Einstein, Schrödinger, and the Cost of Closing Our Minds
Einstein, Schrödinger, and the Cost of Closing Our Minds
The whole reason Einstein was able to have his miracle year of 1905 was his desire to uncover meaning at a deep level. He was not a “shut up and calculate” thinker. His breakthroughs grew out of curiosity, imagination, and a refusal to accept shallow explanations. That same mindset later put him at odds with the Copenhagen School, which discouraged deeper questions about what was really happening at the quantum level.
In 1905—Einstein’s “miracle year”—he published four papers that permanently transformed physics. Two of these helped launch quantum theory itself. His paper on the photoelectric effect introduced the idea that light comes in discrete packets: quanta. His work on Brownian motion confirmed the existence of atoms, grounding microscopic physics in measurable reality. These were foundational developments. Without Einstein’s curiosity and refusal to accept vague explanations, quantum physics might not have taken the shape it did.
Yet within twenty years, Einstein and Schrödinger found themselves in deep conflict with the emerging Copenhagen School. Everyone agreed that quantum mechanics worked. The debate was about what the theory meant.
Why Interpretation Matters
Quantum mechanics made extraordinarily successful predictions, but it wasn’t clear what the mathematics said about the world. As Adam Becker states in What Is Real?:
“Quantum physics needs an interpretation because it’s not immediately clear what the theory is saying about the world. The mathematics of quantum physics is unfamiliar and abstruse, and the connection between that mathematics and the world we live in is hard to see.”
This becomes obvious when you compare it with classical physics. Newtonian physics describes a simple world of objects in motion—three coordinates, time, and a few forces. No one runs around “interpreting” Newton.
Quantum physics is different. It uses wave functions—infinitely many numbers—to describe even a single electron. Becker notes:
“Apparently, quantum physics needs an infinity of numbers… just to describe the location of a single electron.”
And when you measure that electron, the wave function suddenly collapses in a way that breaks the normal rules of the theory:
“The Schrödinger equation holds all the time, except when you make a measurement.”
This is the measurement problem—a central conceptual puzzle. Einstein and Schrödinger saw this not as a reason to panic, but as a reason to keep asking deeper questions.
The Philosophical Roots of the Copenhagen Mindset
To understand why the Copenhagen School resisted deeper inquiry, it helps to look at the assumptions behind their approach. The Copenhagen stance didn’t come out of nowhere. It rested on two major philosophical sources:
1. Mach’s Humean Empiricism
Ernst Mach was deeply influenced by David Hume, who denied that causation can be known and claimed that all meaningful knowledge must come from immediate sense experience. Under this view:
If you can’t directly observe it, you shouldn’t talk about it.
Questions about what lies behind appearances are meaningless.
Interpretation is minimized; sense data is treated as sufficient.
Your notes express it clearly:
Mach rejects causation and asserts that the limits of sense experience are the limits of knowledge.
The irony is that Mach and the movements derived from him—Logical Positivism and the Copenhagen School—constantly used concepts like probability, position, or momentum, all of which require abstract reasoning. As your notes put it:
Mach and those influenced by him “are guilty of hypocrisy every time they attempt to communicate concepts.”
2. Bohr’s Kantian Framework
Bohr added a second layer, shaped by Immanuel Kant’s distinction between:
the phenomenal world (what we can observe), and
the noumenal world (the “thing-in-itself,” which is unknowable).
This led Bohr to say:
We must describe experiments using classical concepts,
but we cannot know what is happening behind those descriptions.
Your notes highlight the contradiction:
If the underlying reality is unknowable, on what basis can we assert that it exists or that it causes what is observed?
This combination—Humean skepticism + Kantian limits—produced an attitude that discouraged deeper questions. The Copenhagen School treated their philosophical assumptions as if they were pure empirical modesty, even though they rested on untested claims about what humans can know.
Einstein saw the inconsistencies immediately. When Heisenberg insisted that physics must restrict itself to what is observed, Einstein replied:
“It is the theory which decides what we can observe.”
In other words: observation is never raw; it is always theory-laden.
Einstein and Schrödinger: Keep Asking Questions
Einstein’s EPR paper (1935) showed that if the Copenhagen interpretation were correct, it implied “spooky action at a distance,” contradicting special relativity. Schrödinger responded with his cat thought experiment, showing the absurdity of saying a cat is both alive and dead until observed.
Neither Einstein nor Schrödinger rejected quantum mechanics. They rejected the idea that the theory was complete. They believed uncertainty should prompt further inquiry, not silence it.
But the Copenhagen School insisted that deeper questions were meaningless. Their famous attitude was:
Stop asking. Just calculate.
This is what Einstein found most troubling—not disagreement, but the loss of curiosity.
Curiosity vs. Closure: A Human Issue
This debate in physics mirrors the way people respond to uncertainty in everyday life. When things feel complex or confusing:
Some people become curious, open, reflective.
Others close down, cling to certainty, and declare the discussion over.
Einstein modeled a teachable posture:
He questioned assumptions.
He stayed open even when others insisted everything was settled.
He refused to hide behind slogans.
He took puzzles seriously instead of ignoring them.
This mindset is essential in science—but also in therapy, personal growth, and relationships. Curiosity allows us to examine our beliefs, look beneath the surface, and move toward deeper understanding. Premature certainty shuts that down.
The Takeaway
The conflict between Einstein, Schrödinger, and the Copenhagen School is ultimately about intellectual humility. It’s a reminder that:
Understanding requires curiosity.
Difficult questions shouldn’t be dismissed.
Philosophical assumptions must be examined, not hidden.
Progress comes from exploring the unknown, not denying it.
Einstein’s miracle year wasn’t an accident. It was the fruit of a posture—a refusal to “shut up and calculate,” and a commitment to keep seeking what is true.
