The Living Cell - Molecular Theory of the Living Cell - page 269

Table 10.1 Three categories of structures in the cell and the brain. The third structure, which is
built on the first two structures, is thought to be essential for reasoning/computing, or the ability of
a physical system to respond to input stimuli according to a set of rules or programs
Peircean categories a
Level Firstness Secondness Thirdness

Chemical reactions
(covalent
interactions)

Dissipative structures (space-
and time-dependent gradients)

Cell Biopolymer-biopolymer

interactions
(noncovalent
interactions)

Brain Gradient structures
(e.g., membrane
potentials)

Information transmission
(from one neuron
to another)

Neural networks (connected via action
potentials and neuro-transmitters;
space- and time-dependent)

a

See Sect. 6.2.2

obeying a set of rules are equivalent to computation (Wolfram 2002,
pp. 715-846). Also the postulated ability of the cell to reason seems consistent
with the isomorphism thesis between cell and human languages (Ji 1997a, b,
1999b, 2002b), since, without being 'rational', neither humans nor cells would
be able to use a language for the purpose of communication.
3. Humans can reason (i.e., the Thirdness phenomenon exists in the human brain),
only because cells and abiotic systems in nature in general behave rationally
(and not randomly); i.e., the Thirdness phenomenon exists in Nature, indepen-
dent of human mind. The universality of Thirdness asserted here may be closely
related to what Rosen called Natural Law that guarantees the ability of the
human mind to model nature (Rosen 1991).

10.4 A Topological Model of the Living Cell

There is now an abundance of experimental evidence suggesting that cells, both
normal and diseased, are affected by five distinct classes of factors or determinants
as indicated in Table 10.2 .
It is clear that the Bhopalator 2011 shown in Fig. 10.1 is consistent with the
content of Table 10.2 , although biochemicals are not explicitly indicated in the cell
model. To graphically represent the equal importance (to be referred to as the
“equipotency hypotheses”) of all of these five factors in determining the properties
and behaviors of the cell, the body-centered tetrahedron may be utilized as shown
in Fig. 10.2 .
One difference between the cell models depicted in Figs. 10.1 and 10.2 is that, in
Fig. 10.1 , the five possible causes for cell functions are organized in the order of
their distance from their ultimate effects, namely, cell functions, whereas Fig. 10.2
does not contain such hierarchical information.