Dear Sergio and All,Received on Fri Dec 19 18:11:07 2003
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
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