Publisher's Synopsis
This book analyses and proposes answers and proofs to some fundamental issues that the best minds during the human history tried to cope with: a. What is life? b. What is the basic difference between living and non-living systems? c. What is the physical and chemical basis for this difference? d. How could the creation of living systems begin, be established and evolve? e. What is the physical basis for this process? f. Is evolution an irreversible process and why? g. How can living systems convert unordered (random) process of genetic variation into biologically ordered patterns? h. How does biological order increase along with the increase in entropy in living systems? i. Can we engineer and construct technological and industrial systems that function as living systems? The book contains a unique integration of physics, chemistry, biology, ecology and various other scientific areas, which generates a unique theoretical concept, the Cyclic-ISES concept (Cyclic -Integrated Self-Evolving and Self-stabilizing concept), including a revised version of natural selection and evolutionary process. This concept can be defined as Cyclic-ISES biophysics. The book analyses and describes the unique physicochemical properties of biopolymers, and how these properties stem from the primary structure of these polymers. The physicochemical properties of such biomolecules enable a Cyclic-ISES organization of living systems and the coupling of external energy supply. The result is a unique physics which exists exclusively in living systems. The book explains how Cyclic-ISES organization is the mechanism by which living systems convert unordered (random) processes (e.g., genetic variation) into biologically ordered patterns. The book analyses and theoretically describes the spontaneous creation of the first simple living Cyclic-ISES systems, and how, according to basic principles of thermodynamics, physical chemistry and physical statistics, such systems evolve and tend to increase their complexity and biological order. As a result of the unique physicochemical properties of biopolymers and Cyclic-ISES organization of living systems, the probability of an increase in their complexity and biological order is higher than the probability of decrease in these parameters. Consequently, the evolutionary process is inevitable and irreversible. The living Cyclic-ISES organization, which creates a unique physics and mode of cyclic irreversible thermodynamics, enables the creation, existence of living systems, their continuation, their unique evolutionary process and their ability to increase their complexity and biological order along with the increase in their entropy. According to the analysis in this book, the living Cyclic-ISES organization separates the increase in entropy in living systems into two processes: a. Negative biologically increase in entropy. Such an increase in entropy impairs biological order and occurs along with a decrease in order. Living systems remove this increase in entropy into the non-living surroundings (negative selection), and thus avoid the damage to their biological order by this increase in entropy. b. Positive biologically increase in entropy. Such an increase in entropy occurs within living systems, along with an increase in their biological order. The increase in complexity, organizational degree, biological order and divergence during the evolutionary process is the way in which entropy increases in living systems. Besides the fundamental open issues described above, the theoretical concept in this book can account for additional open issues in biology, evolution and ecology (more than thirty). Large part of the book is dedicated to integration of living Cyclic-ISES principles into our technological and industrial systems. By such integration, better ecology and more efficient and stable economy are attainable.
