Biological Organization and Negative Entropy: Based on Schroedinger's reflections

TL;DR

This paper introduces a systemic perspective on biological organization as negative entropy, extending thermodynamics with new principles, and applies this framework to evolution, metabolism, and complexity in biological systems.

Contribution

It proposes two additional principles compatible with thermodynamics to model biological organization as negative entropy, and applies quantum-inspired operator methods to biological complexity and evolution.

Findings

Reconstruction of Gould's biomass over complexity curve.

Analysis of metabolism and scaling laws in biological systems.

Quantitative evaluation of complexity related to empirical data.

Abstract

This paper proposes a systemic perspective for some aspects of both phylogenesis and ontogenesis, in the light of the notion of biological organization as negative entropy, following some hints by Schroedinger. To this purpose, we introduce two extra principles to the thermodynamic ones, which are (mathematically) compatible with the traditional principles, but have no meaning in inert matter. A traditional balance equation for metabolism will be then extended to the new notion as specified by these principles. We consider far from equilibrium systems and we focus in particular on the production of global entropy associated to the irreversible character of the processes. A close analysis of this term will be carried on, both in terms of a diffusion equation of biomass over complexity and, as a complementary approach and as a tool for specifying a source term, in connection to Schroedinger's method for his equation in Quantum Mechanics. We borrow from this equation just the operatorial approach and, this, in a classical frame, as we use real coefficients instead of complex ones, away thus from the mathematical frame of quantum theories. The first application of our proposal is a simple mathematical reconstruction of Gould's complexity curve of biomass over complexity, as for evolution. We then elaborate, from the existence of different time scales, a partition of ontogenetic time, in reference to entropy and negative entropy variation. On the grounds of this approach, we analyze metabolism and scaling laws. This allows to compare various relevant coefficients appearing in these scaling laws, which seem to fit empirical data. Finally, a tentative and quantitative evaluation of complexity is proposed, also in relation to some empirical data (caenorhabditis elegans).