Erwin Schrodinger — "Our body is not a thing, but a process."
Our body is not a thing, but a process.
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About Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961)
Austrian physicist who shared the 1933 Nobel for the wave equation that bears his name and the famous cat thought-experiment. Closely associated with Werner Heisenberg (matrix-mechanics rival who reached the same physics by different math) and Albert Einstein (his pen-pal on quantum interpretation). For an intellectual contrast, see Niels Bohr, Danish physicist and architect of the Copenhagen interpretation — Schrödinger's cat thought-experiment was specifically designed to ridicule Bohr's 'observer-dependent reality' reading of quantum mechanics — Schrödinger thought the Copenhagen interpretation was absurd; the cat was meant as reductio ad absurdum.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
The human body isn't a static object like a rock or a machine — it's a continuous, dynamic unfolding. Cells die and regenerate, molecules cycle in and out, energy flows constantly. What we call 'the body' is really a sustained pattern of activity, never the same twice. Identity persists not through fixed matter but through ongoing biological processes maintaining their form over time.
Relevance to Erwin Schrodinger
Schrödinger, who formulated wave mechanics treating particles as probability waves rather than fixed objects, extended this process-thinking to biology in his landmark 1944 book 'What is Life?' He challenged physicists and biologists alike to see living organisms through the lens of thermodynamics and quantum physics — as systems that maintain order by continuously consuming energy, resisting entropy through ceaseless molecular activity.
The era
Writing in the 1940s, Schrödinger bridged quantum physics and biology just as molecular biology was emerging. Watson and Crick's DNA discovery followed nine years later, partly inspired by his work. Post-war science was grappling with applying atomic-age thinking to living systems, moving away from mechanistic Victorian biology toward understanding life as dynamic information-processing and energy-exchange.
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