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Erwin Schrodinger – What is Life?

From all that we have learnt about the structure of living matter, we must be prepared to find it working in a manner that cannot be reduced to the ordinary laws of physics.  To put it crudely, an engineer, familiar with heat engines only, will after inspecting the construction of an electric motor, be prepared to find it working along principles which he does not yet understand.  He finds the copper familiar to him in kettles, used here in the form of long long wires wound round in coils; the iron familiar to him in levers as bars and steam cylinders, is here filling the interior of those coils of copper wire.  He will be convinced that it is the same copper and the same iron subject to the laws of Nature and he is right in that.  The difference in construction is enough to prepare him for an entirely different way of functioning.  He will not suspect that an electric motor is driven by a ghost because it is set spinning by the turn of a switch, without boiler and steam