Yale University, School of Architecture

The Housing of Entropy: On Schrdinger's Code-Script Author(s): Edward Eigen Reviewed work(s): Source: Perspecta, Vol. 35, Building Codes (2004), pp. 62-73 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of Perspecta. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1567344 . Accessed: 18/03/2012 11:12
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EdwardEigen

The

Housing

of

Entropy

In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance offamiliar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper.... The frank realization that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances. A. S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (I 928)

under delivered I Basedon lectures

the auspices of the Dublin Institute for

Studiesat Trinity Advanced College,

Dublin, in February 1943, What is Life? The Physical Basis of the Living Cell was originally published in 1944.

in thisessayareto the All references Cantoedition:ErwinSchr6dinger,

What is Life? with Mind and Matter and AutobiographicalSketches

University (Cambridge: Cambridge

Press, 1992). Schrodinger's arrival in Dublin marked the beginning of the

periodthat,in his"Autobiographical
Sketches,"he referred to "My Long Exile (1939-56)." 2 This characterization of What is

fromEvelynFoxKeller, Life?derives
RefiguringLife: Metaphors of Twentieth-CenturyBiology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 69.

"Life,Thermo3 L6onBrillouin, in Harvey andCybernetics," dynamics

Leff and Andrew Rex (eds.), Maxwell's Demon. Entropy,Information, Computing(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 93. 4 Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny," [I919] in The StandardEdition of the Complete Psychological Worksof Sigmund Freud, 24 vols., trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press,
1953-74), XVII. 220.

Whatis Life?This is the questionaddressed by Erwin in in the seriesof lectureshe delivered Schr6dinger February1943fromthe securityof his self-imposed in Dublin.1 The veryambitionevincedin the title "exile" have seemed had the Nobel laureate might preposterous, physicistnot used the occasionto outlinethe quantum Codemechanical designof life'sgenetic"code-script." explainscriptwas DNA avantla lettre.For Schr6dinger, natureof its molecularstructure (the ing the endurable so-calledaperiodiccrystal)wenthalfwaytoward for withstandlife'senigma,namelyits "gift" deciphering influenceof ing for long periodsof time the disturbing courseof eventsin Contraryto the irreversible entropy. nature,livingorganisms presented singularevidenceof of"orderfromorder." the (re)production Code-script Yet to life's was the key geneticimmortality. life's seemingexemptionfromthe secondlawof thermoor dynamicswas not the productof some nonphysical force.Its abilityto "keepgoing"stemmed supernatural a streamof orderon ratherfromits "concentrating the organismrestoresitselfby continually itself:" Or,as Schr6dinger "feedingon 'negative entropy.'"2 it in still morevividterms,the organismgoes expressed fromits environment." orderliness on by "sucking The organismis not a closed systemfatedby the second in the physicistLeon law to "deathby confinement," For Brillouin's phrase. Brillouin,who interpreted notion of negativeentropyin termsof Schrodinger's "confinement the new languageof cybernetics, implies in the existenceof perfectwalls,whicharenecessary orderto buildan idealenclosure....Do we reallyknow anyway to builda wall that could not let any radiationin In thus questioningthe physicalnatureof or out?"3 havepointedto Brillouinmightunwittingly confinement

Fig. I Brownian movement of a sinking droplet, from Erwin Schr6dinger's What is Life?

On

Code-Script Schrodinger's

of Schrodinger's the disjointedframework writingon it was as his life, including own-punctuated by periods and homelessness. of exile,wandering, Schr6dinger's approachin Whatis Life?was to ask, "Howcan the eventsin timeandspacewhichtakeplace withinthe spatialboundaryof a livingorganismbe accountedfor by physicsand chemistry?" By "spatial firstand he was of a referring boundary livingorganism" foremostto the cell, whathe calledthe "tinycentral carriedout the office"in and fromwhichcode-script workof orderinglife. Thismentionof the cell marksthe figuresof thoughtinto the migrationof architectural discourseof life.Articulated by analogyto a honeycomb, whichwas said to resemblea buildingmadeup of small those of a dwelling,the cell rooms(or cells),particularly itself an "unusually sheltersthe hereditary substance, That said, order." largemoleculeof highlydifferentiated examine to this of intention the is not it essay primary the physicaland chemicalaccountof eventsin timeand They are,to use space.Whataretheseevents,anyway? of life itself,preventing term,the "devices" Schrodinger's it from"fad[ing] awayinto a dead, inertlumpof matter," or whatphysicistscall "maximum (69). Rather, entropy" in drawingattentionto the questionof spatialboundary, to whatBrillouincalls"perfect walls"-includingthose life and death,as well as the livingand the separating dead-this essayexaminesthe rolethat conceptualand realarchitectures conceptionof playin Schrodinger's life'sgoverning anticipatplan, or code-script.Correctly of in terms of the code-script difficulty explicating ing ablyresortedto Schr6dinger physicsand chemistry, is both chromosome the To language. wit, figurative and executivepower-or, to use another "law-code craft-in one" simile,it is architect's plan and builder's 63

(22). To be sure,the similefits withinthe presentattempt to examinethe roleplayedby realand conceptual in Schrodinger's architectures writingon life.Yetthe discussiondoes not restwith the life of the cell but examines in and its oppositearedramatized how confinement Sketches" Schrodinger's elliptical"Autobiographical

