The Importance of "What is Life?
Schrodinger asked the question, 'What is life?' in his 1944 book of the same title for a very important reason.
Science had made a lot of ground in understanding various aspects of the environment.
From the very large, like the Universe and galaxies to the very small world of the atom and the quantum, science had explored these regions of our surroundings and had been quite successful in explaining how they all fitted together.
Science was an extremely powerful tool for understanding our surroundings.
And Schrodinger was one of the best practitioners of the scientific method, however he knew that life was one aspect of our everyday world that science had enormous difficulty in explaining.
'What is life?' was Schrodinger's way of asking the question that had confounded scientists for centuries.
The question is of utmost importance because life is such a ubiquitous phenomenon.
It isn't a rare oddity, but is a plentiful peculiarity that completely engulfs our biosphere.
Understanding 'what is life?' is essential for science...
if science is true.
If there are aspects of our world that science cannot EVER explain, then we have no choice but to conclude that science and its plethora of theories and laws are not all encompassing and is therefore not true.
'What is life?' is a question that needs explanation.
Life is too obvious and too important to ignore.
Schrodinger suggests that the answer lies in an essential component of living systems; consciousness.
Unfortunately consciousness, is even more mysterious that life itself.
Science has made no grounds whatsoever in understanding anything to do with consciousness.
In its frustration, the scientific establishment has relegated it to the background.
The understanding of consciousness is not an important scientific discipline and gets very little public funding in relation to other more 'understandable' disciplines.
But the question 'what 'is life' is one that has been around for hundreds even thousands of years.
From the very first moments we became self-aware we probably posed the question.
'What is life?' and it associated question 'what is consciousness' are very important questions that science has to find answers to in order for it to be considered a true way of looking at the Universe.
Science had made a lot of ground in understanding various aspects of the environment.
From the very large, like the Universe and galaxies to the very small world of the atom and the quantum, science had explored these regions of our surroundings and had been quite successful in explaining how they all fitted together.
Science was an extremely powerful tool for understanding our surroundings.
And Schrodinger was one of the best practitioners of the scientific method, however he knew that life was one aspect of our everyday world that science had enormous difficulty in explaining.
'What is life?' was Schrodinger's way of asking the question that had confounded scientists for centuries.
The question is of utmost importance because life is such a ubiquitous phenomenon.
It isn't a rare oddity, but is a plentiful peculiarity that completely engulfs our biosphere.
Understanding 'what is life?' is essential for science...
if science is true.
If there are aspects of our world that science cannot EVER explain, then we have no choice but to conclude that science and its plethora of theories and laws are not all encompassing and is therefore not true.
'What is life?' is a question that needs explanation.
Life is too obvious and too important to ignore.
Schrodinger suggests that the answer lies in an essential component of living systems; consciousness.
Unfortunately consciousness, is even more mysterious that life itself.
Science has made no grounds whatsoever in understanding anything to do with consciousness.
In its frustration, the scientific establishment has relegated it to the background.
The understanding of consciousness is not an important scientific discipline and gets very little public funding in relation to other more 'understandable' disciplines.
But the question 'what 'is life' is one that has been around for hundreds even thousands of years.
From the very first moments we became self-aware we probably posed the question.
'What is life?' and it associated question 'what is consciousness' are very important questions that science has to find answers to in order for it to be considered a true way of looking at the Universe.
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