foundational problems of modern physics. The book shows that the widespread view, according to which Schrodinger was "conservative" in his approach to quantum mechanics, is ill-founded. A rational reconstruction of Schrodinger's innovative interpretation of the quantum theory in the 1950's is undertaken. His apparently conflicting attitudes towards realism (which combine Mach's positivism and realism of theoretical entities) are reconciled in the framework of S. Blackburn's "quasi-realism". Schrodinger's rejection of corpuscles, and his adoption of wave-like entities instead, is shown to be a by-product of his phenomenalist conceptions of material bodies and of his quasi-realist attitude towards theoretical entities. In addition, his views on the measurement problem are compared with current no-collapse interpretations (especially Everett's and Van Fraassen's).Finally, Schrodinger's and Bohr's positions are systematically contrasted. The difference between Bohr's combination of holistic and dualistic analysis of the measurement process (contextual phenomena combined with classical-quantum cut), and Schrodinger's parallelist conception (experimental events - wave function evolution) is emphasized.