(1960). Translatedand published for the first time as a

to the Cantoeditionof Whatis Life?, supplement on offersanotherlevelof (self)reflection the "Sketches" the eventsin time and spacethat shapea life (story). the wouldseemto haveappreciated Schr6dinger incentiveforjuxtaposingthe two texts,offeringas he did blandopinionthat"it takesboth a code the deceptively and civilizedhumansurroundings of chromosomes to producepeopleof our kind"(174).And indeed,while of Whatis Life?examinesthe molecularstructures how one can reveals the "Sketches" inheritance, painfully be kin but not kind.The autobiographical subjectof the "Sketches" neglectshis familialbonds and betrayshis worseyet, to his own thinking,he hereditary obligations; home unwiselyand unkindlycloses out his parents' The of his reversal father. of his followingthe death family'sfortune-in which,as an errantson, he felt himselfto play a part-becomes the text of his dreamlife. the dreamsequenceis in the "Sketches," As recorded
symptomatic of what Freud, in his 1919 essay on the

that the familiar describedas the realization "Uncanny," alreadycontainsthe unfamiliar-or life alreadycontains death--makingthe veryidea of the homelyunhomely.4 whichbeara relaIt is fromthe natureof thesereversals, of all things,thatclues tionshipto the entropictendency must also be coaxed. to the meaningof life'scode-script constitutedthe outlinesof What,for Schr6dinger, familiar(andfamilial)life?Tojudgefromthis essay's

Eigen-The Housing of Entropy

64 in his essay"Mindand epigraph,quotedby Schrodinger He the physicistis at home in a shadowyreality. Matter," stand which constructs and workswith models,pictures, But whichworld?How does the in for "theworlditself." of performance watching"a shadowgraph physicist's familiarlife"squarewith the autobiographer's sorting the case that the It is not simply throughmemory? offerssomethingapparentand sensiblethat is "Sketches" missingfrom Whatis Life?Almost the oppositeis true. that On at least two occasions,Schrodinger emphasizes a but rather idea" or entropyis not a "hazyconcept measurable by the equation: physicalquantityexpressed as "famousequation," S = k log D. LudwigBoltzmann's to it, may appearoffputtingto the referred Schr6dinger reader(this authorincluded).How is one nonspecialized it S is the organonof disorder; its meaning?5 to translate predictsthe dislimningof life'sfamiliaroutlines.It betweengenerations. Curiously, disruptscommunication monument Boltzmann's on the equationwas inscribed in whichsettingit serves CentralCemetery, in Vienna's as a particularly crypticmementomori. Biography, literallya formof life writing,wouldseemto restoreif not establishlife'sfamiliaroutlines.Yetthe act of writing in Boltzmann's itself is seeminglyimplicated equation. to of the As Schr6dinger things tendency explained, approacha chaoticstateis the sametendencythat the books in a libraryor the piles of paperon a writingdesk displayunlessdisorderis obviated."Theanalogueof heatmotion, in this case,is our handlingthose irregular objectsnow and againwithouttroublingto put them back in theirproperplace"(73). Puttingthingsin theirproperplaceis essentiallythe Architectural theorywas condisciplineof architecture. cernedthroughmuchof its historywith the natureof orderas'such;the specificoriginof the genera(orders)of columnsin divineand/ornaturalmodelswas the matter debate.Equally of frequentand occasionally illuminating as importantto the codificationof architectural theoryis insistenceon the partof the Romanauthor the rhetorical the so-calledfatherof architectural theory,on Vitruvius, ideasand practices: of exemplary the geneticimmortality Ourancestors,not only wiselybut also usefully, theirideas the practiceof transmitting established so that to posteritythroughthe reportsof treatises, theirideaswouldnot perish,but instead,as they grewwith each passingage and werepublishedin books, they wouldarrive,step by step,at the of learning.6 utmostrefinement in the workwas "rediscovered" WhenVitruvius's fifteenthcentury,the architectand scholarLeon Battista Albertihad legitimatecauseto grievethat"so many

(m
n ^ A r

. l

\\

o-

n 0 CD X
CD P

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(7

5 For Schr6dinger, Boltzmann's demonstration of the "directedness"of things in nature, the life-history of the organism from birth to death, the "arrow of time,"as Eddington called it, was simply the most important intellectual accomplishment between Kant's idealization of space and time and Einstein's theory of relativity. 6 Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Ingrid Rowland (New York: Cambridge University Press, I999), 85. 7 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, I988), 154.

IO A. S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World,cited in Gillian Beer, Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I996), I7I. 11 Notably, Schr6dinger makes no mention of George Beadle and Edward Tatum's important "one gene - one enzyme" theory of 194I . I2 On the "coding problem" see F H. C. Crick, J. S. Griffith, and L. E. Orgel, "Codes Without Commas," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 43:5 (May I5, I957), 4I6-2I.

8 Alberti, On the Art of Building, 3. 9 Erwin Schr6dinger, "Science, Theory, and Man," [New York, 1957] cited in Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, The EntropyLaw and the Economic Process (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 75.

