Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 What is Life? The next fifty years. An introduction
- 2 What will endure of 20th century biology?
- 3 ‘What is life?’ as a problem in history
- 4 The evolution of human inventiveness
- 5 Development: is the egg computable or could we generate an angel or a dinosaur?
- 6 Language and life
- 7 RNA without protein or protein without RNA?
- 8 ‘What is life?’: was Schrödinger right?
- 9 Why new physics is needed to understand the mind
- 10 Do the laws of Nature evolve?
- 11 New laws to be expected in the organism: synergetics of brain and behaviour
- 12 Order from disorder: the thermodynamics of complexity in biology
- 13 Reminiscences
- Index
8 - ‘What is life?’: was Schrödinger right?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 What is Life? The next fifty years. An introduction
- 2 What will endure of 20th century biology?
- 3 ‘What is life?’ as a problem in history
- 4 The evolution of human inventiveness
- 5 Development: is the egg computable or could we generate an angel or a dinosaur?
- 6 Language and life
- 7 RNA without protein or protein without RNA?
- 8 ‘What is life?’: was Schrödinger right?
- 9 Why new physics is needed to understand the mind
- 10 Do the laws of Nature evolve?
- 11 New laws to be expected in the organism: synergetics of brain and behaviour
- 12 Order from disorder: the thermodynamics of complexity in biology
- 13 Reminiscences
- Index
Summary
In Dublin half a century ago, a major figure in this century's science visited, lectured, and foretold the future of a science which was not his own. The resulting book, What is Life?, is credited with having inspired some of the most brilliant minds ever to enter biology to the work which gave birth to molecular biology (Schrödinger, 1944). Schrödinger's ‘little book’ is, itself, as brilliant as warranted by its reputation. But, half a century later, and at the occasion of its honouring, perhaps we may dare to ask a new question: is the central thesis of the book right? I mean no dishonour to so superb a mind as Schrödinger's, nor to those properly inspired by him, to suggest that he may have been wrong, or at least incomplete. Rather, of course, like all scientists inspired by his ideas, I too seek to continue the quest.
I am hesitant even to raise the questions I shall raise, for I am also fully aware of how deeply embedded Schrödinger's own answers are in our view of life since Darwin and Weismann, and since the development of the theory of the germ plasma, with the gene as the necessary stable storage form of heritable variation: ‘Order from order’, answered Schrödinger. The large aperiodic solids and the microcode of which Schrödinger spoke have become the DNA and the genetic code of today. Almost all biologists are convinced that such self-replicating molecular structures and such a microcode are essential to life.
I confess I am not entirely convinced.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- What is Life? The Next Fifty YearsSpeculations on the Future of Biology, pp. 83 - 114Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
- 5
- Cited by