Schrodinger’s philosophy (absolutely nothing to do with cats)

I mentioned in my last post, a recent acquisition: What is Life? by Erwin Schrodinger. This is a book that I’d heard about on more than a few occasions, so expectations were high, and I can honestly say it doesn’t disappoint. It says a lot that the copy I have is the eighteenth edition published in 2008, and it was originally published in 1944.

It started off as a series of lectures for the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies at Trinity College, Dublin in February 1943. He then added an epilogue, On Determinism and Free Will. This segues into another essay (book really) called Mind and Matter which is another set of lectures delivered at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1956. The collection is bookended by a one-page Forward written by Roger Penrose in 1991, and Autobiographical Sketches, written as a virtual appendix by Schrodinger himself in November 1960.

Erwin Schrodinger is most famously known for the set of equations that bear his name, formulated in 1925/6 and for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1933. They are the fundamental equations for quantum mechanics, arguably no less important than Einstein’s equations of relativity that I discussed in my previous post.

This collection is essentially a book on philosophy, that starts off by explaining the role of statistics in physics, then the role of quantum mechanics in evolutionary biology, then a philosophical discourse on mind that leads to a discussion on religion and finally epistemology. It’s a slim volume, a little over 150 pages long (leaving aside his autobiographical sketches). Yet I would recommend that all philosophers and students of philosophy should read it. To quote Paul Davies on the back cover:

“In these little books [Schrodinger] set down … most of the great conceptual issues that confront the scientist who would attempt to unravel the mysteries of life. This combined volume should be compulsory reading for all students…”

According to Penrose’s Forward, this book influenced J.B.S. Haldane and Francis Crick. Considering that it’s over 60 years old and was written before the discovery of DNA, it gives a remarkable insight into the role of mutations in evolutionary biology. Not only that, but Schrodinger explains the role of quantum mechanics in creating mutations. But he begins by explaining how virtually all of physics is statistical, giving examples ranging from Brownian motion, to the physics of magnetism, to radioactivity. His salient point is that, in each of these cases, no one can say when an individual element (atom) might change or react, but statistically they all follow strict mathematical rules. This is a mystery that struck me when I studied physics in high school, and here is a Nobel Prize winning physicist confirming what I thought then: it’s a facet of nature that defies our intuitive logic yet it’s been proven in virtually every arena of physics. We can’t predict the outcome of an individual element but we can predict the overall outcome with preternatural accuracy. He also explains the role of scale: the magnitude of numerical atoms or molecules that make up the smallest physical entities, which is what gives statistical power to many of nature’s dynamics.

Schrodinger then addresses the fundamentals that make life unique, including the fact that every cell contains the ‘code’, effectively the ‘blueprint’ that determines every facet of an organism like us. Remember, this is decades before the structure of DNA was discovered, yet Schrodinger explains how ‘isomers’ can create a code analogous to the way Morse code can be created by just dots and dashes, and this code determines how a life form functions, appears and grows.

His book is full of these little treasures – so obvious when he points them out – yet never really contemplated by most of us. One name that keeps appearing throughout this volume is Ludwig Boltzman, whom Schrodinger considered of no less significant to our knowledge of physics than Planck or Einstein. He explains the contribution that Boltzman made to thermodynamics, and entropy in particular, including the simple mathematical equation that encapsulates it. He also explains the role this has on the ‘arrow of time’. Few people appreciate that entropy determines the direction of time in physics, not relativity nor quantum mechanics. This was first pointed out to me by Penrose, in his book The Emperor’s New Mind. But Schrodinger covers it better still (only in the second part on Mind). He explains it by evoking statistical outcomes and the very simple analogy of shuffling a pack of cards. How many times would you need to shuffle a pack to get it in the right order. In effect this is entropy, and it’s like trying to reorganise the molecules of a broken egg to return it to its unbroken state.

On the subject of life and entropy, he addresses the fact that life alone seems to defy the second law of thermodynamics (actually, it doesn’t, otherwise we wouldn’t die). Nevertheless, life has a dynamism unlike non-organic molecular structures that defies our intuition. Schrodinger introduces the term, ‘negative entropy’, to explain how organisms increase the entropy of the environment; effectively the expense they impose for keeping themselves alive, whether they be primates like us, or bees, or trees in a forest.

In his short treatise on Determinism and Free Will, which he writes as an ‘Epilogue’ to the first set of lectures, he ventures, without apology, into the metaphysical, and acknowledges an influence by Aldous Huxley, specifically his The Perennial Philosophy. Early in this essay he says: “…I wish to emphasize that in my opinion , and contrary to the opinion upheld in some quarters, quantum indeterminancy plays no biological relevant role … except perhaps by enhancing their purely accidental character in such events as meiosis, natural and X-ray-induced mutation and so on…”

I find this a strange declaration, since he had just elaborated at length on the role of quantum mechanics in mutations, which are the causal factors in evolutionary biology, with natural selection being nature’s scythe so to speak. In the previous passage to the one quoted, Schrodinger emphasises that quantum mechanics is ‘statistico-deterministic’, which means that determinism is not completely eliminated by quantum phenomena as many people seem to believe. However, mutations are purely chance and, importantly, rare events, which Schrodinger explains in detail in the body of his lectures, so biological evolution is far from deterministic at its root cause.

