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What Is Life?: with "Mind and Matter" and "Autobiographical Sketches" | 
 enlarge | Author: Erwin Schrodinger
Creator: Roger Penrose
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $20.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 54060
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 194
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.2 x 0.5
ISBN: 0521427088
Dewey Decimal Number: 574.01
EAN: 9780521427081
ASIN: 0521427088
Publication Date: January 31, 1992
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Product Description
Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger'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 Schrödinger'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.
Book Description
Includes an exploration of "the question" which lies at the heart of biology (What is Life?), an investigation of a relationship which still puzzles philosophers (Mind and Matter), and autobiographical sketches, published and translated for the first time.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 A spectacular read!! September 7, 2008
"What Is Life" is an excellent look into the brilliant mind of one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, Erwin Schrodinger. This book suggested the existence of DNA. Tell me thats not important!! Also, "Mind and Matter" is an amazing look into human consciousness and will definitely provoke many thoughts. This book contains alot of technical language, so you may want to have a dictionary with you or take down the words you are unfamiliar with. Overall, this book is simply amazing, and I'd recommend it to any intelligent individual.
 Erwin Schrödinger: The man and his vision August 27, 2008
This is another great work of Erwin Schrodinger which gives an insight into the biology of life from a physicist's perspective that inspired scientists like; Francis Crick who discovered the structure of DNA, J.B.S. Haldane, and Roger Penrose. It is clear from this work and other books of Schrodinger that he was one of the few physicists who deeply thought of the inner most secrets of life. This book is divided into two parts: What's Life (7 chapters) and Mind and Matter (6 chapters).
The physicist's most dreaded weapon, the mathematical deduction can not be used for life because it is too complex to be accessible to equations. The orderliness required for the preservation of life does not come by the random heat motions of atoms and molecules, but statistical averages that provide order. Schrodinger asks a simple question; why is life made of so many atoms and not just a few. He offers three examples; higher magnetic fields, increase in molecular population and the error introduced into a reaction rate constant or any other physical parameter would be far too great if only few molecules are involved to form life. Hence orderliness, and of course evolution and diversity of life, requires very large population of molecules.
The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories; all existing objectively and all scientific knowledge is based on sense of perception and nonetheless the scientific views of material processes formed in this way lack all sensual qualities and can not account for the latter. Theories that are developed from scientific observations of experiments never account for sensual qualities. The sentient, percipient and thinking ego does not figure anywhere in our world picture, because it is itself the world picture. It is identified with the whole and not part of it. The physical world lacks all the sensual qualities that go to make the subject of cognizance. It is colorless, soundless, and impalpable. The world is deprived of everything that makes sense in its in relation to the consciously contemplating, perceiving, and feeling the subject; no personal god can form part of world model that has only became accessible at the cost of removing everything personal from it. God is missing from spacetime picture like sense of perception or ones own personality. Upanisads (Hindu Scripture) states that Atman = Brahman, the personal self equal the all comprehending eternal self. Consciousness never experienced in plural only in the singular, and plurality is merely a series of different aspect of one soul and one conscious produced by a deception (Maya). There is no multiplicity of minds; in reality and truth there is only one mind.
Before and after is not a quality of the world we perceive but pertains to the perceiving mind and don't imply the notion of space and time. After relativity, the notion of before and after reside on the cause and effect relationship. The general directedness of all happenings is explained by the mechanical or statistical theory of heat. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that order changes to disorder but not disorder to order, and time travels in one direction from past to future, but not future to past. The statistical theory of time has a stronger bearing on the philosophy of time than theory of relativity. The latter presupposes unidirectional flow of time while statistical theory constructs from order of events.
My body functions according to laws of nature, but I direct body motions. The word "I" means to state that I who control the motion of the atoms and molecules according to the Laws of Nature. The uncertainty principle and the lack of causal connection in nature introduce certain features into physical reality. For example, we can not make any factual statement about a physical system without interacting with it which would change the physical state of the system. This explains why no complete description of any physical object is ever possible. These laws have pushed the boundary between the subject and object. In fact subject and object are only one, and no barrier exists. It is the same element that goes to compose my mind and the world. The situation is the same for every mind and its world, in spite of the unfathomable abundance of cross references between them. The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived.
The last chapter gives brief autobiographical sketches of Schrodinger translated by his granddaughter. Schrödinger was deeply philosophical with strong family: He loved and respected his parents. His strong interest in physics and Vedanta philosophy (one of the six schools of Hindu Philosophy) is apparent, but he shy's away from writing about his complex personal life that involved many women and numerous extramarital affairs.
1. Schrödinger: Life and Thought
2. Space-Time Structure (Cambridge Science Classics)
3. A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (Canto original series)
4. Erwin Schrödinger's World View : The Dynamics of Knowledge and Reality (Theory and Decision Library A:)
5. 'Nature and the Greeks' and 'Science and Humanism' (Canto original series)
6. Schrödinger's Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science)
7. Schrodinger's Science and the Human Temerament
8. Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality: Solving the Quantum Mysteries Tag: Author of In Search of Schrod. Cat
9. Statistical Thermodynamics
10. Science and Humanism, Physics in Our Time
An Absolute Classic from a Great Thinker August 3, 2007
In "What is Life?" monograph, Schrodinger brilliantly enlightens us with the true concept of life science. He proposes what himself calls "a naive physicist's ideas about organisms." Years before the discovery of double helix structure of DNA, Schrodinger beautifully details how the huge volume of information is related to the structure of what he calls "aperiodic crystal" (what we currently call it "protein structure."
The ideas are still fresh and everybody who really wants to start the REAL and TRUE molecular biology must read this classic. It is astonishing to see how this great thinker and physicist had elaborated, very correctly and properly, to use the statistical tools in physics (statistical physics) to explain the fundamentals of life.
It is an absolute classic from a great legend. Please read and enjoy it.
Stimulating Reading October 15, 2006
Schroedinger, one of the great physicists of the 20th Century, applied the knowledge he gained in his own discipline to analyze human life. Based upon lectures that he gave in the 1940s, this brief book contains Schroedinger's fascinating speculations on the nature of life, several of which have proven prophetic (including the discovery of DNA). The reader comes away with the joy of having shared in the workings of a great mind.
Perhaps the most impressive achievement of the book is that it can be readily understood by persons relatively untrained in science or mathematics.
 A physicist's essay on a topic he cannot know as a scientist, only as a human being December 19, 2004
7 out of 68 found this review helpful
I'm wondering why scientists are allowed to give their opinion as scientists about topics they know nothing about as scientists. The beginning of the title ("What is Life") sounds like if Schrodinger can claim anything about the difference between mind and matter as a pure consequence of physics. Too bad, as the rest of the title might make you think that there will be some discussion about why and whether there might be a difference between mind and matter. What remains of mind when you stick to the physics? That would be a very nice question to think about, if only this was the topic of the book...but it's not what is done here.
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