What is Life? Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions

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. Contents:All the Colors of a Rainbow in a Worm or: What is Life? (R Eichelbeck)Life — A Problem Inherent in the Research Context (F-T Gottwald)Truth and Knowledge (W Schommers)The Formative Powers of Developing Organisms (L V Beloussov)Communication — Basis of Life (L von Klitzing)On the Essence of Life — A Physical but Nonreductionistic Examination (H-J Fischbeck)Biophoton and the Quantum Vision of Life (R P Bajpai)Quantum Mechanics, Computability Theory and Life (J Swain)and other papers Readership: Scientists interested in the life sciences and related subjects. Keywords: