Unpublished Schrödinger Manuscript Reveals His Challenge to Quantum Randomness Claims

Insider Brief

• A new study analyzes an unpublished Schrödinger manuscript that challenged claims that hidden information could not explain apparently random quantum outcomes.
• Schrödinger’s model reproduced the expected results of polarization measurements, serving as a mathematical counterexample rather than a complete theory of quantum physics.
• The manuscript illustrates the complexity of Schrödinger’s views, showing that he could construct a deterministic model while favoring fundamental randomness in nature.
• Image: Photo by Robert Stump on Unsplash

PRESS RELEASE — An unpublished manuscript by Erwin Schrödinger shows how apparently random quantum results could follow definite rules, challenging an argument that such explanations were impossible.

The handwritten draft, analyzed in a new historical study posted on arXiv, adds a missing contribution to a wartime dispute over whether quantum mechanics had ended the scientific case for a predictable universe. It also complicates a familiar picture of Schrödinger as a defender of determinism, the idea that events are fixed by preceding conditions.

According to physicist Flavio Del Santo, Schrödinger constructed his model to expose a weakness in an argument, rather than to establish how nature actually works. His draft combined a mathematical counterexample with a defense of the possibility that randomness is fundamental.