What is life?

Feyerabend’s emphasis on science and art was influenced by the work of the Viennese art historian, Aloïs Riegl and his theories of cultural and developmental progress in art and style. This essay reads Feyerabend’s characterization of the ‘ugly’ Madonna degli Ochi Grossi by way of Riegl's 'art-science' and in terms of a comparative contrast between the idea of progress in the arts and progress in science, including the hermeneutic challenges of 'reading' a painting and the artist as technician-engineer and scientist.

This paper embarks on a contextual reading of a work by the renowned physicist and Nobel Laureate Erwin Schrödinger entitled Science and Humanism. It is argued that while specialisation does contribute to the advancement of knowledge, in itself that specialist knowledge means little and has a dehumanising effect on society. In order to become meaningful and in order to develop the faculties of critique and appreciation, a synthetic vision is required that can only come when the sciences are seen on the same playing field as the humanities. The reading draws upon several arguments that Schrödinger draws upon which have implications for contemporary science education. The paper concludes that texts such as Science and Humanism are exemplars for cultivating and illustrating that critical and synthetic vision which is required in a hyper-specialised context of education.

This review paper aims at a better understanding of the origin and physical foundation of life’s dual – metabolic and genetic – nature. First, I give a concise ‘top-down’ survey of the origin of life, i.e., backwards in time from extant DNA/RNA/protein-based life over the RNA world to the earliest, pre-RNA stages of life’s origin, with special emphasis on the metabolism-first versus gene/replicator-first controversy. Secondly, I critically assess the role of minerals in the earliest origins of bothmetabolism and genetics. And thirdly, relying on the work of Erwin Schrodinger, Carl Woese and Stuart Kauffman, I sketch and reframe the origin of metabolism and genetics from a physics, i.e., thermodynamics, perspective. I conclude that life’s dual nature runs all the way back to the very dawn and physical constitution of life on Earth. Relying on the current state of research, I argue that life’s origin stems from the congregation of two kinds of sources of negentropy – thermodynamic and...

This review paper aims at a better understanding of the origin and physical foundation of life's dual-metabolic and genetic-nature. First, I give a concise 'top-down' survey of the origin of life, i.e., backwards in time from extant DNA/RNA/protein-based life over the RNA world to the earliest, pre-RNA stages of life's origin, with special emphasis on the metabolism-first versus gene/replicator-first controversy. Secondly, I critically assess the role of minerals in the earliest origins of bothmetabolism and genetics. And thirdly, relying on the work of Erwin Schrödinger, Carl Woese and Stuart Kauffman, I sketch and reframe the origin of metabolism and genetics from a physics, i.e., thermodynamics, perspective. I conclude that life's dual nature runs all the way back to the very dawn and physical constitution of life on Earth. Relying on the current state of research, I argue that life's origin stems from the congregation of two kinds of sources of negentropy-thermodynamic and statistical negentropy. While thermodynamic negentropy (which could have been provided by solar radiation and/or geochemical and thermochemical sources), led to life's combustive and/or metabolic aspect, the abundant presence of mineral surfaces on the prebiotic Earth-with their selectively adsorbing and catalysing (thus 'organizing') micro-crystalline structure or order-arguably provided for statistical negentropy for life to originate, eventually leading to life's crystalline and/or genetic aspect. However, the transition from a prebiotic world of relatively simple chemical compounds including periodically structured mineral surfaces towards the complex aperiodic and/or informational structure, specificity and organization of biopolymers and biochemical reaction sequences remains a 'hard problem' to solve.

