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arXiv:2610.20752

Schrödinger's unpublished hidden-variable model in the 1944-45 debate over the "Collapse of Determinism"

Flavio Del Santo

physics.hist-phquant-phSubmitted Oct 14, 2026• Announced Oct 16, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

In the mid-1940s, the question of whether quantum mechanics could be supplemented by deterministic hidden variables resurfaced in a debate in ^textit{Nature}. I show that Erwin Schrödinger drafted a hitherto unpublished response to this controversy. In it, Schrödinger provided an explicit hidden-variable model, thereby showing that such models could not be ruled out. I reconstruct the historical context of this forgotten manuscript and publish here the first transcription and analysis. Importantly, Schrödinger's proposal should be understood as a proof of principle rather than as evidence of his commitment to determinism.

Comments
5 pages + 1-page typescript o the unpublished manuscript by Schrödinger

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In the mid-1940s, the question of whether quantum mechanics could be supplemented by deterministic hidden variables resurfaced in a debate in ^textit{Nature}. I show that Erwin Schrödinger drafted a hitherto unpublished response to this controversy. In it, Schrödinger provided an explicit hidden-variable model, thereby showing that such models could not be ruled out. I reconstruct the historical context of this forgotten manuscript and publish here the first transcription and analysis. Importantly, Schrödinger's proposal should be understood as a proof of principle rather than as evidence of his commitment to determinism.
This preprint re-examines the widespread belief that “Einstein was wrong about quantum mechanics.” While Einstein is often portrayed as rejecting quantum theory due to his criticism of its probabilistic interpretation, this simplified narrative does not accurately reflect his actual position or the historical context. The paper organizes Einstein’s original arguments, clarifies common misunderstandings—such as the misattribution that he “advocated hidden variables”—and reviews the development of Bell’s inequalities and their experimental tests. These experiments ruled out simple local hidden-variable models but did not fully resolve Einstein’s deeper concern: the possible incompleteness of quantum mechanics as a physical theory. By revisiting historical documents and theoretical developments, this work argues that Einstein’s critique was not a fundamental mistake but has been misinterpreted over time. The goal is to provide a more accurate understanding of the Einstein–Bohr debates and the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics.
This paper argues that a European controversy over a 'mystical' hypothesis, one assigning the mind a role to play at the material level of reality, shaped much of the debate over the interpretation of the quantum equations. It traces back the controversy to the past two decades, beginning in the late 1920s—birth of quantum theory—and concluding with Erwin Schrodinger's lectures published as 'Mind and Matter'. Becoming aware of the issues at stake can help us understand the historical, philosophical and cultural background from which today's physics emerged.
In the debate whether ‘hidden variables’ could exist underneath quantum probabilities, the ‘no hidden-variables’ position is at present favored. In this article I attempt to provide a more equilibrated verdict, by pointing towards the heuristic and explanatory power of the hidden-variables hypothesis, in particular in its deterministic form. I argue that this hypothesis can answer three foundational questions, whereas the opposing thesis (‘no hidden variables’) remains entirely silent for them. These questions are: 1) How to interpret probabilistic correlation ? (a question considered by Kolmogorov “one of the most important problems in the philosophy of the natural sciences”, and first analysed by Reichenbach); 2) How to interpret the Central Limit Theorem ?; and 3) Are there degrees of freedom that could unify quantum field theories and general relativity, and if so, can we (at least qualitatively) specify them ? It appears that only the hidden-variables hypothesis can provide coherent answers to these problems; answers which can be mathematically justified in the deterministic case. This suggests that the hidden-variables hypothesis should be considered a legitimate candidate as a guiding, unifying principle in the foundations of physics.
Many theoretical predictions derived from quantum mechanics have been confirmed experimentally for the last 80 years.However, interpretative aspects have long been subject to debate.Among them, the question of the existence of hidden variables is still open.We review these questions, paying special attention to historical aspects, and argue that one may definitively exclude local realism based on the present experimental outcomes.Nevertheless other interpretations of Quantum Mechanics are not excluded.