The human body is an organism that maintains its state far removed from thermodynamic equilibrium, and it does so by continually drawing 'order' from its environment.
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"Quantum mechanics is a wonderful theory. But it is not the last word."
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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Living organisms defy the thermodynamic tendency toward disorder. Rather than decaying into chaos like non-living matter, the body actively maintains its complex, organized state by consuming structured energy from food and surroundings. Schrödinger called this 'negentropy' — imported order that powers biological processes. Life is essentially a continuous effort to stay organized by harvesting the environment's available structure before releasing waste and heat.
Schrödinger developed the wave equation governing quantum systems in 1926, winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. In 1944, he wrote 'What is Life?' — this quote's source — applying statistical physics to biology decades before molecular biology existed. His cross-disciplinary ambition defined him: physics as a lens for all natural phenomena. This work directly inspired Watson and Crick to pursue DNA's structure, linking his quantum legacy to biology's greatest discovery.
Written in 1944, during World War II, when physics was transforming warfare through radar and nuclear weapons while biology remained largely descriptive and pre-molecular. Schrödinger's application of thermodynamics to living systems was radical — no framework yet existed for understanding heredity at the molecular level. His ideas helped launch molecular biology as a discipline, and within a decade Watson and Crick's 1953 double-helix discovery validated his insight that life's 'order' had a physical, codable substrate.
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