We still need a strategic account of biological foundations at all levels, to be arrived at
through dialogues between physical biologists and biological physicists
F. Eugene Yates
Matter, information and energy are inseparable entities. When aggregated in special assemblies that
organize themselves in hierarchical structures of increasing complexity, all interconnected by a
continuous bi-directional flow of energy, they can bring about another entity which possesses very
unique properties and is known by the name of life. Since higher hierarchies come from lower
hierarchies, life ultimately must have arisen from the physical world.
It took 3.8 billion years for present life to evolve. In the course of evolution, matter bonded to matter to
make up structure and the information embodied in matter organized that structure. This organized
structure provided both initial and boundary conditions for dynamics. The information selected in the
process of constructing the cellular structure was somehow stored locally, in the form of symbols, in the
genome of every cell. According to Pattee, there are two control models in present life, each
complementing one another - the genetic, which controls the amino acid sequence (primary structure) of
biopolymers and the dynamic, which controls, in a coherent way, the folding of biopolymers into
proteins, their mutual interactions and interactions with all other components of the cell.
These two models of life have been brought together by the Unitary Theory of Whyte. Dynamics is no
longer seen as an isolated series of interactions among molecules. Energy, information and dynamics
cannot be separated from function and structure. They are all components of a single comprehensive
process operating under the guidance and constraints of the laws of nature. This conceptual change of
dynamics is the subject of this book.
We do not believe that biological systems are reducible to physical systems. Instead, they differ from
them in several ways. Biological systems are more complex, much more interactive, more delayed in
action, self-constructing, and work in a state far from thermodynamic equilibrium. They have functions,
such as that of reproduction, and functional properties that physical systems do not have. Nevertheless,
biological systems obey to physical laws as physical systems do. This work merely emphasizes the
physical rather than the biochemical side of biology.
Like any other entity in the universe, life is ultimately derived from the fundamental forces of nature.
Given its dynamic character and the characteristics of these forces, only the long-range electromagnetic
force could possibly have led to the genesis of life. Life has an electromagnetic basis and the reason
why water was chosen as the living medium should have been rooted in its special dielectric properties.
Biomatter was then organized from the bottom up, from the microscopic to the macroscopic level, life
being a macroscopic phenomenon. As a consequence, living systems must obey to the laws of quantum
mechanics, a theory of the microworld that considers waves and particles to be different aspects of the
same reality.