65

worksof suchbrilliantwritershad been destroyed by the For time and these of chaotic man."7 Alberti, hostility a forceswerecounteracted by life-givingflame."How he wrote,"wouldhavetotally families," manyrespected adverbroughtdownby some temporary disappeared, sity,had not theirfamilyhearthharboredthem, welcomingthem, as it were,into the verybosom of their
ancestors?"8

with innumerable interspersed tiny specksof something,the electronsand the nucleiwhirling around,but alwaysseparated by distancesat least
I00oo,oootimes their own size. (120)

this legacy,is it not curiousthat the Considering settlesis spaceupon whichthe traumaof the "Sketches" In sellingoff its contents father's Schr6dinger's library? basis of the Schrodinger mortgagedthe intellectual "civilized humansurroundings" in whichhe himselfhad been raised.If keptin good order,the house is a principle sourceof low entropy;to paraphrase a well-known Schr6drefrain,it is a devicefor living(in). Revealingly, ingerfoundno betteranalogyfor the meaningof entropy than the chaos wroughtupon a libraryby the sudden humanagentof entryof an unrulymob, that definitive disorder.9 As it happens,the libraryin questionwas the focus of the so-calledgas calamityof 1918,whichforced his fatherto workunderthe light of noxiouscarbon of whichproved lamps,the physiological repercussions fatal. The"coding problem" The structure of the vital partsof livingorganisms, Schr6dinger explains,differsentirelyfromany piece of matter"everhandledphysically in our laboratories or mentallyat our writingdesks"(4). This firstsection examineshow Schr6dinger's metaphoric designof the and ultimately writingdesk (and by extensionthe library, spaceand time)fits withinthe samemodel of figurative usageas the simileof the "architect's plan and builder's Firstaboutthe desk:in his essay"Mindand craft." discussesthe giftedscientific Matter," Schrodinger expositorArthurEddington's pictureof physicalreality. As if to eulogizethe passingof familiarnotions of time and space,Eddingtonwrote:"I am standingon the thresholdaboutto entera room;it is a complicated business."'10 Eddingtonthenceoffereda parableof the two writingdesksto illustrate the businessat hand,giving senseto a flux of interpenetrated elementsungraspable words: by the intellect.In Schrodinger's Some readersmayremember A. S. Eddington's "twowritingdesks;" one is the familiarold piece of furniture at whichhe is seated,restinghis armson it, the otheris the scientific physicalbody which not only lacksall and everysensualqualitiesbut in additionis riddledwith holes;by far the greatest partof it is emptyspace,just nothingness,

The geniusof Whatis Life?is to treatthe geneticcode as if it werethis "oldpieceof furniture," somethingthatwas thatwas inheritedfromthe previousgenerafabricated, tion and destinedto be passedalong to the next. Schr6dinger beganinvestingthe geneticcode with familiarphysicality the molecule," the by "inventing aperiodiccrystal,in whichthe contentsof code-script wereborne.He suggestedthatif the regular, lattice-like geometryof solid matterwerelike ordinary wallpaper in whichthe samepatternis repeatedagainand again, the aperiodiccrystalline structure of the geneticfiberwas a "masterpiece of embroidery, In it there say a Raphael." is no dull repetitionbut ratheran "elaborate, coherent, meaningful designtracedby the greatmaster" (5). Every atom, everygroupof atoms,playsan individual role,not to that of other. such a entirelyequivalent any Only well-ordered associationof atomspossesseda varietyof possiblearrangements sufficiently largeto embodya
system of organic "determinations"(6I). Thus Schrod-

betweenthis ingerwritesof a possible"correspondence" "miniature code"and a highlycomplicated and specified of to plan organicdevelopment.1I According Schrodinger the great"revelation" of quantumtheorywas that of discreteness "features werediscovered in the Book of Thatis to say,so-calledsolidifyingforcesand Nature." thresholdenergies the permanence "vouchsafed" and of the molecule. On this basis it was stability possibleto a between this and imagine "correspondence" code-script a highlycomplicated and specified plan of organic Yetcode-script was not a set of fixedand development. unmovingsymbols.The geneticfiberwas at once reader, writer, translator, and, accordingto some accounts, editorof life'senigmatictext. Theseeditorialfunctionspresupposed, of course, that code-script was in some waylike a text. As with the Book of Books,with its narrative of Genesisand litany of begetting,the Book of Nature,seemingly compressed into code-script, containedexotericand esoteric No meanings. ordinary (or interpreter) interpretation woulddo. The firstgeneration of molecularbiologists, manyof whomwereinspiredby Whatis Life?,would makea disciplinary issue of the so-calledcoding in it a formalquestionof how genes problem,seeing themselvessifted"sense" from"nonsense" withinthe of the chromosome.12 Forwhile potentialdeterminations it is composedof discretesigns(codons),code-script has no extrinsic meaning;it simplyconstitutesa

Eigen-The Housing of Entropy

66 structure. differentiated) differentiating (andinternally If thereare signsin nature,then thesesignsmustbe read, was after,by contrast, aftera fashion.WhatSchr6dinger was nothingless than the philosophically intoxicating issue of beingand becoming.Indulgingin languagethat less becominga by his own accountwas "perhaps scientistthan a poet,"he made attemptsat approximatof the genetic betweenthe structure ing the relationship fiber(plan)and its rolein development (craft).The for Schr6dinger's poetic agonyis evident. inspiration fromthe Whatis Life?is punctuated by epigraphs writingsof JohannWolfgangvon Goethe,the master for whomthe essenceof poetic poet of metamorphosis, its adequately. languagewas inabilityto be paraphrased unadventurously By contrast,science,Schrodinger but at "aims claimed, nothing makingtrueand adequate
statements about its object" (I 17).

