The Notion of Consciousness in Schrödinger’s Philosophy of Nature

Abstract

Even in light of Thomas S. Kuhn’s critique, it is still gene rally assumed today that the historical development of science is guided by paradigms, which first and foremost define its issues and methods. Even if this view is not necessarily closer to the truth than others, it has become a paradigm of the diachronic understanding of science, under which the respective paradigm of a discipline is subsumed. But whereas Kuhn and later on I. Lakatos, L. Laudan, and even P. Feyerabend put emphasis on the limitations of the preliminary decisions constituting a science, one must be aware of the fact that these are embedded in a wide network of values and fundamental views of a time, which, on the one hand, is the presupposition for changes within a specific science on the basis of argumentation, whereas, on the other hand, this network is influenced by new scientific findings. This general framework, Le., the prescientific world view, changes much slower than paradigms. This can be seen in the telological view on which each explanation and interpretation of nature, from Aristotles to the Middle Ages has been based, and later in the causal view, expressed in the strictest sense by the Laplacean Demon, a view, which the evolutionistic view seems to have suppressed today.