What is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches (Canto Classics) Reprint Edition

I had already savoured a bit of Schrodinger’s writing as I came to this book after first reading Ken Wilber’s “Quantum Questions” and Samuel Guo’s “Quantum Memoirs”. (Reader alert, by the way: the “Autobiographical Sketches” section is identical in both this book and the one edited by Guo.) I still derived great pleasure in reading this book as it gave me a more considered and sustained perspective into what one of the giants of science thought about how science influenced and shaped our lives and also science’s limitations. Schrodinger does not claim to have answers to all the questions he raises (although the title of this collection may sound unintentionally grandiose. Moreover, even if Schrodinger had all the answers, it is a good bet that some would have been “falsified” - as is the nature of science - over the last sixty or seventy years since this collection was first published). On more than one occasion, Schrodinger refers also to his limitations in subjects other than quantum physics and apologises for “the dilettante character of [his] summary.” None the less, his knowledge of biology and issues in neuroscience and philosophy as expressed in this collection are so deep, one feels that there is no need for such contrition.Schrodinger begins “What is Life” by trying to use Newtonian physics to explain chromosomes, life’s road maps. Such an attempt is effective to some extent as chromosomes comprise of millions of atoms (thus forming a single substantial entity) and the laws of classical physics are able to a large extent explain the behaviour of objects at such a macro level. However, it is now well-known that classical laws hit some restrictions when we try to describe events at an atomic level. Schrodinger feels that this is where quantum physics could be applied to explain how genetics works. He equates, for instance, genetic mutations to quantum jumps. Schrodinger contends furthermore that organisms use quantum mechanical effects to combat entropy by continually drawing “negative entropy” from their environment. This is another case where Schrodinger’s arguments here would turn out to be so prescient, as this book laid also the foundations of quantum biology.While “What is Life” touches only incidentally upon such mystical questions as the limitations of science in explaining life and its purpose, “Mind and Matter” deals with such issues in much more depth. Schrodinger covers here a whole gamut of related questions such as the theory of evolution and its philosophical underpinnings, how consciousness and the mind arise, why we feel the need to believe and the place of God in a scientific world-view. Schrodinger argues that as science is circumscribed by the parameters of space-time, it is not adequate to explain the mind as the “mind is always now. There is really no before and after for mind.” You suspect that he would certainly not have subscribed to a functional theory of the mind.

This is one of the most important books in science and was written by one of the great minds of the 20th Century. In this book, written at the end of the 1940s, Schrodinger tells us how off the rails science was at that time. We have seen evidence in the 21st Century that he was profoundly correct. He basically tells us back in the 1940 that science must to be deconstructed then reconstructed to embrace all phenomena of life. We see today that he was right. Today, because science knows nothing of man, science is trying to build artificial intelligence and robots. Science has given us no real insights into man's nature so that even more than in WWII mankind stands closer to the brink of extinction. Many forms of life have already been made extinct because of a world polluted by the works of scientists who don't even understand themselves. Yet, they blindly follow the drum beat of a falsely built science. We have a heavily drugged society, which seems that given time will be completely on drugs. We take drugs for two reasons: to ease pain (physical, mental and spiritual) and to kill ourselves. Science as constructed and pursued has given mankind very little understanding of itself but has given it many dangerous and dehumanizing drugs and many toys. This book is not an anti-science manifesto because Schrodinger knew we needed science to help mankind understand itself. Science has also given us a path to the stars. And someday we will reach those far distant planets and stars. But because science has failed to embrace all of the phenomena that is mankind, we, sadly, will take all our current and future problems and destructive behavior with us. Postscript: you read today about machines surpassing mankind in intelligence. Let us say this could occur. But in reality it could only occur if science fails to help mankind truly understand itself and unlock potential that makes any conceivable form of AI look moronic.