Naked Science Forum
On the Lighter Side => Famous Scientists, Doctors and Inventors => Topic started by: Ylide on 05/11/2003 10:13:04
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In Irwin Schrodinger's book "What is Life?" he states that "the human organism feeds on negative entropy." Discuss. (Quantumcat, I know you're all about this guy!)
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I guess he is getting at our obsession with order ?
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
- Groucho Marx
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He might be getting at the fact that we (very literally) feed on highly complex chemical structures (i.e. living things) that perform a great deal of "negative entropy" just to exist and reproduce.
Or, as you suggest, our whole mindset is aimed at order. Building, sorting, arranging, categorizing.
Almost all - Teenagers tend to have a high positive entropy level, at least in their rooms.
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John
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Tweener pretty much hit it. We consume very large, ordered molecules and excrete much simpler, higher entropy molecules.
Thus, in order to maintain a low entropy non-equilibrium state of living, we require an "entropy sink"
Schrodinger was great. I haven't read all of this book, but from what I hear, it's a remarkably perceptive and accurate view of the nature of life considering it was written in the 1940s.
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