Niels Bohr's argument for the irreducibility of biology to physics
pp. 231-255
in: Jan Faye, Henry J. Folse (eds), Niels Bohr and contemporary philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 1994Abstract
Even in his youth, Bohr was familiar with those difficult and controversial questions surrounding the relationship of the phenomena of life to those of inanimate nature, or in other words, the relationship of biology to physics and chemistry. (See e.g., APHK, 96; Folse, 1985, 45–46; and 1990a, 212; Holton, 1970, 142–143, 151; Kay, 1985a, 490; Meyer-Abich, 1965, 180; Petersen, 1985, 307; and Röseberg, 1985, 15–18, 195–196.) Are the phenomena of life in any sense fundamentally different from the processes of inanimate nature, or aren"t they? Bohr became more intensely preoccupied with this question once the stormy development of quantum mechanics had more or less wound down.
