"`When does one say that a piece of material lives?
When it continually does something, moves...,' is the formulation of the atomic physicist Erwin
Schroedinger. Impulses to movement are, for example, electrical or chemical potential
differences. When they are equalized, the tendency to form a chemical bond ceases;
temperatures become equalized through heat transfer. Thermodynamic equilibrium results in a
condition of constant rest (maximum entropy), a condition which is precisely: death. From the
physical standpoint, disorder is continuously created out of a condition of order. Nature strives
for the condition of ideal disorder; this was recognized in the last century from the behavior of
gases. Schroedinger continues: `The trick by which an organism can keep its place on a rather
high level of order consists in reality of continuous "absorption" of order out of the surrounding
world.' We learn further that there are a few changes in the inherited characteristics of the
organism. These are the motif-formers, which give the occurrence its distinctive character."
From "Music, Sound and Sensation"