What is life - Book review

Last updated on:2 years ago

The most content of the book, What is life - mind matter, is not advanced now, since the majority of the knowledge becomes common knowledge now and teachers teach in classes. But it is still worthwhile to read because there are some interesting philosophical theories.

My thought about the book

Theories like Darwin’s evolution, Lamarckism, maximum entropy, quantum theory and so on, are the most important ideas in the book. But I had acquired relative knowledge from colleges.

I think the general philosophy of the book is interesting, and that is changing. Schrodinger didn’t say whether they are negative or positive. He told us everything is changing and transforming their status interacting with the surroundings. Behind the change, there are laws that support it.

Just like human’ lives, you are always changing, and everything around you and you did contribute to the process. Each possible results have their own possibility.

Notes from the book

The large and important and very much discussed question is:
How can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry?

Now, why are atoms so small?
Clearly, the question is an evasion. For it is not really aimed at the size of atoms. It is concerned with the size of organisms, more particularly with the size of our own corporeal selves.

For though a million is a reasonably large number, an accuracy of just 1 in 1000 is not overwhelmingly good, if a thing claims the dignity of being a “Law of Nature“.

How can we, from the point of view of statistical physics, reconcile the facts that the gene structure seems to involve only a comparatively small number of atom, and nevertheless it displays a most regular and lawful activity?

The higher temperature of the warm-blooded animal includes the advantage of enabling it to get rid of its entropy at a quicker rate, so that it can afford a more intense life process.

Any succession of events in which we take part with sensations, perceptions and possibly with actions gradually drops out of the domain of consciousness when the same string of events repeats itself in the same way very often.

Reference

[1] Schrodinger, What is life?