Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 21
Towards a Category Theory
of Everything (cTOE)
The purpose of this last chapter is i) to compare the molecular theory of life
presented in this topic with some of the theories of life proposed by others and ii)
to propose an incipient theory of everything that attempts to integrate, based on
category theory, the biological theory described here with the major ideas and
theories formulated by numerous investigators in other fields, including physics,
informatics
and
philosophy
.
In 1943, Schr
odinger (1998) attempted to answer the question “What Is Life?” in
his historic topic with the same title which contained about 90 pages. Six decades
later, in this topic, I needed more than 700 pages to try to answer the same question.
The eightfold increase in the number of pages in this topic relative to that of
Schrodinger probably does not do justice to the enormous increase in our experi-
mental knowledge about living systems that has occurred since 1943 (e.g., see
Table
11.1
). In his topic, Schrodinger proposed three main ideas:
€
1. The gene is a molecule that encodes heritable traits and contains “the means of
putting it into operation” (Schrodinger 1943, p. 68).
2. The gene is “the aperiodic solid” (Schrodinger 1943, p. 60).
3. “The living organism feeds on
negative entropy
.” (Schrodinger 1943, p. 70)
It is not the purpose here to analyze in detail these well-known claims of
Schr
odinger, except to point out that the first of these ideas has largely been
validated by experimental findings since Schr
€
odinger's time, the second idea has
been invalidated since genes (whether viewed as DNA segments as in the contem-
porary sense or chromosomes as Schr
€
odinger thought) are not solids that
resist
thermal fluctuations
but rather
deformable bodies
that actively utilize
thermal
fluctuations
for their biological functions (see Sect.
12.12
), and the last idea must
also be judged as invalid, since it violates the Third Law of Thermodynamics (see
Sect.
2.1.5
).
€