evokedas the idealreader To this end, Schrbdinger own an imaginary of code-script beingof physic's mind"conceivedby the the "all-penetrating parturition: de Laplace. physicistPierre-Simon eighteenth-century was an entityto whoseeyes"the "Intelligence" Laplace's
future, like the past, would be present"(21). Its combined

13 E. E. Daub, "Maxwell's Demon," in Maxwell's Demon, 37. 14 Fox Keller, RefiguringLife, 72. I5 Gaston Bachelard, Lautreamont (Paris: Librairie Jose Corti, 1956), 54-5I6 T. E. Hulme, "Romanticism and Classicism," in Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1924),
I32.

17 Letter dated December 22, I818, John Keats to George and Tom Keats, in Hyder Edward Rollins (ed.), The Letters of John Keats, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, I958), I. I9I.

18 Erwin Schr6dinger, Nature and the Greeks, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I996 [I954]), I8. 19 Schr6dinger,Nature and the Greeks, 56. 20 Robert Hahn, Anaximanderand the Architects: The Contribution of Egyptian and GreekArchitectural Technologiesto the Origin of Greek Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 200 I), I8 i. 2I Hahn, Anaximanderand the Architects, 3. 22 Max Delbriick, Nicolai W. Timofeeff-Ressovsky, and K. C. Zimmer, "Uber die Natur der Genmutation und der Genstruktur" [On the Nature of Genetic Mutation and Gene Structure], Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften
zu Gittingen (I935), 189-245.

previsionand retrospection capacityfor unerring the epigenetic allowedit to comprehend patterninscribed Thusit "couldtell from[thechromosome in code-script. whetherthe egg woulddevelop,under fibers']structure suitableconditions,into a blackcock or into a speckled a hen, into a fly or a maizeplant,a rhododendron, read beetle,a mouse or a woman"(2I). The Intelligence not only the adultformof an fromthe code-script of its pattern" organismbut also the "four-dimensional was the productof a The Intelligence development. eventsand predictable worldof reversible mechanical turns.By contrast,most discussionsof life and the secondlaw,Brillouin's included,evokeanotherimagiDemon. Maxwell's naryentity:JamesClerkMaxwell's as he was christened by William demon," "intelligent Thomson(LordKelvin),himselfthe authorof the meantto secondlaw,was born of a thoughtexperiment true.This show that the secondlawwas only statistically being"was capableof "veryobservantand neat-fingered moleculesby operatinga frictionless sortingindividual of gas, thereby two chambers slidingdoor separating the directionof heatflow.13 reversing nevermentionsMaxwell's Demon, Schrodinger two between the at chambers, the "doorkeeper" aperture whichwouldotherwisemutuallytend to maximum as EvelynFox Kellerhas However, equilibrium. does not manageto solve the observed,Schrodinger problemof life and secondlawwithoutrecourseto

67 somethingverylike the Demon. The deux ex machinain of the most his solutionreturnshiddenin the structure essentialpart of a livingcell:the chromosome.14 Evidentlythe discussionturnsagainto the questionof thresholdsand cells.Yetbeforesortingthe evidence, just largelyderivedfromthe "Sketches," suggesting how imperfectarethe wallsthat shelterlife, it seems of necessaryto examinethe interpretive consequences Schr6dinger's conceptionof the chromosomeas "architect'splan and builder's craft-in one."The Demon, for its part, occupiedthe architecture of a thoughtexperiment devisedto "picka hole"in the secondlaw of thermodynamics. Actingin the place of the Demon, order. code-scriptkeepsdisorderat bay by perpetuating similebetrayshis desireto Arguably, Schrodinger's the architecture of thoughtitself.Thatis, it penetrate makessensiblethe events-coding, sorting,determining, sheltering-that takeplacewithinthe boundaryof the
living organism.

"Allimagesof innerfire," Gaston Bachelard writes, "hiddenfire,firesmoldering beneaththe cinders,in short,of firethat is unseenand hencedemands are'imagesof life."''5 simile metaphors, Schrodinger's his readerto the Demon'sstationat the door transports betweenorderand disorder, betweenlife and heat death. This suggestionis borneout by attendingto the whatof metaphoric usageas well as to the how.Schrodinger that the literarycritic deployedthe set of instruments T. E. Hulmemetaphorically calledthe "architect's curves." Thesearethe templatesthe architectuses to drawnonorthogonallines,whenthe "normal" meansof the T-square is of no use. By a suitableselectionfrom thesehe could producenearlyany curvehe liked.16 Figurallanguage(as represented by so manyliteral curvesor figurative tropes)can neverand ought not fit its object.Rather,it nurtures the qualitythat precisely the poet JohnKeatsonce calledNegativeCapability, that is, "whena man is capableof beingin uncertainties, doubts,withoutanyirritable mysteries, reachingafter In fact, Schr6dinger fact and reason."'7 addressed what he calledthe "competition of reasonv. senses"in a discussionof the originalimportationof architectural into cosmologicalthought,a genreof writing techniques fromwhich Whatis Life?clearlydescends. As if to test the mechanisms of intellectual inheritance,in his 1948seriesof lecturesNatureandthe Greeks examinedwhichelementsof Greekthought Schrodinger had been"takenoverby the fathersof modernscience." He arguedthat the legacyof antiquitywas not a body of immutable truthbut ratheraccidentaland contingent In otherwords,it reflected so many habitsof thought.18

