Do you think the Schrödinger equation from quantum mechanics is a true description of reality?
NEWS | 27 February 2026
QM represents the effort of the human mind to describe phenomena that couldn't be described with what was considered as natural laws - the reality - in a deterministic frame. Take for example the emission spectrum of an atom. If you make an approach considering that different outcomes are possible, you look for an instrument and interpretation of the outcome that are essentially non-deterministic. The way to do that is ascribing a non-deterministic character to that part of the 'reality' which is matter. From this first axiom arises the question: How can matter be described with mathematical instruments in that manner? The answer is: describe matter as a wave, of which can be said like for 'The Red Pimpernel', is it here? is it there? or is it everywhere? There are at once many possible outcomes, and we know that one of them will occur now we conduct our experiment, but we don't know beforehand which one, where and when. That makes the inquiry manageable asking: what is the probability of every possible outcome? To achieve those outcomes, a mathematical instrument has to be devised in which every variable needs to be assigned a very definite physical meaning. That's a logical requirement of the method that we use in Physics and is called 'scientific'. With the aid of (theoretical) axioms and (practical) constrains like boundary conditions and the like, we arrive at outcomes that can be tested by experiments. That is not done in a couple of minutes, but requires a long time, a huge number of smart minds working on it, experiencing failures and successes and the use of material means - machines, devices - to put that all into effect. The Schrödinger equation is the key element in the approach in which all these deep insights can be concentrated. The mathematical expression of it is extremely flexible and can be used depending on what we want to consider, just a theoretical exercise or search for its validity when describing nature, by comparing its outcomes with experimental results within the limits of the experimental uncertainty inherent to any measurement. In this last respect, the validation of the outcomes of the Schrödinger equation follows the same path as those obtained in Classical Physics. The essential difference between both is that because of the statistical nature in the description of nature used by QM, the number of experiments that needs to be conducted in order to achieve an equivalent certainty of the QM outcomes must be greater and the set-up of the experiment being much more complex. Because of the statistical nature of the method, you need to work with large ensembles of objects, and the conclusion will be applied to 'objects' in general - not 'this' object! - or 'that percentage of objects' to state a specific behavior of the objects involved. And that is the essential difference between both approaches. The 'quantitative' certitude achieved in QM may be larger, the 'qualitative' is less.
Author: Joseph Howlett.
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