What is life? The observer prescriptive

Abstract

In his famous book, “What is life?”, Erwin Schrödinger defines biological processes as processes that decrease entropy. As accurate as this description is, entropy reduction is not unique to animate processes; therefore, this definition does not clearly distinguish between animate and inanimate processes. Relying on previous works, which showed that in quantum-like processes the collapse resulting from measurements defines the concept of an observer’s personal interpretation, we present life as a comprehensive quantum-like measurement process that interprets reality. Furthermore, we show that this process decreases entropy, in agreement with Schrödinger’s definition.

Topics & Concepts