Natuurkunde en leven De Oostenrijkse natuurkundige Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) werd op 12 augustus 1887 in Wenen geboren. Hij was enig kind. Zijn vader was Oostenrijker en katholiek; zijn moeder was van half Oostenrijkse en half Engelse afkomst en was luthers. Hoewel hij als lutheraan in een religieus huishouden was opgegroeid, verwierp hij traditionele religieuze overtuigingen (joods, christelijk en islamitisch) omdat hij ze naïef vond (Moore 2015). Hij bestempelde zichzelf als een atheïst, maar had een sterke belangstelling voor oosterse religies, pantheïsme, en Griekse natuurfilosofie en wetenschap. Ook gebruikte hij vaak religieuze symboliek in zijn wetenschappelijk werk. Schrödinger staat bekend als één van de grondleggers van de moderne kwantummechanica. Zijn naam is voor altijd gekoppeld aan de beroemde Schrödingervergelijking die het verloop van de kwantummechanische golffunctie wiskundig uitdrukt. Hier ontving hij in 1933 de Nobelprijs voor. Het brede publiek is vooral vertrouwd met Schrödingers kat, het beruchte gedachtenexperiment dat de onhoudbaarheid van het vaak gepostuleerde indeterminisme op subatomair niveau tracht bloot te leggen. Naast zijn centrale rol in de ontwikkeling van de kwantumfysica, staat ook in de biologie een bijzonder invloedrijke publicatie op zijn naam. Schrödingers vader Rudolf, met wie hij tijdens zijn kinder-en tienerjaren een hechte band had, hield zich in zijn vrije tijd bezig met plantkunde, waaronder plantenveredeling en evolutie. Charles Darwins (1859) On the Origin of Species bleef gedurende zijn verdere leven een favoriet boek van Erwin Schrödinger. Zijn interesse voor biologie en leven resulteerde in 1944 in de publicatie van Wat Is Leven? Het Natuurkundig Aspect van de Levende Cel. Dit wetenschappelijk onderbouwd populariserend boek baseerde hij op een reeks openbare lezingen die hij in februari 1943 hield aan het Trinity College in Dublin onder de auspiciën van het Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies waar hij sedert 1940 directeur was van de vakgroep Theoretische Natuurkunde. Deze lezingen trokken een publiek van ongeveer 400 mensen die werden gewaarschuwd "[…] dat het onderwerp moeilijk was en dat de lezingen niet populair konden worden genoemd, ook al zou het meest gevreesde wapen van de natuurkundige, wiskundige deductie, nauwelijks worden gebruikt" (Schrödinger 1944, p. 3). Schrödinger richtte zich op de belangrijke vraag: "Hoe kunnen de gebeurtenissen in ruimte en tijd die plaatsvinden binnen de ruimtelijke grens van een levend organisme worden verklaard door natuurkunde en scheikunde?" (Schrödinger 1944, p. 3) En hij voegde hier meteen aan toe dat "het klaarblijkelijke onvermogen van de huidige natuurkunde en scheikunde om dergelijke gebeurtenissen te verklaren, […] helemaal geen reden [is] om te betwijfelen of ze door die wetenschappen kunnen worden verklaard." (Schrödinger 1944, p. 4)

What is life? The probably most brilliant answer to this question was given by the German philosopher Friedrich Engels: "Life", he said, "is the state of being of proteins." And whoever wants to spare himself further reflections may safely settle down on this certainly not exhaustive, but at least irrefutable, explanation. Whoever wants to know and express more about life than this kind of truism, has to expect a task compared to which the twelve labours of Heracles seem trivial. So what is life? At present a comprehensive and generally accepted definition of this term, sparkling in so many of its various facets and aspects, is not to be found. We can just circle around it questioning, trying to describe its different facetswith no hope however of fully reaching and understanding it. An approximation for the moment could possibly be the statement that life is the quality and feature, or better yet the sum of all those qualities and features that make an organism alive. After that we can start an enumeration, which, though it may never come to an end or bring us to a definite answer, still may give us the feeling, that we have a goal. At the Open University, Milton Keynes, the English biochemist Mae-Wan Ho in cooperation with her students developed a special method to observe small organismsmicrobes, water-fleas, and larvae of flies for instancein very exceptional colours with the help of a polarization microscope. But the tiny little beings show these brilliant colours only as long as they are alive. Being dead, they lose light and colour. The luminosity of its colours obviously is a manifestation of and a criterion for the liveliness of an organism.