stylesof makingsenseof the world.On the side of who werebent on reasonhe placedthe Pythagoreans, to number. Evenso, the edificeof nature" "reducing of a discoveryof the rationalsubdivisions Pythagoras's string-that is, musicalintervals-led to the composition of songs,the harmonyof which"maymoveus to tears." On the side of sense,he placedthe Milesianphusiologoi who appliedthemselves to abstract (naturedescribers) problemsaboutthe physicalconstitutionof the world basedon the evidenceof techne. Theirwayof thinking shows"tracesof the practicaloriginfromwhichit started."19 The most notableexampleis Anaximander's in termsof a syngraphe, cosmogony,whichwas rendered or the set of technicalspecifications commonlyproduced Justas often, these specifications were by an architect. or a physicalmodel.20 accompanied by a paradeigma, Anaximander the shapeof the cosmos:as imagined the philosopherRobertHahn has written,his explanatory modelsfor its law-likepatternswerederivedfrom the worldof makingand aboveall the architect's of monumental What undertaking templeconstruction.21 does Schr6dinger's self-styledreturnto antiquityreveal aboutthe roleplayedby plans,models,and more architecture in the projectof world-making? generally The modernphysicist,he explains,"plans" picturesand modelsfor the purposeof seeingwhetherthey confirm basedon experimental results,and thus expectations whetherthe picturesor modelsarethemselves adequate. offers his "General Picture of the Indeed,Schr6dinger in the chapterof Whatis Life? Substance" Hereditary entitled"Delbriick's Model Discussedand Tested." The Max Delbruick and his co-authorsdemonstrated physicist in theirfamousso-calledthree-man paperof 1935that mutation consisted of a "singleevent"that takes genetic in at a locus the substance.22 place specific hereditary Hereis the essentialeventin spaceand timeupon which the explanatory forceof quantumtheorywas to be focused.Thus Schrodinger addresses "TheUniqueness of the Picture," to singularfeaturesof Delreferring molecular model fromthe quantummechanical briick's "Order, point of view.Yetin the followingchapter, Disorderand Entropy," he suggeststhatwhilethe model is coherentit offersno understanding of how the geneis he asks,"arewe going to put into operation."How," turn'conceivability' into trueunderstanding?" (67). The philosophical of Anaximander rebalances legacy the equationof mindand body;it bringsthe use of models(as opposedto theirshadowyessence)in linewith originin the worldof making.Senseand reasonboth havea partin furnishing "construction" Schr6dinger's of reality. But for Schrodinger the chief questionis how

Eigen-The Housing of Entropy

68 thatworldendures. Whatcould haveservedfor in The Schrbdinger place of Anaximinder's temple? of What in is fact coincides with the call by writing Life? for a "newmonumentality" architects followingthe allconsuminginfernoof the SecondWorldWar.As articulated by SiegfriedGiedion,the needwas to develop non-monumental meansfor creating (i.e., nonmassive) forms thatwill "constitute a heritagefor future symbolic is What in this statement is the generations."23 striking concernfor whatGiedionreferred to in his Space,Time, andArchitecture: TheGrowth of 1941 of a New Tradition as the questionof "architectural inheritance." Therehe wrotethat"historycan revealto our periodthe forgotten elementsof its being,just as our parentscan recover for us those childhoodand ancestral particularities whichcontinueto determine our naturesthoughthey are not foundin our memories."24 ConsiderSchr6dinger's dedicationof Whatis Life?: "Tothe Memoryof My Whilethe workpaysrespectto the departed Parents." himself prophetsof its own being,its authorconsidered to be "thebodilyheritageof his ancestors." He possessed their"chromosome He was theirliving treasure." memory. Thegas calamity to gather It is not necessaryto turnto the "Sketches" life. In the initialdiscussionof glimpsesof Schrodinger's in Whatis Life?,for instance, mechanism the hereditary notes the eventsthat took placewithinhis he improbably father's body in November1886(meiosis)thatled to his a long parenthetical own conception.More revealingly, asidein a discussionof"Different'States'of Matter" drawson Schrodinger's memoryof the asphalt-like for coffeein Viennaduringthe substancethat substituted FirstWorldWar.The ersatzcoffeewas initiallyrocksolid but overtime behavedas a liquid,closelypacking the vesselin whichit was kept;it was an exampleof the whichwas the oppositeof substance, "amorphous" That stuffof whichthe genewas built.25 the crystalline such a recollectionseepedinto his accountof the events in spaceand timethat takeplacewithinthe spatial boundaryof a livingorganismis not in itselfremarkable. localizesthe events Yetto the extentthat the "Sketches" theseboundaries. of a lifetime,it potentiallyredefines Thatis to say,it pointsbeyondthe cell to the identityof the household- the verywordsuggestinga particular formof bond(age)-as the primaryspaceof life-giving in the felicitous meaning.Its wallsconfineits inhabitants it is the essentialsourceof order senseof safekeeping; and assimilates. that the organismeats,drinks,breathes, the of narrative the "Sketches" turningpoint Tellingly,

23 Jos6 Luis Sert, Fernand Leger, and Siegried Giedion, "Nine Points on Monumentality,"in Joan Ockman (ed.), ArchitectureCulture, I943-i968 (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), 29. 24 Sert, L6ger, and Giedion, "Nine Points on Monumentality," 30. 25 Schrodinger expressed these two states of matter with the following "scheme of'equations"': molecule = solid = crystal; gas = liquid = amorphous. What is Life?, 59. 26 Walter Moore, Schr6dinger:Life and Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, I989), 115.

