The Philosophy of Life in Erwin Schrödinger's Poetry, 1918-1950

The death and destruction wrought by the World Wars and the Interwar era heightened a collective desire among twentieth-century Europeans to find meaning in their fragile lives and to establish the boundaries distinguishing living organisms, especially humans, from their inanimate counterparts. As a theoretical pioneer in the science of life, molecular biology, the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger indelibly shaped the discourse on life and the methodologies of generations of scientists. However, scholars have overwhelmingly emphasized the mechanistic tendencies in Schrödinger's philosophy of life. In my thesis, I propose that Schrödinger's often-overlooked poetry provides a glimpse into the synthesis of mechanism and organicism in his philosophy. This synthesis influenced Schrödinger's ideas about the co-existence of determinism and free will in life, the necessity of love and passion for the sciences, and the usefulness of interdisciplinary collaboration and public engagement for the study of life. With the aid of Schrödinger, the logic and methodologies of both mechanism and organicism have had a long-lasting influence on the discourse on life.