What Is Life? Scientific Approaches And Philosophical Positions

Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions

Hans-peter Durr, Fritz Albert Popp, Wolfram Schommers

• Publisher: World Scientific
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9789812706560
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Biophysics
• Index: Biological Sciences

The book of Erwin Schrödinger about life evokes a variety of basic questions concerning the understanding of life in terms of modern physics rather than biochemistry. Problems of organization and regulation of biological systems cannot be understood by revealing only the chemical processes of the living state. A group of reputable physicists — among them the followers of Heisenberg and Fröhlich — and biologists came to this same conclusion through several workshops on this topic. This book contains their contributions, written from different viewpoints of theoretical physics and modern biology. These articles are valuable not only for understanding life, but also for creating new and non-invasive diagnostic and therapeutic tools in medicine; they also contribute importantly to a deeper understanding of evolutionary processes, including the development of consciousness.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword
• List of Contributors
• Chapter 1 All the Colors of a Rainbow in a Worm or: What is Life? Reinhard Eichelbeck
• Chapter 2 Life — A Problem Inherent in the Research Context Franz-Theo Gottwald
• Chapter 3 Truth and Knowledge Wolfram Schommers
• Chapter 4 The Formative Powers of Developing Organisms Lev V. Beloussov
• Chapter 5 Electromagnetic, Symbiotic and Informational Interactions in the Kingdom of Organisms Gunter M. Rothe
• Chapter 6 Dead Molecules and the Live Organism Roeland Van Wijk
• Chapter 7 Inanimate and Animate Matter: Orderings of Immaterial Connectedness — The Physical Basis of Life Hans-Peter Dürr
• Chapter 8 Communication — Basis of Life Lebrecht von Klitzing
• Chapter 9 Can Biological Effects Emerge from Inorganic Nano-Systems? Michael Rieth and Wolfram Schommers
• Chapter 10 Substantial and Non-Substantial Structure in Living Systems Jiin-Ju Chang (Jinzhu Zhang)
• Chapter 11 On the Essence of Life — A Physical but Nonreductionistic Examination Hans-Jürgen Fischbeck
• Chapter 12 Coherent Excitations in Living Biosystems and Their Implications: A Qualitative Overview G. J. Hyland
• Chapter 13 Biophotonics — A Powerful Tool for Investigating and Understanding Life Fritz-Albert Popp
• Chapter 14 Biophoton and the Quantum Vision of Life R. P. Bajpai
• Chapter 15 Quantum Mechanics, Computability Theory and Life John Swain
• Chapter 16 Bose–Einstein Condensation of Photons, Does it Play a Vital Role in the Understanding of Life? Eberhard Müller
• Index