One of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century,
Schrodinger has written about science and philosophy and made his mark on both
fields. Here he combines his knowledge of physics as well as biology to explore
the overlap between the two fields. He also goes into the philosophical
consequences of his conclusions.
“What is Life?” became a very significant work, it inspired
many of science’s greatest thinkers to join the field of biology. Of course it
is incredibly out of date, he discusses genetics but at the time of writing DNA
had not been discovered as the molecule of heredity yet. So the most he does it
talk about chromatin, and not the actual mechanism that passes traits on.
Similarly some of his ideas are pretty far-fetched, like his discussion of how
organisms stave off entropy by consuming ordered objects such as food. It’s an
interesting concept… but I think our consumption of food has more to do with
the nutrients inside it rather than any “negative entropy” it passes on.
Where things really get interesting is his philosophical
thought. He spends quite a bit of time on free will and the duality between
animals as machines and our ability to choose. Of course there is no clear
resolution of this, the duality remains a duality, but his deconstruction of
these concepts is fascinating.
I picked this up because many other scientists that I’ve
been reading about have been highly influenced by this work, and I would
encourage others to do the same. In order to understand the thought processes
of those that came before us, we have to go back to the source and understand
how ideas have changed over time. There is still value in reading texts such as
this one, regardless of whether it is outdated or not.
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