Principles and Mechanisms of Biological Evolution - Molecular Theory of the Living Cell - page 479

Table 14.4 A comparison between the macro-to-micro transitions in physics and biology that
have occurred or are currently in progress in theory building. These transitions can be analyzed in
terms of another dichotomy, namely, energy versus information as shown below
Energy Information

P
h
y
s
i
c
s

Macro Continuous Confined to the mental world

Micro Discrete (quantization of energy, quantum,
quons)

Extended to physical processes
(Wolfram 2002; Lloyd 2009;
Ji 1999a)

(1) Energy is quantized (Sect. 11.3.3 )
(2) Wave/particle duality (Sect. 2.3.1 )
(3) Heisenberg uncertainty principle (Sect. 2.3.1 )

B
i
o
l
o
g
y

Macro Orthogonal to information Orthogonal to energy

Micro Inseparable from information (i.e., fused
with information to form gnergy )
(Sect. 2.3.2 )

Inseparable from energy (i.e., fused
with energy to form gnergy )
(Sect. 2.3.2 )
1. Information-energy complementarity (or gnergy as the complementary union
of information and energy) (Sect. 2.3.2 )
2. Gnergons (i.e., discrete units of gnergy) as the driving force for all self-
organizations (Sect. 2.3.2 )
3. Conformons (gnergons embedded in biopolymers) as the driving force for all
goal-directed molecular motions in the cell (Chap. 8 )
4. The cell as the unit of computation or the computon (Sect. 6.1.2 )
5. The cell is the smallest physical unit that can evolve in the Darwinian sense
(Sect. 14.2 )

there was a conceptual revolution of a sort that was centered on entropy about a
quarter of a century earlier than the quantum revolution (see Row b in Table 14.3 ):
L. Boltzmann (1872-1875) introduced the concept of statistical weights
(Volkenstein 2009, p. 64) (or its cognates “information,” “order,” “disorder,”
etc.) into physics. Prior to Boltzmann, R. Clausius (1822-1888) defined the change
in the thermodynamic entropy, S, of a system as the ratio of two macroscopic
observables, the heat absorbed by the system reversibly, dQ, and the temperature,
T, at which this heat transfer takes place; that is, dS dQ/T. Boltzmann connected

the macroscopic entity S (or dS for small change in S) with microscopic entity W,
the number of the molecular configurations or states compatible with (or accessible
to) the macroscopic state of the system, that is, S

¼

¼ k ln W, where k is the

Boltzmann constant.
A molecular revolution also occurred in the field of chemistry in the first decades
of the twentieth century in the form of the connection established between
Mendeleev's periodic table of macroscopic properties of chemical elements and
the atomic structures of the elements predicted by quantum mechanics (see Row c
in Table 14.3 ).
Following what may be called the “molecularizing trend,” the “molecular turn,”
or the “from-macroscopic-to-microscopic trend” in natural sciences as evident in
Rows a through c in Table 14.3 , I perceive a similar molecular revolution in biology
(see also Table 14.4 ). In other words, I believe that there are many macroscopic