It’s impossible in the space I’ve allotted myself here, to do justice to Schrodinger’s book, but whilst it’s full of gems from the opening pages, it’s towards the end that it becomes truly philosophical. Schrodinger tackles the problem of mind in a way that one rarely finds. For a start, he points out that we tend to ignore ‘the elephant in the room’, though, of course, he doesn’t use that phrase, whereby it’s only through mind that the universe has any meaning at all. And that, when we examine the universe - exactly in the way he has throughout the book - we effectively pretend that mind is not part of it. I’ve attempted to address this myself in a previous post on Subjectivity: The Mind's I (June 09). Schrodinger uses the term ‘objectivation’ which he’s obviously coined himself to highlight this point. He alludes to religion (specifically the Eastern religion of the Upanishads) by postulating that there is ‘one mind’ not many, without which the universe would not exist, not because it requires a God to create it, but because, there would be no reason for it to exist without mind. I may not be doing him justice here, so I would beg you read his words yourself, but that’s how I interpret him. I can actually see his point, and I’ve made similar arguments myself: without consciousness there is no point to the universe at all. I need to point out, by the way, that Schrodinger rejected orthodox religion early in his life, and he makes almost no reference to God, except, at one point, to acknowledge: "when God is experienced.. he must be missing in the space-time picture" just like our minds are.

He talks at length about 3 philosophers he considers significant: Plato, Kant and Einstein, all relating to epistemology. In regard to Plato, he gives easy-to-follow examples in both geometry and arithmetic to demonstrate “...true relations whose truth is not only unassailable, but is obviously there forever; the relations held and will hold irrespective of our inquiry into them. A mathematical truth is timeless, it does not come into being when we discover it.”

Then he proceeds to Kant, giving one of the best accounts I’ve read concerning Kant’s controversial views on space and time, which leads to the discussion on the ‘arrow of time’ (and Boltzman’s resolution that I referenced earlier). “He [Kant] would show plainly that space was necessarily infinite and believed firmly that it was in the nature of the human mind to endow it with the geometrical properties summarized by Euclid.”

This leads to Einstein who revealed that space and time are not independent as Kant thought, and is not Euclidean either. However, Schrodinger makes the following point: “Einstein has not – as you sometimes hear – given the lie to Kant’s deep thoughts on the idealization of space and time; he has, on the contrary, made a step towards its accomplishment.”

I’m not sure I agree with Schrodinger on this particular point. Space and time do exist outside the human mind – in fact, space-time is arguably the very fabric of the universe – which, on the surface, does put the lie to Kant’s interpretation as I’ve read it in his Critique of Pure Reason. Having said that, Schrodinger does argue that it is only mind that sees time as past, present and future, and that is an insight that is undeniable as it is obvious. It brings us back to the question: what meaning does the universe have without mind? Einstein showed that time is (relativistically) dependent on the observer, and to that extent, one could say relativity theory supports Kant’s contention of time being internal.

Lastly, Schrodinger touches on a point that is at once obvious, yet rarely, if ever, contemplated, which he calls: “The Mystery of the Sensual Qualities”. In particular, he discusses colour and sound, and he discusses both of them in depth, explaining that, whilst they are both frequency-dependent, the means in which we perceive them and they are propagated are entirely different. For example, colours of quite different frequencies can be mixed to produce a new colour of a frequency that is identical to a single colour of the same frequency and we can’t sense the difference. On the other hand, when sounds of different frequencies are mixed, as in music, we have no trouble in delineating them. But that’s not the main point he is making. The main point is that, whilst we can perform experiments with instruments to give ‘objective’ analysis of colours and sounds, we can’t objectively identify the sensing of them – that is entirely a ‘subjective’ affair. I’ve made this point myself in other posts. It’s why I argue that AI will never ‘sense’ colours and sounds like we do. In fact, it’s why I argue that AI will never have ‘mind’. Schrodinger argues this point better than any other author I’ve read. Of course, he makes no mention of AI, even though Turing had already set that ball rolling in Schrodinger’s own time.

In his autobiographical notes, Schrodinger explains how he learnt English (from an Aunt) even before he had learnt to write German. (He also mentions in passing that his mother’s Aunt had ‘six Angora cats’, which is the only reference to cats in the entire volume.) He was conscripted in the first World War, but spent World War 2 in Dublin; in fact, from 1939 through to 1956, for which he considered himself very fortunate. He called it “My Long Exile, but without the bitter association of the word, as it was a wonderful time.”

Schrodinger’s transcribed lectures are provocative, erudite and articulate. He makes you think deeply about topics and philosophical issues that are common place yet are fundamentally and inexplicably profound. It is one of the best philosophical books I’ve read and I’m surprised it’s not a prescribed text, though perhaps it is in some parts of the world. I know I will read it again.

Many people, in fact most, whether they be scientists, philosophers or theologians, will disagree with Schrodinger. But that’s not the point. The point is that he makes you think about issues you believe you have resolved when you almost certainly haven’t.