Category: Livres anglais et trangers,Nonfiction,Philosophy
What is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches. Details
Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger's What is Life? is one of the great science classics of the twentieth century. It was written for the layman, but proved to be one of the spurs to the birth of molecular biology and the subsequent discovery of DNA. What is Life? appears here together with Mind and Matter, his essay investigating a relationship which has eluded and puzzled philosophers since the earliest times. Brought together with these two classics are Schrödinger's autobiographical sketches, which offer a fascinating account of his life as a background to his scientific writings.
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Reviews
This little book has been extremely influential. Unfortunately, it makes two grave mistakes. Firstly, it gives an extraordinarily role to genes; contrary to what is affirmed, genes are NOT the "architects" of living organisms, and even less do they execute those "instructions". Genes are like human writing; in themselves, they do not DO anything at all. Secondly, the discussion of "entropy" is seriously faulty. Living organisms are thermodynamically OPEN systems; so "entropy" is not properly defined for them, and to the extent that it could be (by fixing "snapshot" views), there is NO tendency for entropy to increase. So there is NO NEED for "information" to counter a tendency to disorganization. The influence this book has had is extremely unfortunate, since it has contributed to contemporary "gene-centred" biology (with the excesses of DNA sequencing and genetic manipulation) which is scientifically erroneous and politically alienaing.
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