Zarządzanie posthumanistyczne to zarządzanie na miarę antropocenu, wywodzące się z zarządzania humanistycznego, a stojące w opozycji do dominujących koncepcji zarządzania ekonomicznego, których nie sposób nie uznać współodpowiedzialnymi za, stanowiące fakt współczesności, kryzys klimatyczny, kryzys nierówności i kryzys demokracji. Zarządzanie posthumanistyczne proponuje radykalną zmianę w stosunku do dominujących i praktykowanych koncepcji zarządzania polegającą na przeformułowaniu pojęcia zasobów, mianowicie ich upodmiotowienie poprzez przyznanie im sprawczości i godności. Radykalizm zabiegu polega na upodmiotowieniu nie tylko tzw. zasobów ludzkich, czyli ludzi, ale także wszelkich aktorów pozaludzkich powiązanych z procesami organizowania, wśród których dominujące definicje zarządzania wymieniają zasoby informacyjne, finansowe i fizyczne. W toku wystąpienia zastanowię się czy upodmiotowienie, równouprawnienie pomijanych dotąd i wykluczanych w dyskursie organizacyjnym INNYCH, poprzez uznanie ich sprawczości i godności, czym zbliżone zostają one do ludzi, zwierząt, roślin, oznacza konieczność ich ożywienia? A może wymaga ono reorganizacji naszego rozumienia tego, co żywe i nieżywe? Czy może implikuje ono konieczność relacjonistycznego, w duchu teorii aktora-sieci, rozprawienia się z dualizmem żywe/nieżywe raz na zawsze?

For many Abiogenecists, life is considered an emergent property instantiated by some concrete objects. In this brief paper I contend that if God exists, then life cannot be an emergent property, because this would infringe on God's aseity.

This means that if life can be thought of as a property which instantiates concrete objects, until one can show that God does not exist, it would be metaphysically reckless to consider life an emergent property.

What is life?" This deceptively simple question lies at the heart of biology. In this activity, students work in groups to come up with their own definition using a set of prompting cards that differs for each team. In doing so, students gain an appreciation of the complexities of addressing this question. The activity takes approximately 60-90 minutes to complete, but students often discuss its implications for weeks afterward. This activity successfully engaged freshman undergraduate students and could easily be adapted to high school and even elementary school students.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is probably not the first person who comes to mind when you think about romantic love. For most of his life, Nietzsche was a solitary and lonely figure. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche railed against the evils of women, only to recant all that he’d written a paragraph later. He attempted to win the heart of Lou Salomé, only to have her rebuff his affections. Supposedly he contracted syphilis in a whorehouse. Nietzsche’s most striking aphorisms about love appear in Thus Spoke Zarathustra—a work that most casual readers find intellectually dense and, in parts, thoroughly incomprehensible. Nevertheless, he wrote so much about love in this work that it could be renamed Thus Spoke Romeo.

Robert Cheatham, the constant gardener of Atlanta’s avant-gardes since the 1970s, has been willing Perforations into the world since the turn of the nineties, but nothing in this anthology—which goes all the way back, and sometimes appears to exist in the future—seems to have aged a single day. Within this reliquary there may be bones, but these bones live and breathe and utter prophecies. Here in giddy cacophony is the choir that only Cheatham could assemble and conduct: deadpan diarists and mystical glossolaliacs, French-fried cultural oncologists and all-American paranoids, offhand jazzmaster prose players and mastermind poet-critics thinking too fast for their pages. To dip into this book is to tune in to a flowering riot of signals from stations you can only find on the Perforations dial, broadcasting loud and clear from beneath/above the un-unheimlich real estate of Atlanta, a burg almost unaware that it harbors the dangerously joyous parallel city whose atlas is revealed in this book. Enter and be pollinated.

The phenomenological question of consciousness usually associated with Husserl (although there are echoes of this in Augustine as in Marcus Aurelius, Kant and Schopenhauer), is the consciousness of the now, the present moment. I explore this consciousness for Erwin Schrödinger, which for him included reference to the Upanishads together with Nietzsche’s central teaching or “thinking” of the eternal recurrence of the same.

Published as

Babette Babich, “Schrödinger and Nietzsche and Life: Eternal Recurrence and the Conscious Now,” in: Christopher Key Chapple, ed., Antonio T. de Nicolas: Poet of Eternal Return (Ahmedabad, India: Ntyalanda International 2014), pp. 157-206,

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The living symphony of life sounds from deep within the microphysical, representing the veritable completion of the fabled Great Chain of Being. This sketch from 2015 can be coordinated with a much more concrete, recent description of the fundamental physical system of living motion and psychical reality at issue (especially the chirality that deeply informs musical thematics) now to be found in the author's 'Carlyle and the Idea' (2018) at Academia.Edu, toward which interested readers of this rough sketch are directed as a kind of paved road ahead.

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