What Is Life? is a short book based on a series of public lectures given by the quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger at Trinity College, Dublin, in February 1943 and published by Cambridge University Press the following year. Schrödinger asks how the order of living organisms can be reconciled with the statistical character of physical law, and argues — eight years before the structure of DNA was determined — that genetic information must be carried by an 'aperiodic crystal', a molecule encoding hereditary information in its chemical bonds.
The Cambridge Canto Classics edition binds the original text with Mind and Matter (1958), in which Schrödinger draws on Advaita Vedanta to argue that consciousness must be in some sense one rather than many, and with his Autobiographical Sketches. The book is read less for the correctness of its specific genetic conjectures and more for the quality of its framing — Schrödinger's way of directing a physicist's attention to the question of hereditary order.
What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy.
Chapter 6, "Order, Disorder and Entropy"
First lines
A scientist is supposed to have a complete and thorough knowledge, at first hand, of some subjects and, therefore, is usually expected not to write on any topic of which he is not a master. This is regarded as a matter of noblesse oblige. For the present purpose I beg to renounce the noblesse, if any, and to be freed of the ensuing obligation.
Contents
The Classical Physicist's Approach to the Subject
The Hereditary Mechanism
Mutations
The Quantum-Mechanical Evidence
Delbrück's Model Discussed and Tested
Order, Disorder and Entropy
Is Life Based on the Laws of Physics?
Epilogue: On Determinism and Free Will
Mind and Matter — The Physical Basis of Consciousness
Mind and Matter — The Future of Understanding
Mind and Matter — The Principle of Objectivation
Mind and Matter — The Arithmetical Paradox: The Oneness of Mind
Mind and Matter — Science and Religion
Mind and Matter — The Mystery of the Sensual Qualities
Autobiographical Sketches
Reception
What Is Life? is one of the most-cited works in the prehistory of molecular biology: James Watson and Francis Crick both named it as the book that turned them toward biology, and Maurice Wilkins did likewise. The Mind and Matter half is read more in philosophy of mind and consciousness studies than in biology, where Schrödinger's invocation of the Upanishadic 'You are the universe contemplating itself' has been a recurring touchstone for monist and non-dual readings of physics. Specialists have noted that several of Schrödinger's specific genetic conjectures (notably his appeal to 'negative entropy' and to the aperiodic crystal as code-script) were programmatically influential rather than detailed correctly; the book is read for its framing more than its mechanism, and remains continuously in print and routinely set on undergraduate history-of-science syllabi.
Frequently asked
What does Schrödinger argue in What Is Life?
Schrödinger asks how the order of living organisms can be reconciled with the statistical character of physical law. His central argument — that genetic information must be carried by an 'aperiodic crystal' — proved programmatically influential, giving James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins initial inspiration for the discovery of the DNA double helix.
What is the Mind and Matter essay about?
Mind and Matter, written in 1958 and collected in this Cambridge edition, draws on Advaita Vedanta to argue that the plurality of individual minds is an illusion — that consciousness must in some sense be one. It is read primarily in philosophy of mind and consciousness studies rather than in biology.
Why is What Is Life? still read today?
The book is widely set on undergraduate history-of-science syllabi and remains continuously in print. It is read less for the correctness of its specific genetic conjectures and more for the quality of its framing. Roger Penrose has described it as among the most influential scientific writings of the twentieth century.