Engineering - Molecular Theory of the Living Cell - page 144

Table 5.8 The extension of the principles of uncertainty and complementarity from physics and
biology to philosophy. M personality. The symbol u

denotes the postulated minimum uncertainty below which no human knowledge can reach
Philosophy
D M

¼ mind, B ¼ body, S ¼ soul, and P ¼

D B u .......(5.53)

D S D P u .......(5.54)

u Soul (S) Personality (P)

Mind (M) 1. Wave

2. Liformation
3. Fuzzy logic

Body (B) 1. Particle

2. Mattergy
3. Crisp logic

If the Symmetry Principle of Biology and Physics (SPBP) described in Table 2.5
is valid, it may be predicted that the relation between the uncertainty principle and
the complementarity principle as depicted in Table 5.6 may have a biological
counterpart. One such possibility is shown in Table 5.7 , which is almost identical
with Table 2.7 , except for the inclusion of the postulated uncertainty relations,
Inequalities 5.51 and 5.52. In Inequality 5.51 , which was derived on the basis of a
geometric argument (Ji 1991, pp. 120-122), D G is the uncertainty about the
measurement of the Gibbs free energy change accompanying an intracellular
process at temperature T, D I is “the uncertainty about the biological significance
of the cellular processes under study, for example, the uncertainty about the
'fitness' value of the cellular processes involved” (Ji 1991, p. 120), and k is the
Boltzmann constant. It is assumed that the critical parameter in biology is the
thermal energy per degree of freedom , that is, kT, which is thought to be analogous
to h (see Statement (4.36)). Again, in analogy to the canonical conjugates in physics
(i.e., the q-p and t-E pairs), it is assumed in Table 5.7 that the canonical conjugates
in biology are information-life (I-L) and energy and matter (E-m) pairs. If this
conjecture is valid, we can derive another uncertainty relation in biology, namely,
D L

kT, where D L is the uncertainty about whether the object under
investigation is alive or death, and D m is the uncertainty about the material
constitution or configuration of the living object under consideration.
Finally, if the complementarity principle revealed in physics and biology can be
extended to philosophy as envisioned by Bohr (1934) and myself (Ji 1993, 1995,
2004b), it should be possible to construct a table similar to Tables 5.6 and 5.7 that
applies to philosophy. One possibility is shown in Table 5.8 . Just as the extension of
the uncertainty and complementarity principles from physics to biology entailed
recognizing a new complementary pair (i.e., liformation vs mattergy in Table 5.7 ),
so it is postulated here that there exists a novel kind of complementarity observable
at the philosophical level, and that complementary pair is here suggested to be the
crisp versus fuzzy logics (see the diagonal boxes in Table 5.8 ).
Associated with the crisp versus fuzzy logics complementarity are suggested to
be two uncertainty relations, Inequalities 5.53 and (5.54), where D M is the

∙ D m