“In Darwin's theory, you just have to substitute 'mutations' for his 'slight accidental variations' (just as quantum theory substitutes 'quantum jump' for 'continuous transfer of energy'). In all other respects little change was necessary in Darwin's theory…”

—  Erwin Schrödinger , book What Is Life?

What Is Life? (1944)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In Darwin's theory, you just have to substitute 'mutations' for his 'slight accidental variations' (just as quantum the…" by Erwin Schrödinger?
Erwin Schrödinger photo
Erwin Schrödinger 67
Austrian physicist 1887–1961

Related quotes

“String theory has a close relationship to quantum field theory — indeed in some sense it encompasses all interesting quantum field theories.”

Michael Green (physicist) (1946) British physicist
Michio Kaku photo

“It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.”

Michio Kaku book Hyperspace

Source: Hyperspace (1995), Ch.12 Colliding Universes

Lee Smolin photo

“Combine general relativity and quantum theory into a single theory that can claim to be the complete theory of nature. This is called the problem of quantum gravity.”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next (2007)

“If quantum communication and quantum computation are to flourish, a new information theory will have to be developed.”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 25, Zeilingers Principle, Information at the root of reality, p. 231

“There can be no question that Darwin had nothing like sufficient evidence to establish his theory of evolution.. . . His general theory, that all life on earth had originated and evolved by a gradual successive accumulation of fortuitous mutations, is still, as it was in Darwin’s time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support and very far from that self-evident axiom some of its more aggressive advocates would have us believe.. . . One might have expected that a theory of such cardinal importance, a theory that literally changed the world, would have been something more than metaphysics, something more than a myth.”

Michael Denton book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis

Source: Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 69, 77, 358

Stephen Hawking photo

“Einstein was confused, not the quantum theory.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Lecture at the Amsterdam Symposium on Gravity, Black Holes, and String Theory (21 June 1997)

Shiraz Minwalla photo

“With the string calculations to guide you can then correct these predictions. The corrected general expectations then apply to all quantum field theories, not just those very symmetric ones that string theory is able to analyse in detail.”

Shiraz Minwalla (1972) Indian physicist

Interview in The Hindu (2013)
Context: The improved understanding of the equations of hydrodynamics is general in nature; it applies to all quantum field theories, including those like quantum chromodynamics that are of interest to real world experiments. I think this is a good (though minor) example of the impact of string theory on experiments. At our current stage of understanding of string theory, we can effectively do calculations only in particularly simple — particularly symmetric — theories. But we are able to analyse these theories very completely; do the calculations completely correctly. We can then use these calculations to test various general predictions about the behaviour of all quantum field theories. These expectations sometimes turn out to be incorrect. With the string calculations to guide you can then correct these predictions. The corrected general expectations then apply to all quantum field theories, not just those very symmetric ones that string theory is able to analyse in detail.

Steven Wright photo

“My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“Although quantum theory involves the use of nonlocal states, such as wave packets and entangled states, there is nothing in the theory, or in the real world so far as it is accurately described by quantum theory, that corresponds to the sorts of instantaneous nonlocal influences which have often been thought to arise in the situation envisaged in the EPR paradox, or implied by the fact that quantum theory violates Bell inequalities.”

Robert Griffiths (physicist)

"Quantum Locality", Found Phys (2011) 41: 705–733

Albert Einstein photo

“The development during the present century is characterized by two theoretical systems essentially independent of each other: the theory of relativity and the quantum theory. The two systems do not directly contradict each other; but they seem little adapted to fusion into one unified theory.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"The Fundamentals of Theoretical Physics," (1940) as quoted in Out of My Later Years (1976)
1940s

Related topics