Reddit mentions of What is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches (Canto Classics)

I recommend this essay for anybody who has a physics background and wants to get an appreciation of biology. I would also strongly encourage any reader of "What if Life?" to follow it up right away with "Mind and Matter" (they are usually packaged together). The philosophical contrast between the two is amazing, and seeing how Schrodinger held these two philosophies (one very reductionist and the other very holistic) together in his mind is an amazing experience. Reading those two essays was a very transformative event for me.

In Mind and Matter, Schrodinger also explores the connections to eastern religion (more accurately would be to say: Schopenhauer's conceptions and retelling of eastern religion) in a much more beautiful and insightful way than Capra's later mess of quantum mechanics and eastern mysticism. He achieves this by clearly making all connections at philosophical and metaphorical levels and never bringing in quantum mechanics (or any other Scientism) even though he is well versed in it.

What Is Life: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches by Erwin Schroedinger

I can't recommend this book enough. Even though it's a relatively short read it eloquently condenses so much information it's almost mind boggling. Science! Fuck yea!

What is Life? By Erwin Shrodinger is a beautiful little book that was based on a series of public lectures given at the Dublin Institute for Advance Studies. It's only about 200 pages but it is full of great science and thinking. One of my favorites.

You realize that there is often more than one solution to a problem, more than one way to derive some mathematical result. Sometimes, a particular solution is desirable, conveys more useful information, conforms to physical reality (rather than a vector in Hilbert Space). The solutions provided by SQM involve basis sets.

From wiki:
In modern computational chemistry, quantum chemical calculations are performed using a finite set of basis functions. When the finite basis is expanded towards an (infinite) complete set of functions, calculations using such a basis set are said to approach the complete basis set (CBS) limit. In this article, basis function and atomic orbital are sometimes used interchangeably, although it should be noted that the basis functions are usually not true atomic orbitals, because many basis functions are used to describe polarization effects in molecules.

I have a hard time calling that "simple". SQM calculations require use of parameters that are not physical constants. There are many basis sets, like there are many ways to interpret QM.

I have no doubt that very precise and accurate answers can be calculated using quantum methods. Mills does not deny this, either. He states that the numbers so calculated are meaningless, even if accurate, because the math is worthless, being a kludge.

Look, Schrodinger himself wrote that quantum jumps are equal to epicycles, an obviously discredited kludge, synonymous with "fudging". Perhaps it would be wise to reconsider concepts you have that have been abandoned by the originator. I can send you his essay, "Are There Quantum Jumps?". It's in this book:
https://www.amazon.com/What-Life-Autobiographical-Sketches-Classics/dp/1107604664/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519429210&sr=8-1&keywords=what+is+life+schrodinger