What Is Life?
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1944
- Language
- English
- Length
- Short · 100 ppunder 120 pages
- Difficulty
- Demanding3 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendWhat Is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical SketchesCambridge University Press, 2012The Canto Classics edition pairing the lectures with Mind and Matter and a short memoir, with Roger Penrose's foreword.
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Lectures given in Dublin in 1943 by the Austrian physicist, asking how the events inside a living organism can be accounted for by physics and chemistry. Schrödinger argues that the gene must be a stable molecule, an aperiodic crystal carrying a code-script in the arrangement of its atoms, and that mutations are quantum jumps. He explains how life maintains order by feeding on negative entropy from its surroundings, and closes with an epilogue on determinism and free will. Watson and Crick both said the book turned them toward the problem of the gene.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns What Is Life? are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
