« Schroedinger Was An Outsider »

Deleuze detested schools of thought and tried to teach his students to « love their solitude », to reconcile them with the necessity of being an outsider and of treating their teachers as intercessors and not models. His aim was not communication and consensus, but to impart a conceptual matter that could be worked over in many different ways. He did not want « immediate reactions », where the ego asks questions and poses objections that would disappear if it had been patient enough to wait, but something deeper that came from his students’ solitude and goodness. He did not want merely intellectual reactions, but an alliance of intellect and emotion. He wanted to protect them from the impulse to imitate and to join, preferring a pedagogy of the outside.

Feyerabend declares his admiration for Schroedinger: « he was a good guy », that is to say that he was an outsider who would not shut up. He would not stay and keep silent in a situation where he was not in agreement, but either leave or speak out and give his opinion. He could not be prevented from acting on his opinions either. Feyerabend praises his insight and courage in denouncing the dangers of nuclear power in the early 1950s, warning against the danger to the whole world if industry got hold of it. Schroedinger was also a precursor in uniting physics and buddhism and declaring that there were many different types of science. He also worked hard to make science comprehensible to the ordinary person. Feyerabend piles up anecdotes and character traits to create an ethical and intellectual portrait of Schroedinger as more than just object of memory and of historical narrative, a field of singularities capable of moving and inspiring decades after his death. « What a person! », Feyerabend exclaims.

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