Schrödinger’s Quest for the Origins of Life
Reviewing his book “Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches“
This book was written by Schrödinger, one of the most influential physicists to ever live, making important contributions to quantum theory. His equation (Schrödinger equation), calculates the wave function of a system and how it changes across time.
His book “What is Life?” was based on public lectures from Trinity College in 1943. It’s mostly concerned with biology, although it has considerable tangents. He wanted to know what life is in the context of both physics and chemistry.
It starts by showing why life seems to be so big when compared to atoms. We have around 30 trillion cells. And each cell has an average of 100 trillion atoms. He argues that at small scales, reality is too chaotic to have order. Quantum chaos fluctuations prevent steady natural laws. As a system gets better, such noise gets smaller and smaller. In further chapters, he touches on hereditary, evolution, molecules, entropy and more.
Some of it was truly groundbreaking. At the time, how hereditary information was passed was unknown. He made a theoretical prediction that an “aperiodic crystal” would store the information required for living things to pass their “blueprint” of how the molecules should be organized. This inspired the later discovery of DNA.
He was definitely a brilliant mind, and it was very enjoyable to read his work. I particularly enjoyed his humility and willingness to describe his thought process. The book was written for the layman's audience, and he succeeded in doing so. You don’t need any background to read, although at times it was nevertheless difficult. Luckily regarding biology and hereditary, I had some previous knowledge that helped, but the few times that he went into mathematical theorems, I was completely lost.
The latter part of the book was my favourite. While I enjoyed the rest, it was a times too sciency for my taste. Towards the end, it left more technical subjects related to biology and physics and was more concerned with philosophy, especially as it relates to consciousness. What strikes me the most is how well aware he was of the body/mind problem, despite him being a physicist. He certainly wasn’t blind to a materialistic worldview, and he easily articulates many of its problems when trying to account for consciousness.
Some parts I found not argued very well, for example when he touched on free will. But his description of qualia, for example, was incredibly well written. He even got a bit mystical at times, which took me completely by surprise. The Upanishads were mentioned (a religious/philosophical text from Hinduism), largely influenced by Schopenhauer and Huxley’s perennial philosophy. He considered a possible “unified consciousness”, in which each individual experience was only a fraction of the conscious universe, but nevertheless united.
It’s a brilliant book. The title of it couldn’t be more fitting. If you wonder what life is, how it can persist through the marching and endless entropy, or what distinguishes something living from something that is dead, then Schrödinger will walk you through his genius and explain it. A journey through biology, physics, and philosophy from one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century.
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