Why Is the Cell So Complex? - Molecular Theory of the Living Cell - page 581

Table 17.4 The fourfold complexity in physics and biology is suggested by the two kinds of
complementarities, i.e., matter-wave and dynamics-kinematics complementarities. Mattergy
stands for matter-energy, and liformation stands for life-information (See Table 2.6 )
Ontology Epistemology

I (discontinuity) II (continuity) III (global) IV (local)

Physics
(secondness)

Particle Wave Kinematics Dynamics

Photoelectric
effects

Interference effects Planetary

motions

Particle
collisions

Wave-particle complementarity Kinematics-dynamics

complementarity

Biology
(thirdness)

Organized
chemical
reactions

Random chemical
reactions

Metabolic
pathways

Mechanisms

Chemical
reactions
in the cell

Chemical reactions
in test tubes

Metabolism chart Single-molecule
mechanics

Liformation-mattergy complementarity

17.4 The Law of Requisite Variety and Biocomplexity

If forced to choose one principle that best accounts for the complexity of living
systems, I would not hesitate to select the Law of Requisite Variety (LRV) as the
most powerful candidate of all the laws and principles of biology discussed in this
book. LRV (Sect. 5.3.2 ) , when combined with the Second Law of thermodynamics
(also called the Law of Maximum Entropy) (Sect. 2.1.4 ), can logically lead to the
Principle of Maximum Complexity (LMC) (Sect. 14.3 ), according to which “ The
active complexity of living systems increases toward a maximum,” Statement 14.15,
where “active complexity” is defined as the “complexity created by living systems
utilizing free energy in order to survive under complex environment.” Simply put,
the reason surviving organisms increase the complexity of their internal states is
because the complexity of their environment is constantly increasing due to the
Second Law of thermodynamics and no simple organisms can survive complex
environment, Statements 5.10 and 14.8.

17.5 Cybernetics-Thermodynamics Complementarity

Since cybernetics mainly deals with control information and thermodynamics with
free energy, both of which being necessary and sufficient for producing complex
living processes, it appears logical to conclude that cybernetics (including infor-
matics ) and thermodynamics (including energetics ) are complementary sciences
essential for a complete description of life and hence can be viewed as a comple-
mentary pair obeying the Principle of Information-Energy Complementarity