【藏書角 Book Corner】What is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches

好書推介:《What is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches》

作者:埃爾溫·薛定格

這是三本書的合訂本。第一本是《生命是甚麼?》作者薛定格(Schrödinger)是偉大的物理學家,由於創立量子力學而獲頒諾貝爾獎。物理學家竟然大膽闖入生物學的世界,探討生命之謎,因此這本書受到極大關注。它寫於上世紀的四十年代,當時已知道遺傳密碼位於細胞核內,但密碼的形式仍無人知曉。薛定格從物理學角度猜想這密碼的形式,其洞見啟發了日後沃森(Watson)、克里克(Crick)和威爾金斯(Wilkins)研究DNA,最終發現了DNA的雙螺旋結構。第二本是《思維與物質》。雖然作者最後還未能揭示思維的本質,但探討的過程卻使我們更了解科學的局限,甚至是人類的演化。第三本是作者的自傳:一個不平凡的腦袋,原來有著不平凡的一生。

王永雄博士 (通識教育基礎課程副主任)

Book Recommendation:What is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches

Author:  Erwin Schrödinger

This is a bound volume of three books. The first title is What is Life? The author Erwin Schrödinger was a great physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his contribution to quantum physics. It can be imagined that this book drew much attention because a physicist broke into the biological world and talked about the mystery of life. This book was written in the 1940s when the language of genetic information was not known though genes were known to be in the cell nucleus. Schrödinger attempted to find out the language of genetic information and his insight inspired the discovery of the double-helical structure of the DNA by Watson, Crick and Wilkins. The second title is Mind and Matter. Although Schrödinger eventually could not unveil the nature of the human mind, the process of exploration lets us know more about the limitation of science and even human evolution. The third title is Schrödinger’s autobiography: an unusual mind lived an unusual life.

Dr. Wong Wing Hung

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