27. Thermodynamics of Life

This web page is associated with a book called called Reverse Engineering the Universe.

The book can be bought at: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Dr_Jerome_Heath_Reverse_Engineering_the_Universe?id=_OvqBQAAQBAJ

The book gives a more complete explanation of these issues and includes a number of related topic discussions. The combination develops the understanding of these concepts from a number of viewpoints.

Thermodynamics of Life

As a chemist I needed to think in probabilities rather than directly, structurally, or deterministically. The chemical bond, being related to quantum mechanical processes, is understood through probabilities. The bond forms as probabilities usher the components together. In fact, understanding the probabilities is essential to understanding chemical processes.

Of course this is all complicated by various orbits and the number and size of these. The components of a “bond” need to approach each other and then there is a set of probability processes that determine whether and how the components bond. It can be generalized into a probability funnel combined with certain spatial (steric) issues to determine the bond process.

In most cases the successful bond is equilibrium. Equilibrium is a lower state of energy where the entropy is maximized.

For physical processes we look at something like billiard cues to bounce off each other and every action has an equal and opposite reaction. These are not looked at as probabilistic but they really are; with an extremely narrower probabilistic distribution than chemical processes.

We mentioned entropy. Entropy is a problem for the determinist view. Entropy means some processes are not reversible. That every action has an equal but opposite reaction implies reversibility. Entropy (thermodynamic entropy) implies irreversibility. Prigogine talks about this problem.

What I am talking about here applies to chemical processes definitely. Most determinists like to include chemistry as deterministic when they are actually wrong. Many chemical reactions do go in one direction to one result. So they look deterministic to people who do not know chemistry. But the reaction has a probabilistic not deterministic base. Some chemical reactions do have more than a single output. When these happen the result is so much percent of this and so much percent of that. These types make for good studies. If we raise the temperature how does the resultant distribution change? What about changing the concentration?

These types of reactions are not my aim. Prigogine talks about the systems that very far from equilibrium and systems that cannot reach equilibrium. They are similar as most of the time the systems that are very far from equilibrium are very far from equilibrium because they are not able to reach equilibrium.

One of these systems is any living being. Life is out of equilibrium. True “thermodynamic” equilibrium for a living thing is death and decomposition. Life has internal controls to avoid such equilibrium. Lots of processes occur but none of the processes reach equilibrium; only a sort of metastable energy compromise.

Of course we are at the bend in the road. This is what Ludwig von Bertalanffy and his friends were talking about. This is emergence. This demonstrates how emergence happens and how it is not determinist.

Jaynes insists that the true entropy is the information in the system [Shannon entropy]. The thermodynamic definition of entropy is always some kind of approximation. That approximation relates to how the information in the system affects the efficiency of the steam engine. But such an approximation is never the information. The information entails the specific values of energy distribution to each individual part (molecule) of the system.

Jerome Heath