Erwin SchrödingerReviews

A clear concise technical approach to the physics of statistical thermodynamics.

An odd little book. mr Schrodinger was a bit of a philosopher. The first chapter was the best, comparing physics at the human scale with physics at the atomic level. Human scale being deterministic and certain, the other being quantum and probabilistic. The ;water chapters get progressively more obscure, although there are a few anecdotes about his life and work.

Scientifically very out of date, often unclear and self-condradictory. Frequently descends into religio-metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. The autobiographical part completely superficial.

Posted at https://vivekiitkgp.github.io/shorts/books/what-is-life.html

Statistical Thermodynamics by Erwin Schrödinger is pretty much what it says it is. Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger discusses the basics of Statistical Thermodynamics, utilizing equations and formulas galore. Alongside that is a number of descriptions of those very same formulas.

All in all, this book is similar to a number of other books published by Dover. The only issue I had was that the text was sometimes blurry when they printed a fractional exponent, but other than that I really enjoyed this book. A great deal of it was read while on a bus ride, and the rest was finished at work during my break. There are no problems to solve, so if you just want the theory this is a good book for that.

This book defines Einstein's Theories on Gravitation in a mathematical manner, using partial differentiation and multiple integrals and matrices and other advanced things. It describes scalar densities and tensor densities, defining what they are and showing the symbols used to show it.

I didn't really understand this book, since I can't explain it well, but I did like it. I need to find a book or something that will teach me partial derivatives and stuff. Maybe then I can follow it.

"We must therefore not be discouraged by the difficulty of interpreting life by the ordinary laws of physics." Such an understatement. And what an intellect!

Schrödinger's book made the New Scientist's top 25 most influential popular science books, (some of which I've already read but I intend to read all 25 in the next year or so) and I was amazed at his understanding of a field so different from quantum physics. But then, he argues that things are really not so different. I think this book, short though it is, may take another read before I can fully grasp what he was getting at. If I do, it will have to be after I read the rest of the list.

I didn't really enjoy the first title that much, What is Life, it got a bit too technical for me, discussing heredity and using statistics. I very much enjoyed the second title, being more philosophical in style. I found it a fascinating but still easy read (my favourite style ;). For me it served as very good supplementary reading to my study of emptiness (Madyhamaka philosophy).

I had been meaning to read this for a long time. The book is not nearly as exciting as it must have been in the 1940s, many of the ideas are reasonably familiar. And some of the interest one gets is watching Schrodinger grope around the concept of Gene's and digital, discrete information without the benefit of knowing about DNA and how it functions. But other than mistaking the source of gene's for a protein, he did not miss much and another 60 years of molecular biology would have added relatively little to his analysis.

All that said, the careful, methodical reasoning from first principles about how biology should ultimately be explicable from first principles was still very exciting. That and learning that some restaurants in the 30s and 40s actually printed calories on the menu. Which Schrodinger objects to, pointing out that our existence is premised not on the consumption of calories but the absorption of negative entropy.

Schrodinger was a very clever physicist, and he applied his intelligence and knowledge to the question of the title. His book first appeared in 1944, but Schrodinger's reasoning shows what kind of structure DNA must be, decades before its structure was discovered or observed. He wrote very clearly for non-scientists, but did not shy away from complex subjects. He does answer the question, in physical terms. He believes the genetic machinery is based on the physics which appears to operate in the rest of the universe, which is a fair assumption. He comes to some surprising conclusions about the individual and their relationship to each other and the universe. Very thought-provoking and still very readable and relevant today.

Starting from pretty basic thermodynamic assumptions, Schrödinger ends up speculating about the nature of personality and the 'self'. At the time of writing the DNA was not yet discovered but is nothing but directly predicted in this work. Overall this is a short and entertaining historical-scientific text that teaches you as much about genetics and entropy as about the way the mind of one of the great physical thinkers of his times worked.½

The classic on the question 'What is life?'. Although old, it can still be read with great benefit and pleasure. The most amazing thing is how Schroedinger could figure out so much about the future of molecular biology when at his time there was so little known. He did it all with logical reasoning, order of magnitude estimates etc, basically doing what a really good physicist is supposed to do.

I had been meaning to read this for a long time. The book is not nearly as exciting as it must have been in the 1940s, many of the ideas are reasonably familiar. And some of the interest one gets is watching Schrodinger grope around the concept of Gene's and digital, discrete information without the benefit of knowing about DNA and how it functions. But other than mistaking the source of gene's for a protein, he did not miss much and another 60 years of molecular biology would have added relatively little to his analysis.

All that said, the careful, methodical reasoning from first principles about how biology should ultimately be explicable from first principles was still very exciting. That and learning that some restaurants in the 30s and 40s actually printed calories on the menu. Which Schrodinger objects to, pointing out that our existence is premised not on the consumption of calories but the absorption of negative entropy.

What is life is a brilliant discussion by a remarcable physicist about the nature of life. How, asks Schrödinger, does inheritance funtion? Does life function according to the laws of physics?
Schrödinger discusses the question of what is life from a physicsist's point-of-view, and draws conclusions about how heritance must function, years before the DNA was discoverd. A classic.

The additional book "Mind and matter" is philosofical text that I don't find very appealing. As someone said about Schrödinger: "He is a brilliant physicist, but a mediocre philosopher."

12/8/22

Formerly published as Science and the Human Temperament

Fascinating

I wish I knew more philospy.

Expected more science.

ok
note book # 823

good
note book #823