Abstract
IT has become the orthodox view of physicists to-day, that the momentary state of a physical system does not determine its movement or development or behaviour, to follow; Nature is supposed to be such that a knowledge of state, sufficiently accurate for sharp prediction of the future, is not only unobtainable but also unthinkable. All that can be predicted refers to a large number of identical experiments, and consists in a definite statistics among all the possible developments to follow. The relative margin of indeterminacy (the ‘spread’ of the statistics) is large for a small system, for example, for an atom; but for large systems the margin is usually, though not necessarily, small, which makes it possible to account for the apparent determinacy of inanimate Nature.
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Schrödinger, E. Indeterminism and Free Will. Nature 138, 13–14 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138013a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138013a0