In this book, the leading Austrian physicist E. Schrödinger examines questions that are traditionally considered the prerogative of philosophers, theologians, psychoanalysts and politicians: are mind and matter, subject and object, the inner self and the outer world completely different things, or are they one and the same? the same, what place does consciousness occupy in the process of the evolution of life, what underlies morality, can one still expect the biological development of modern man and how his intellectual development will occur