Daniel Nicholson discusses how Schrödinger’s book ‘What is Life?’ shaped years of biology, research

In this episode of “Brain Inspired,” Paul Middlebrooks is joined by Daniel Nicholson, assistant professor of philosophy at George Mason University, to discuss Nicholson’s book “What is Life? Revisited.” The book tells the story of what led Erwin Schrödinger, a physicist, to write his influential book about biology in 1944. Steeped in debates about the nature of quantum physics, Schrödinger worried that the new view of quantum physics—that the world is inherently nondeterministic—would lead psychologists to embrace the idea of free will. Schrödinger’s “What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell” preceded the discovery of DNA and directly led to our modern mechanistic explanation framework in neuroscience.

Read the transcript.