Reading Schrodinger's what is life (I), why should I read this book in 2022?

 

What is life? Different people have given different answers to this question. Believers believe that life is created by God; Artists believe that life is the source of creation; Writers regard life as the carrier of emotion; Chemists believe that life is a series of chemical reactions; Biologists study how life evolved. Now, molecular biologists will understand the cornerstone of life as a series of genes and proteomes. Schrodinger believes that life lives on negative entropy.

 

Why read this book?

When I was in college, I had great curiosity and interest in life, life and other topics. I went to the library to consult relevant books. I saw this book at that time. According to the introduction, it was written by the Nobel laureate Schrodinger. It has a strong appeal in the physics camp and attracted a large number of physicists to devote themselves to the research of molecular biology, It directly inspired the proposal of DNA double helix structure model and operon theory of gene regulation, as well as the subsequent interpretation of genetic code. Seeing so many scientific names, I began to frown. After reading for three minutes, I turned back impatiently. After five minutes, I decided to give up the book because it was really obscure to me at that time. In fact, if you really read word by word, you can still understand it, but you have no patience, there are too many professional names, and you are not in this field at all. I just want to get a conclusion: what is life and what is its meaning? There is no need to spend more time figuring out a lot of terms and knowledge of physicochemical biology. I was very anxious. I hoped to get the answer directly, so I finally borrowed a lot of books about soul chicken soup. As for what life is, I still haven't figured it out. How many people like me, please raise your hand!

Times have changed. Now I have my own career, but the poor management of the company has led to my life falling into a trough. In confusion, I once again deeply thought about what life is. By chance, this book came into my eyes again, and now I can read a book more patiently. I found that throughout our life, we have read so many philosophy books, soul chicken soup, TV dramas, etc. after experiencing so many feelings or setbacks, in fact, we have never stopped thinking about this problem. Each experience gives you different answers, maybe they are all right, but different aspects of the same problem. Which you accept depends on your current state. Schrodinger's book gives another answer different from soul chicken soup, metaphysics and philosophy. Maybe it can give you guidance from subjective and practical aspects, and be more realistic. It can also let you understand what you do to change your dilemma. Please calm down and read this book patiently. The first few chapters may annoy you, but the more you read down, the greater the harvest. If you really don't have time or are eager to know the answer, my next explanation may provide you with an opportunity to better understand this book. My explanation is very organized. First, I will briefly introduce the author and works, then divide the whole book into several paragraphs to elaborate the key themes, and finally combine the knowledge points in the book with daily life to guide your life direction. I hope I'm not alone in making a summary, because my view is likely to be one-sided. I also hope you can participate, leave a message and discuss with you, so as to give a more comprehensive answer to this topic, let more people have enlightenment and lead more people out of the confused period of life.

Authors and Works

Title: What is life

Author: Erwin Schrodinger

Year of publication: 1944

"A living organism is constantly generating entropy - or increasing positive entropy - and gradually tends to the dangerous state of maximum entropy, that is, death. To get rid of death, that is, to live, the only way is to constantly absorb negative entropy from the environment. We will soon understand that negative entropy is a very positive thing. Organisms live on negative entropy. Or more To be exact, the essential thing in metabolism is to enable the organism to successfully eliminate all the entropy it has to produce when it is alive. "

——Erwin Schrodinger

 

 About the Author

Picture Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961), Austrian physicist. In the first 30 years of the 20th century, physics experienced a great revolution and solved the basic law of micro motion. Schrodinger lived in this era. In 1926, he proposed wave dynamics, which is one of the standard forms of quantum mechanics. Schrodinger won the Nobel Prize for this. Later, his interest turned to life science. What is life written in 1944 made conceptual preparations for the birth of molecular biology. The book raises a thought-provoking question: "what makes life systems seem to contradict the known laws of physics?" He pointed out that life is characterized by a "codebook", which can not only guide cell organization and inheritance, but also let organisms get rid of the second law of thermodynamics; Life feeds on negative entropy. The answer given by Schrodinger at that time now seems quite predictable.

In the book "what is life", Schrodinger explained the essence of life through the theory of thermodynamics and mechanics, and introduced the concepts of aperiodic crystal, negative entropy, genetic code, transition mutation and so on to explain the phenomena of organism material structure, maintenance and continuation of life, heredity and variation, which promoted the birth of molecular biology. The understanding of gene inheritance and mutation from the perspective of quantum mechanics can be regarded as the starting point of quantum chemistry and biology. In addition, how to produce order, order in disorder and so on are also discussed.

This book publishes what is life and consciousness and matter in one volume. The latter is also his prose. The paper studies the problems that have puzzled philosophers since ancient times. Together with these two classic works is Schrodinger's autobiography. Through the review and fascinating description of his life, it provides the background materials of his scientific works. This book is one of the great scientific classics of the 20th century. It has become an inspiration and promoter for the birth of molecular biology and the subsequent discovery of DNA.

Author | Gao

Source | original

Cooperation | ringqueen@qq.com