69

in the gas was the materialshortages, culminating

calamity of 1918, that spelled the end of housekeeping

and the deathof Schr6dinger's parents.By this time, had left home to pursuehis career however, Schr6dinger
in science.

The "Sketches" of severalof beginswith recollections Schr6dinger's personal,thoughnot unambivalent, He recallshis faithlessattachment to his relationships. friendFranzel,with whomhe studiedthe workof RichardSemon,whoseheterodoxviewswerebasedon the inheritances of acquiredcharacteristics. Thencome two figureswho most formidably shapedhis intellectual The firstwas FritzHasen6hrl,who was development. Boltzmann's successorat the Universityof Viennain
o906.Subject to long bouts of depression, Boltzmann

AlexanderBauer,who by the maternalgrandfather, rentedthe top-floorapartment to his daughterand sonin-law.Bauerhad not converted his house to electricity, in partbecauseRudolfhad becomeused to gaslight;thus they dependedon gas for heat and light. To makeup for the deficitin theirdailyallotment,Rudolfacquired carbonlampsthat he insistedon tendinghimself."A dreadfulstenchspreadfromhis beautifullibrary, which he had turnedinto a carbidelaboratory," Schr6dinger
recalls (17I). The setting of Rudolf's intellectual life

had committedsuicidein Duinojust weeksbefore enrolled.It was therefore Hasen6hrlwho Schr6dinger him to Boltzmann's introduced equationS = k log D, whichSchr6dinger judgedto be the most important in perception physicsto date.(Hasen6hrlwas killedin WorldWarI. Schrodinger's uneventful militaryservice duringthe waraffordedhim the leisureto readAlbert Einstein's theoriesfor the firsttime.)The otherfigureof was his father,Rudolph,"whoin the course consequence of those manyyears[they]livedtogetherdrew[him] into conversations concerninghis manyinterests,"
including morphology and Darwinism (I68). Rudolf's

successfullinoleumand oilclothbusinessallowedhim to spendmuchmoretime at home than most men at the time.The businessfailedin 1917due to wartime whichfact he kepthiddenfromhis son. shortages, For the Viennese,the warand its consequences meant that basicneedscould no longerbe met. In the discussion of orderand disorderin Whatis Life?,Schr6dinger writesthat everyprocess,event,or happeninggoing on in naturemeansan increaseof the entropyof the part of the worldin whichit occurs.In orderto freeitselffrom this fatalincrease,the livingorganismfeedsupon In the negativeentropydrawnfromits environment. "Sketches," hungeris keenlyfelt. Sociallife in its writes: customaryformcameto an end, Schr6dinger therewas simplynothingto offerguests.The resources of humansurroundings" whichgaveriseto people "civilized of one'skindwereno longeravailable. On balance,the

becamea literalgas chamber. Rudolfdied on Christmas Eve 1919in his old armchair. Wouldthat JamesClerk Maxwell's Demon had allowedout all the doorkeeping noxiousgas, therebymaintaining the library's rarified and reversing the inevitable, if not fated, atmosphere courseof events. At the time,Schr6dinger was happilyoccupiedat his research post afterservingfouruneventful yearsin the army(he spentthe last yearas a meteorologist), leaving his father"to his own devices." Whatfollowedwas as as the weather unpredictable patternshe observedduring the waryears.The rampantinflationof I920 meantthe of his father's life savings. The rapiddepreciation proceedsfromthe Persianrugsthat Rudolfhad earlier into sold, with Schrodinger's consent,"dissolved To makeends meet Schr6dinger nothing." began the contents of the home. "Gone for ever liquidating werethe microscopes, the microtomeand a good partof his library," whichSchr6dinger "gaveawayfor a song afterhis [father's] death." At this momentSchr6dinger movedto Jenawith his new wife,leavinghis mother"to fend for herself," a fact of whichhe was not proud.She bore the burdenalone of packingup and clearingout the afterher own fathergrewanxiousoverthe apartment rent.Schr6dinger's father-in-law founda renterin the personof a Jewishbusinessman workingfor the Phoenix insurance company,two noted detailsworthyof a dream narrative. "Somotherhad to leave,whereto I do not know." her deatha EvidentlySchr6dinger interpreted yearlaterin termsof the family'srealestate."Hadwe not been so blindwe wouldhaveforeseen...whatan excellent sourceof moneythe big, well-furnished flatcould have
proved for my mother had she lived longer" (172). The

of foresightof coursecoincideswith the impossibility

a Gemeinschaftskiichen kitchens) (community produced newformof sociability anddomestic the economy, women whoranthemcreating "meals outof nothing" Yet the situation turned from difficult to direwith (170). theenactment of gasrationing, which limited each household to onecubicmeter a day.TheSchr6dingers livedin a "rather in Vienna valuable building" purchased

increased disorder of events. latermadea public of whathe Schr6dinger expression cameto regard as his"neglected duties" toward his Yet it was the lost his parents.26 property, inheritance, andnot thedisappearance of hisparents-first from to trouble view,andthenfromtheworld-thatcontinued him.Schrodinger confided:

