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What Is Life?: with Mind and Matter and…
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What Is Life?: with "Mind and Matter" and "Autobiographical Sketches" (edition 1992)

by Erwin Schrodinger

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8481125,331 (4.01)1
Nobel laureate Erwin Schro̘dinger's What is Life? is one of the great science classics of the twentieth century. A distinguished physicist's exploration of the question which lies at the heart of biology, it was written for the layman, but proved one of the spurs to the birth of molecular biology and the subsequent discovery of the structure of DNA. The philosopher Karl Popper hailed it as a 'beautiful and important book' by 'a great man to whom I owe a personal debt for many exciting discussions'. It appears here together with Mind and Matter, his essay investigating a relationship which has eluded and puzzled philosophers since the earliest times. Schrodinger asks what place consciousness occupies in the evolution of life, and what part the state of development of the human mind plays in moral questions. Brought together with these two classics are Schro̘dinger's autobiographical sketches, published and translated here for the first time. They offer a fascinating fragmentary account of his life as a background to his scientific writings, making this volume a valuable additon to the shelves of scientist and layman alike.… (more)
Member:bairel
Title:What Is Life?: with "Mind and Matter" and "Autobiographical Sketches"
Authors:Erwin Schrodinger
Info:Cambridge University Press (1992), Paperback, 194 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:***1/2
Tags:biology, physics, biophysics, mad, read, 2007r

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What Is Life? : With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches by Erwin SCHRÖDINGER (Author)

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An odd little book. mr Schrodinger was a bit of a philosopher. The first chapter was the best, comparing physics at the human scale with physics at the atomic level. Human scale being deterministic and certain, the other being quantum and probabilistic. The ;water chapters get progressively more obscure, although there are a few anecdotes about his life and work.
  jvgravy | Oct 31, 2020 |
Scientifically very out of date, often unclear and self-condradictory. Frequently descends into religio-metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. The autobiographical part completely superficial. ( )
  Arbieroo | Jul 17, 2020 |
"We must therefore not be discouraged by the difficulty of interpreting life by the ordinary laws of physics." Such an understatement. And what an intellect!

Schrödinger's book made the New Scientist's top 25 most influential popular science books, (some of which I've already read but I intend to read all 25 in the next year or so) and I was amazed at his understanding of a field so different from quantum physics. But then, he argues that things are really not so different. I think this book, short though it is, may take another read before I can fully grasp what he was getting at. If I do, it will have to be after I read the rest of the list. ( )
  Razinha | May 23, 2017 |
I had been meaning to read this for a long time. The book is not nearly as exciting as it must have been in the 1940s, many of the ideas are reasonably familiar. And some of the interest one gets is watching Schrodinger grope around the concept of Gene's and digital, discrete information without the benefit of knowing about DNA and how it functions. But other than mistaking the source of gene's for a protein, he did not miss much and another 60 years of molecular biology would have added relatively little to his analysis.

All that said, the careful, methodical reasoning from first principles about how biology should ultimately be explicable from first principles was still very exciting. That and learning that some restaurants in the 30s and 40s actually printed calories on the menu. Which Schrodinger objects to, pointing out that our existence is premised not on the consumption of calories but the absorption of negative entropy. ( )
  nosajeel | Jun 21, 2014 |
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
SCHRÖDINGER, ErwinAuthorprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Penrose, RogerForewordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Roger Penrose wrote the foreward for this book; he is not its author. Erwin Schrödinger authored What is Life?.
Please don't combine "What is life" with editions containing ALSO "Mind and matter" and/or "Autobiographical sketches". Thank you.
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Nobel laureate Erwin Schro̘dinger's What is Life? is one of the great science classics of the twentieth century. A distinguished physicist's exploration of the question which lies at the heart of biology, it was written for the layman, but proved one of the spurs to the birth of molecular biology and the subsequent discovery of the structure of DNA. The philosopher Karl Popper hailed it as a 'beautiful and important book' by 'a great man to whom I owe a personal debt for many exciting discussions'. It appears here together with Mind and Matter, his essay investigating a relationship which has eluded and puzzled philosophers since the earliest times. Schrodinger asks what place consciousness occupies in the evolution of life, and what part the state of development of the human mind plays in moral questions. Brought together with these two classics are Schro̘dinger's autobiographical sketches, published and translated here for the first time. They offer a fascinating fragmentary account of his life as a background to his scientific writings, making this volume a valuable additon to the shelves of scientist and layman alike.

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