"As an example he mentions diffusion, which can be modeled as a highly ordered process, but which is caused by random movement of atoms or molecules. If the number of atoms is reduced, the behavior of a system becomes more and more random. Life greatly depends on order and that a naive physicist may assume that the master code of a living organism has to consist of a large number of atoms.
The hereditary mechanism, the important role mutations play in evolution. The carrier of hereditary information has to be both small in size and permanent in time, contradicting the naive physicist's expectation. This contradiction cannot be resolved by classical physics.
Molecules, which are indeed stable even if they consist of only a few atoms, as the solution. Even though molecules were known before, their stability could not be explained by classical physics, but is due to the discrete nature of quantum mechanics. Furthermore mutations are directly linked to quantum leaps.
true solids, which are also permanent, are crystals. The stability of molecules and crystals is due to the same principles and a molecule might be called "the germ of a solid." On the other hand an amorphous solid, without crystalline structure, should be regarded as a liquid with a very high viscosity. the heredity material to be a molecule, which unlike a crystal does not repeat itself. an aperiodic crystal. The aperiodic nature allows to encode an almost infinite number of possibilities with a small number of atoms.
Schrödinger states:
...living matter, while not eluding the "laws of physics" as established up to date, is likely to involve "other laws of physics" hitherto unknown, which however, once they have been revealed, will form just as integral a part of science as the former.
The statement is open to misconception and tries to clarify it. The main principle involved with "order-from-disorder" is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, according to which entropy only increases. The living matter evades the decay to thermodynamical equilibrium by feeding on negative entropy. Life is based on a different principle, "order-from-order."
The "order-from-order" is not absolutely new to physics; in fact, it is even simpler and more plausible. But nature follows "order-from-disorder", with some exceptions as the movement of the celestial bodies and the behaviour of mechanical devices such as clocks. But even those are influenced by thermal and frictional forces. The degree to which a system functions mechanically or statistically depends on the temperature. If heated, a clock ceases to function, because it melts. Conversely, if the temperature approaches absolute zero, any system behaves more and more mechanically. Some systems approach this mechanical behaviour rather fast with room temperature already being practically equivalent to absolute zero.
By Schrödinger
