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Science

What Is Life?

Erwin Schrodinger · 1944 · 8 ideas · 8 min

Argues that heredity and biological order can be explained through physics and chemistry, proposing that a stable molecular code stores genetic information and that life resists entropy by drawing order from its environment.

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Why this book

Erwin Schrodinger, a physicist best known for quantum mechanics, turns his attention to a fundamentally biological question: how can the orderly, predictable transmission of hereditary traits across generations be reconciled with the statistical, probabilistic laws of physics that govern matter at small scales? He proposes that chromosomes must contain an 'aperiodic crystal,' a molecule with a stable but irregular structure capable of encoding a vast amount of hereditary information despite being built from a small number of atoms, remarkably anticipating the structure and function of DNA years before its discovery. He also introduces the concept of life feeding on 'negative entropy,' arguing that organisms maintain their improbable, highly ordered state by continuously extracting order from their environment, since the second law of thermodynamics would otherwise push any system toward disorder and decay.

The book matters because it helped catalyze the mid-twentieth-century convergence of physics and biology, directly inspiring a generation of scientists, including James Watson and Francis Crick, to search for the physical, chemical basis of genes, treating heredity as a problem solvable through rigorous physical reasoning rather than vague biological description. Schrodinger's willingness to reason from first principles across disciplinary boundaries, acknowledging the limits of his own expertise while still offering falsifiable predictions, models a kind of interdisciplinary scientific courage that reshaped how physicists and biologists talked to one another.

Who should read it

Readers interested in the history of molecular biology, the intersection of physics and life sciences, or how bold interdisciplinary reasoning can precede experimental discovery. It suits readers comfortable with some physics and chemistry background, though Schrodinger writes for an educated general audience.

About the author

Erwin Schrodinger was an Austrian physicist and Nobel laureate best known for developing wave mechanics in quantum theory; he wrote What Is Life? based on public lectures delivered in Dublin in 1943.

The ideas

01Heredity requires a stable molecule that is simultaneously irregular enough to encode information02A small number of atoms can encode enormous hereditary complexity03Life sustains itself by continuously importing order from its environment04Mutation can be understood as a physical quantum transition between stable molecular states05Order in living systems can emerge from mechanisms beyond simple statistical averaging06The gene functions simultaneously as both the architect's blueprint and the construction crew07Physical determinism, not mysterious vital forces, likely governs biological processes08Consciousness and free will pose a puzzle for a purely physical, deterministic account of life
molecular-biologyphysicsgeneticsentropydnahistory-of-science
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