Eigen-The Housing of Entropy

70 For a long time aftermy father's death... a nightmarekeptrecurring againand again:my father was still aliveand I knewI had givenawayall his beautifulinstruments and botanicalbooks.What was he to do now thatI had rashlyand irretrievably the basisof his intellectual life?(I73) destroyed The instruments and books that furnished Rudolf's wereliquidated. libraryand laterhis carbonlaboratory Whatwas solid meltedinto air.Havingset himselfthe task of explainingthe durability of the gene structure, recountsin the "Sketches" how he carelessly Schrodinger was gaveawaypartof his own inheritance. Schrodinger his parents'realand mortal unableto settleproperly estates. is a curiousinversionof the The dreamnarrative of harrowing sequencein Freud'sTheInterpretation Dreamsthat examinesthe "mostanguishing mystery" whichlinksa fatherto the corpseof his dead son. Having to havean old man keepvigil overthe son's arranged body,the fatherrestsin an adjoiningroombut leavesthe door ajarso that he can look fromhis roominto the of next. In fact, the scenariopresentsa curiousmirroring Freudwrites, Maxwell's thoughtexperiment. After a few hours'sleep,the fatherhad a dream besidehis bed,caught that his childwasstanding to himreproachfully. himby thearmandwhispered He wokeup, don'tyou see I'mburning?" "Father, noticeda brightglareof light fromthe next room, had hurriedinto it and foundthe old watchman and droppedoff to sleepand that the wrappings one of the armsof his belovedchild'sdeadbody had beenburnedby a lightedcandlethat had fallen on them.27 a situation Accordingto Freud,the dreamrepresents that existsin the presentand is perceptible by the senses in the wakingstate.The expected like an experience perceptual sequenceis replacedby the livingson who speaksto the father.The watchman(the Demon?)who off to sleep." attendsthe deadhas himself"dropped of death,the In this inversion,tantamountto the reversal desireto see the son againis fulfilled,evenif his presence it is agonyto the father.In Schrodinger's dream-thought, is the son who is visitedby the father.It is the fatherwho his son for having returnsfromdeathto reproach basisof his intellectual dispensedwith the instrumental was not watchfulenough;he finally life. Schrodinger
allows, "I should have taken care of him better" (172).

27 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams [ 90oo],in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Worksof Sigmund Freud,v. 509. 28 Georges Canguilhem, A Vital Rationalist, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Zone Books, 1994), 319. 29 Moore, Schr6dinger,395. 30 Canguilhem, A Vital Rationalist, 89. 31 Moore, Schr6dinger, I6.

Theerrantson as the decisivefactors The discoveryof chromosomes to havegiven seems in heredity, wrote, Schr6dinger

7I

but societythe rightto overlookotherbetter-known equallyimportantfactorssuch as communication, education,and tradition.In otherwords,development "civilized humansurroundings." That Schrodrequires with formaleducation ingeridentifiesthese surroundings the properfunctionof betrayshis ambivalence regarding the home.As an exampleof the role of educationhe mentions,in passing,the story of the foundlingKaspar
Hauser (I74). The mysterious origin and death of

Hauserhavelong been the subjectsof obsessivedocumentation.Hauser,a youth of fifteenunableto speakor on the streetsof identifyhimselfin any way,appeared to a certain Niirnbergin 1828bearinga letteraddressed and isolation. cavalrycaptaindetailinghis confinement Whenquestionedfurtherhe simplyrepeated the cryptic phrase:"EinReiterwill ich werden,wie meinVatereiner war"(I want to becomea horseman,likemy fatherwas). The statement's the notion of being syntaxrecapitulates and becomingthat is implicitto the veryquestionof inheritance. For Schrodinger, Hauser'sstorywas proof that even a child deprivedof familialbonds-the facts of his parentage wereobscure-could be madereadyto entersociety.Hauserwishedto assumehis (unknown) father's place in the world,or so he was trainedto claim. Yetfantasyand evendynasticintriguefilledthe gapsin the foundling's past. Havingacquiredlanguageand behavioral norms,Hauserwas murdered by a person promisingto revealto him his trueidentity. averred that the questionof natureand Schrodinger

