The Schrödinger Paradox
Now Schrödinger would try to link life with the underlying theorems of thermodynamics. How is order ensured, given that systems of microparticles tend toward disorder? Schrödinger caught sight of the problem. Consider a copy machine: if you copy a copy, it gets dimmer; if you copy that copy, it gets dimmer and duller still. While organisms do lose features of their parents, their copying fidelity is astonishing; and they sometimes progress or improve, evolving complex refinements, sometimes whole new features. How do organisms perpetuate (and even increase) their organization in a universe governed by the second law? We call this "the Schrödinger paradox."
The basic resolution of the Schrödinger paradox is simple: Organisms continue to exist and grow by importing high-quality energy from outside their bodies. They feed on what Schrödinger termed "negative entropy"—the higher organization of light quanta from the sun. Because they are not isolated, or even closed systems.
Light is deemed the added organizing element that allows for the possibility of evolution, and increase in "order".
But this is not a "proof", it is only an explanation of what must be true in order for evolution to take place in a cell that would other wise "not" increase in order.
Evolution is presumed to be true and Schrödinger is trying to explain how entropy is over come by living cells.
The circular argument goes like this.
We know that evolution is true because sunlight organizes cells.
We know that sunlight organizes cells because evolution is true.
Cells go from order to order and order to less order, but they do not go from order to more order.
--Dave
