Impact-driven category spotlight — Erwin Schrödinger
“The task is…not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.” — Erwin Schrödinger
Physics. Hated every second of it in high school. My physics teacher hated me. The feeling was mutual. The only things I can remember are Newton and his three laws of motion. And the whole neutrons, protons, and electrons bit. Oh and loved playing with magnets. But that’s about the gist of my relationship with physics.
But I have always found it to be fascinating. You know those sci-fi movies when the physicist saves the day or when Sheldon ranted on about it in Big Bang Theory.
That being said, I can’t yet believe I’m writing this blog post. But this post isn’t just about physics it's also about biology. So I guess it makes sense. Given I adored biology and my high school teacher — Ms. Shivanthi.
I do love science as a whole. And the answers it continuously provides us. I am in awe of impact-driven individuals who are willing to put their theories out there. Long before it will ever be understood and accepted.
Can you imagine being Nicolaus Copernicus in 1507? Suggesting that the planets revolved around the sun? Just by observing with the naked eye. He had no tools to prove this. This is what impact-driven category design is all about! And individuals like Copernicus are early impact-driven category creators.
This heliocentric theory made Copernicus the father of astronomy.
I’m sure we have all heard of Schrödinger’s cat? How it’s alive and dead? We may not fully understand it but we have definitely heard of the cat!
In the 1940s Schrödinger had already discovered quantum physics and was the greatest physicist of his time. He had already made an impact that would be felt for centuries. But people who want to create impact are always curious. They are constantly trying to find answers.
After quantum physics, Schrödinger wanted the answer to life. Present-day DNA and molecular biology. He wanted to explain how living organisms differed from non-living organisms. An article in the Guardian explains this far better than I could:
One of Schrödinger’s key aims was to explain how living things apparently defy the second law of thermodynamics — according to which all order in the universe tends to break down. — Source — https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/feb/07/wonders-life-physicist-revolution-biology
When Copernicus proposed heliocentric astronomy, pretty much everyone thought the earth was the center of the universe. Similarly, as Schrödinger explained “life” proteins were believed to be the basis of hereditary material.
But. Schrödinger argued otherwise. He claimed that it had to be a non-repetitive molecular structure. And that the hereditary molecule contained a “code-script”.
Here’s an excerpt from the What is Life book:
It is these chromosomes, or probably only an axial skeleton fiber of what we actually see under the microscope as the chromosome, that contain in some kind of code-script the entire pattern of the individual’s future development and of its functioning in the mature state.
As is always with such stories of human impact and advancement, not many people took it seriously at the time. But years later Schrödinger’s thesis formed the basis for Francis Crick and James Watson’s double helix model — Schrödinger’s aperiodic crystal.
Schrödinger was trying to find a connection between biology and physics that can develop the what is life “equation.” How the “laws of atoms” apply to living and creation.
But here’s why I love impact-driven category design. Its impact is far-reaching. And the interpretation can change depending on the individual and the time.
Today, Paul Davies, Sara Walker, and Lee Cronin have another way in which Schrödinger’s thesis can potentially be interpreted. Instead of trying to establish a link between atoms and living organisms. They are viewing them as being “conduits for information.”
Adam Frank has written an excellent article on this on Big Think. Here’s a revealing excerpt from that article:
Why is this new perspective so radical? What’s most important is it’s not reductive. That means it does not reduce life to “just” the laws governing quarks or whatever quarks are made of. Without a doubt, life is a physical system, but by creating and then harnessing intricate ballets of information flows, life does something amazing: it creates. The focus on networks of information flows means its laws may be emergent. Life’s laws would not, therefore, be encoded in the laws of quarks. Instead, they only emerge when enough matter is brought together in the right conditions for networks of information flows to become possible. That’s when novelty enters the universe. — Source- https://bigthink.com/13-8/what-is-life?rebelltitem=8#rebelltitem8
Let’s step back and absorb that for a second. If this is true, philosophically speaking, every novelty that happened, happened because it had the right conditions. You are here because the right conditions created not just your physical body but your mind! Isn’t that a beautiful thing?
Whether we fully understand Schrödinger’s aperiodic crystal or cat analogy one thing is certain — impact. Impact-driven category designers leave so much to individual interpretation. Be it, Copernicus, with astronomy or Schrödinger with quantum physics and the life equation.
Such individuals continuously push humanity beyond our comfort zone. They change the future but changing the present. They see the different in the everyday. They don’t see the present for what it is, they see the present for what it can be.
“Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear: Tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as ‘I am in the east and in the west, I am below and above, I am this whole world’. — Erwin Schrödinger.