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was not strictlyspeakingany of his concern. nurture The questiononly cameto his mind,followingas it did his discussionof Hauser,"whenI once againrecognized how muchI gainedfromthe time I spentwith my father as a youngboy.... If I went into detailhere,I shouldend up tellinga verylong story"(174).It wouldalso be a very old story;the plot endureswhilethe characters and life writingsin fact reveal settingschange.Schr6dinger's him to be an errantson. As GeorgesCanguilhem observes,intrinsicto any processof (genetic)communicationis the possibilityof errancy. An animalis formed certainkindsof by heredityto receiveand retransmit information. Yet for life to havemeaning,for knowledge of life to be possible,errormustbe admittedinto its plan. refersto the movementfromplace to placeErrancy often withouta plan or itinerary-in orderto see things anew.It entailsthe act of rearranging the outlineand contentsof spacesand placesin orderto know them morefully.28 selfthus connectsthe subject's Canguilhem formationto dissatisfaction with existingmeaning;the subjectevolvesby movingbeyondits pre-adapted sourcesof self.The errantsubjectstraysfromhome;he makesmistakesbecausehe does not knowwhereto settle;and in the exchangehe comesinto possessionof self. But at whatcost?Schrodinger stood by and watched as his family'shome was unmadeby the gas calamity. whilehe was writingWhatis Life?, Curiously, Schr6dinger indulgedhis hobbyof makingdollhouse with textileswovenon a miniature furniture loom.29 Was he busyreproducing the elementsof his lost home-the in whichhis fatherdied? Persianrugs,the old armchair The geneticheritage,Canguilhem writes,"islike a loan, and deathis the due datewhenthat loan mustbe repaid.It is as if, aftera certaintime,it werethe duty of individuals to disappear, to revertto the statusof inert For Schr6dinger matter."30 the marvelof life is that this debt could be deferred for so long;this deferral was synonymouswith its "gift"for going on. The question "whatis life?" is thus inextricable fromthe query"whatis the precioussomething... whichkeepsus fromdeath?" Yet the troublingquestionto emergefromthe "Sketches" is whathappenswhenthe dead arenot keptfrom the living?After death,Schrodinger's fatherhauntedthe unhomelyhouse of entropy,upon the wallsof which of familiarlife. Apparently the playedthe shadowgraphs dream from recalled his childhood only Schr6dinger involvedthe frightfulappearance of the word Gefangnis saw (prison)on the ceilingoverhis bed.31Schr6dinger the writingon the walls,so to speak.In the agitated the codethoughclairvoyant sleep statehe discerned of confinement scriptof the house-the structure

Eigen-The Housingof Entropy

72

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The "Fors: Derrida, 32 Jacques of NicolasAbraham AnglishWords trans.Barbara and MariaTorok," in NicolasAbraham Johnson,
and Maria Torok, The Wolf Man's Magic Word:A Cryptonymy(Minnea-

0C t~

of Minnesota Press, polis:University

I986), xxxvi. 33 Mark Wigley, The Architectureof Deconstruction: Derrida's Haunt (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, I993),
I42.

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34 Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin

(NewYork:Zone Books, Joughin

I990), 262.

Derrida,The Work of 35 Jacques of University (Chicago: Mourning ChicagoPress, 200I), I54.

revealed.He becomesa secretsharerin the logic that connectsthe house,the settingthat producespeopleof our kind-finally the act of edification-as boundto the spaceof the crypt.The tropeof the crypt,the philosopherJacquesDerridahas written,impliesa topographic made to keep(conservehidden)the living arrangement of As MarkWigleyexplains,this arrangement dead.32 spaceis boundup with the doublegestureby which"the the heimlich familiarbecomesfrightening, [homely] with whatit supposedlyexcludes,such that resonating whatdoesn't'belongin the house'somehowbelongsand The discussion remainsall too familiar."33 the unfamiliar of life'scode thus leadsto othercrypticmeanings. Whatis Life?is writtenso as to keepa distancefrom thoughtsof death.Fromthe book'sstartSchr6dinger leadsthe readerastraywith the followingpassagefrom

Acknowledgement This essay was originally inspired by Evelyn Fox Keller, a valued teacher. I would like to thank Meredith TenHoor and Michael Osman for their perspicacious criticisms, which contributed to the strengths of this essay such that they may be; to Sara Eigen the preceding phrase, and more.

Fig. 5 (left and center) Claus de Werve, Mournersfrom the Tombof Philip the Bold,
Duke of Burgundy (1342-1404), I406-I o0; (right) Jean de la Huerta, Mourner with a Bookfrom the Tomb of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy (1371-1419), 1443-5

73 Spinoza's Ethics (Pt. IV,Prop. 67): "There is nothing over

whicha freeman pondersless than death;his wisdomis, Whatdoes it mean to meditatenot on deathbut on life." to be free?For Spinoza,GillesDeleuzeexplains,the free man "strives and reasonable to extricatehimselffrom chanceencountersand the concatenations of sad to passions, organizegood encounters...all this in such a way as to be affectedwithjoy."34 The essenceof freedomis the capacityto be affected; the freeman keeps chance(a corollaryof disorder)and the dominionof externalforcesat bay.Tellingly, Schrodinger beginsthe "Sketches" with the admission,"I livedapartfrommy best friend,actuallythe only close friendI everhad, for the greaterpartof my life. (Maybethat is whyI have often been accusedof flirtatiousness insteadof true
friendship)"(I67). Flirtation involves keeping the other

the act of consummaat a distance,delayingindefinitely tion. The workof mourning,in markedcontrast,makes is saidto do.35 Had theabsent as friendship present, mournedbetterhe mighthavebeenmoved Schrodinger of death.And whatof Eros,the counterby the inevitably concludesthe "Sketches" part of Thanatos? Schr6dinger with an avowalof silence: I mustrefrainfromdrawing a completepicture of my life, as I am not good at tellingstories; besides,I wouldhaveto leaveout a verysubstantial partof this portrait,i.e., that dealingwith my with women.First of all it wouldno relationships doubt kindlegossip,secondlyit is hardlyinteresting enoughfor others,and last but not least I don't believeanyonecan or maybe truthfulenoughin
those matters. (I84)