What Is Life? Revisited Quotes

“Even before Prigogine’s ‘order through fluctuations’, the Viennese polymath Heinz von Foerster had already recognized in 1960 the need to distinguish self-organization, and what he termed ‘order from noise’, from what Schrödinger had called ‘order from disorder’ in What Is Life?: “reading recently through Schrödinger’s booklet I wondered how […] his keen eyes escaped […] a ‘second clue’ to the understanding of life, or—if it is fair to say—of self-organizing systems. Although the principle I have in mind may, at first glance, be mistaken for Schrödinger’s ‘order from disorder’ principle, it has in fact nothing in common with it. Hence, in order to stress the difference between the two, I shall call the principle I am going to introduce to you presently the ‘order from noise’ principle” (von Foerster 1960: 43).”
― Daniel J Nicholson, What Is Life? Revisited

“Even before Prigogine’s ‘order through fluctuations’, the Viennese polymath Heinz von
Foerster had already recognized in 1960 the need to distinguish self-organization, and
what he termed ‘order from noise’, from what Schrödinger had called ‘order from disorder’ in What Is Life?: “reading recently through Schrödinger’s booklet I wondered how
[…] his keen eyes escaped […] a ‘second clue’ to the understanding of life, or—if it is fair
to say—of self-organizing systems. Although the principle I have in mind may, at first
glance, be mistaken for Schrödinger’s ‘order from disorder’ principle, it has in fact nothing
in common with it. Hence, in order to stress the difference between the two, I shall call the
principle I am going to introduce to you presently the ‘order from noise’ principle” (von
Foerster 1960: 43).”
― Daniel J Nicholson, What Is Life? Revisited