Related papers: Schr\"{o}dinger's "What is Life?" at 75

The origin of life is often framed primarily as a chemical problem, yet life's defining feature is evolution. Advances in geochemistry, prebiotic chemistry, and molecular biology have produced diverse scenarios for the emergence of genomes,…

Physical emergence - crystals, rocks, sandpiles, turbulent eddies, planets, stars - is fundamentally different from biological emergence - amoeba, cells, mice, humans - even though the latter is based in the former. This paper points out…

If the results of the first LHC run are not betraying us, many decades of particle physics are culminating in a complete and consistent theory for all non-gravitational physics: the Standard Model. But despite this monumental achievement…

In this short report the first attempt of a new approach to the still mysterious phenomenon of the life, and its peak, the human being, is presented from the view point of the natural sciences, i.e. of the physics in the broad sense of the…

We draw a picture of physical systems that allows us to recognize what is this thing called "time" by requiring consistency not only with our notion of time but also with the way time enters the fundamental laws of Physics, independently of…

The Wheeler -- DeWitt equation was proposed 50 years ago and until now it is the cornerstone of most approaches to quantization of gravity. One can find in the literature the opinion that the Wheeler -- DeWitt equation is even more…

Darwinian Theory depicts life as being overwhelmingly consumed by a fight for survival in a hostile environment. However, from a thermodynamic perspective, life is a dynamic, out of equilibrium process, stabilizing and coevolving in concert…

The Schrodinger equation based on the de Broglie wave is the most fundamental equation of the quantum mechanics. There can be no doubt about it's prediction validity. However, the probabilistic interpretation on the quantum mechanics has…

Evolution is the fundamental physical process that gives rise to biological phenomena. Yet it is widely treated as a subset of population genetics, and thus its scope is artificially limited. As a result, the key issues of how rapidly…

This is a pedagogical introduction to Brownian motion on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Einstein's 1905 paper on the subject. After briefly reviewing Einstein's work in its contemporary context, we pursue some lines of further…

This short text summarizes the work in biology proposed in our book, Perspectives on Organisms, where we analyse the unity proper to organisms by looking at it from different viewpoints. We discuss the theoretical roles of biological time,…

Basic problems in complex systems are surveyed in connection with Life. As a key issue for complex systems, complementarity between syntax/rule/parts and semantics/behavior/whole is stressed. To address the issue, a constructive approach…

Despite great advances in our understanding of the formation of the Solar System, the evolution of the Earth, and the chemical basis for life, we are not much closer than the ancient Greeks to an answer of whether life has arisen and…

The probability that life spontaneously emerges in a suitable environment (abiogenesis) is one of the major unknowns in astrobiology. Assessing its value is impeded by the lack of an accepted theory for the origin of life, and is further…

This paper proposes a systemic perspective for some aspects of both phylogenesis and ontogenesis, in the light of the notion of biological organization as negative entropy, following some hints by Schroedinger. To this purpose, we introduce…

One of the most interesting unsolved questions in science today is the question of life on other planets. At the present time it is safe to say that we do not have much of an idea as to whether life is common or exceedingly rare in the…

Life is characterized by a myriad of complex dynamic processes allowing organisms to grow, reproduce, and evolve. Physical approaches for describing systems out of thermodynamic equilibrium have been increasingly applied to living systems,…

Eugene Wigner famously argued for the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" for describing physics and other natural sciences in his 1960 essay. That essay has now led to some 55 years of (sometimes anguished) soul searching ---…

Life is a complex biological phenomenon represented by numerous chemical, physical and biological processes performed by a biothermodynamic system/cell/organism. Both living organisms and inanimate objects are subject to aging, a biological…

One of the main activities in science teaching, and in particular in Physics teaching, is not only the discussion of both modern problems and problems which solution is an urgent matter. It means that the picture of an active and alive…