Re: [Fis] Again about coupling resources and information

From: Pedro C. Mariju�n <[email protected]>
Date: Fri 19 Dec 2003 - 16:00:29 CET

Dear Sergio and All,

Thanks for the many ideas packaged in your message. Let me start with a
brief return to the disagreements.

Am affraid that in my comments two weeks ago about your sentence, the
'hard-core reductionism' expression was rather inappropriate --too trite
and contentious. And maybe in your recent exegesis on my comments there was
inappropriate wording too, as I clearly separated in my text your own
sentence -- with quotations and italics-- from my own inferences about it
(as Alicia said in Wonderland: "I do not mean that you mean what I mean").
Anyhow, enough of the trivial.

Let me discuss again the the relative presence of absence (the 'weigh') of
the Second Law in the dynamics of living beings. It is for me a very
important subject, rather obscured even by illustrious authors of the field
of physics (and of thermodynamics: Shu-Kun has written some clear sentences
about that). Here, rather than arguing from sweeping statements --in favor
or against--- I would like to enter a few specific ideas from the
scientific discipline in charge of the energetic analysis of the living:
bioenergetics.

Initially, most of living matter is composed by polymers of enormous
lenght, thermodynamically pretty unusual, for all of those reactions imply
an entropy decrease. Who pays for that evident entropy decrease? It is
enthalpy, the other player in the Gibbs free energy of almost every
biological reaction--bigger, far bigger quantitatively, around one order of
magnitude, or even two in most reactions within the living. The famous DNA
polymer, for instance, repeating a eloquent saying by GR Desiraju (2003) is
but " a manifestation of mutual recognition, a storage device for
structural information, and a victory of enthalpy over entropy".

In enzymes, the influence of entropy in their overall efficiency is
extremely low --they fantastically decouple information and energy
processes, and they do so by becoming extremely good players with the
enthalpy processes (always evitating the conversion to heat). Up to the
point that, for instance, the whole cost of our brain processing operations
is in the order of 10 watts. Almost of all of the energy transformations
occur throughout the enthalpic path, scaping from the thermalization
inherent to the change of entropy --it is crucial working always at room
temperature, opposite of our engines, until now, for socially what we try
to do now with the 'fuel cells' is but an imitation of biological metabolism.

One of the consequences of the energy-information decoupling is the almost
arbitrary complexity of the circuits of the latter --in types, forms,
relative magnitude, connections, etc. By this extra informational
complexity, the biological type of extremely efficient use of 'resources'
may escalate up to 99.999 % (e.g., in key mitoch. respiratory chain
reactions). This is only possible because there is the previous enormous
accumulation of information classes both in the sequence of DNA and in the
dynamic processes of the enzymic agents and the numerous concentration
gradients around. Without that information, and without genes and ad hoc
machinery, there is no detection of the necessary resources, no efficient
transportation and inner transformation, no exchange of metabolic
processing functions with other cellular types, etc.

Even more interesting is the theme of enzyme degradation. Actually, it does
not exist 'per se', rather it is a sophisticate mechanism of chopping
away the unnecessary enzymes and proteins (idle ones, or misfolded, or
oxidized ones) and reconverting them to their original amino acid
constituents, isolated. Then, these amino acids are used again and again to
produce new proteins, i.e., other types better suited to the immediate
metabolic circumstances of the cell. Perhaps this is a big lesson for our
linear industrial system of products and wastes --and that lesson could be
prolonged up to the many strands of biological wisdom that converge on
GAIA. The planetary wisdom exists by means of a myriad of co-adapted
genomes & intracellular & intercelluar info labyrinths.

In my opinion, the information provided by science and technology for our
societies, is not far away from what is done in such a complex way around
the cellular genomes. Then, I think that Loet is quite right when he
concludes that "there is no alternative to knowledge-based innovations." So
to speak, in our own societies Information and Resources become equal
partners too, indeed mutual pre-requisites of each other: without knowledge
and techniques we could not even talk about such resources --would coal, or
oil, or the nuclear be a 'resource' without the appropriate know-how?
Irrespective of their immediate environmental wealth, 'clever' societies
have always found resources --and will keep finding them quite probably,
provided an overall wisdom guides them.

Implicitly, I was recognizing that, for good or for bad, science is not
alone and does not cover the whole spectrum of human life and human
knowledge. It is a robust but, in actuality, a very modest player that far
from been situated 'on top' is 'on tap' ... The many (and factually
incommensurable) dimensions of the social body: cultural, political, moral,
religious, nationalistic, racial, esthetic, hedonistic, etc., steer our
global trajectory in very strange ways--irrational ones quite often. And
for us, scientists, it is quite difficult to convey our messages beyond our
narrow disciplinary bounds and to be heard. Actually society listen to us
as a cacophony of little voices.

In this aspect I think we need the mutual tuning up, as much as possible,
of our disciplinary messages to society, and a continuous adaptation of our
paradigms to the changing intellectual circumstances --as Enzo put. These
days maybe I have exaggerated the critical part in my comments on the
second law (another poor expression, thanks Sergio, was my "putting the
tool on the altar"). But I might have a grain of truth in my freshman
vision of the current clash between neoclassic and ecological econometrics.
Ecological economics and information science might have
important goals in common, and somehow we should get along concerning
some particular discussions in the future, I think. (The informational
theory of value is for me sort of a 'pot of gold' relatively close by).

Well, given that we will close the session at the end of next Monday, this
is my final posting in the session. My personal thanks to all of our
ecological economics invitees who have contributed so informatively:
Sergio, Enzo, Pavel, Edgar, and particularly to our elegant chairs Jerry
and Luis.

best wishes--season greetings.

Pedro
Received on Fri Dec 19 15:34:08 2003

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