From The Atom To Living Systems

From the Atom to Living Systems represents an original historico-epistemological approach to follow the passage, in the microscopic analysis of reality, from the atomic to the molecular to the macromolecular levels and then to the threshold of life itself. Naturally, some parts of this journey have been developed in other works, some highly specialized and others of a more general nature. However, although this journey has often been traced in specialized scientific detail, the philosophical implications of the journey have not been discussed to any satisfactory degree. This scientific journey does have important philosophical consequences that constitute an integral part of this book, which is framed within the perspective of systems science and the so-called sciences of complexity, which are areas fundamental to 21st century science. In fact, the possibility of studying and understanding the material world through levels of complexity opens a great philosophical space that proposes to provide systemic and complex explanations, rather than reductive accounts that pretend to explain all phenomena through the interactions of elementary particles while considering all phenomena implicit and deterministic. The systemic and complex approach implies substituting unique bottom-up explanations, which move exclusively from the microscopically simple to the macroscopically complex, with a series of explanations that are horizontal within planes of complexity, vertically bottom up between various levels of complexity, vertically top-down, as well as circular in a manner that renders all levels of reality and the disciplines that study them as both autonomous and interconnected.

"The philosophical vision of the world and the consequent methodology behind the book are clarified. The perspective used is the systemic one, but since today this term has assumed a wide and diversified meaning in the literature, this introduction will clarify the specific meaning of our approach, starting from the meaning of the term "system". Our idea of system is based on three key assertions that may seem contradictory, but are necessary and complementary to its definition. In particular, we considered the usual idea that the system is more and less than the sum of its juxtaposed parts, highlighting the role of emergencies and constraints. In our idea of a system, however, we must consider a third fundamental characteristic: its dynamism, the dual nature of the system as an entity and as a process, its role as a "dynamic entity". Afterwards, the holistic and reductionist approaches were analysed in detail, and both the specific merits and the fact that these two opposing worldviews, considered individually, cannot give a complete and balanced description of reality, were taken into account. For us, only the systemic approach provides a balanced description of both the parts and the whole and must, therefore, be preferred. Finally, the differences between our approach and the approaches mentioned above have been considered in detail in this introduction"--

Revolving around the principles of sustainability, this new edition sets out to provide students with a balanced, complete treatment of environmental issues - their scientific basis, history and future. Material is revised to reflect changing environmental understanding and issues.

The living organisms and systems possess extraordinary properties of programmed development, differentiation, growth, response, movement, duplication of key molecules and in m any cases higher mental functions. But the organisms are physical objects so they must follow laws of physics yet they do not seem to obey them. Physicists cannot easily persuade themselves to accept this as finally true. Non-living objects are governed by these laws of physics and they can explain these properties. However, in the living systems too phenomena encountered like coupled non-linear interactions, manybody effects, cooperativity, coherence, phase transitions, reversible metastable states are being understood better with the aid of powerful theoretical and experimental techniques and hope is raised that these may let us understand the mysteriousness of life. Contributors to this volume are a small fraction of rapidly growing scientific opinion that these aspects of living bodies are to be expected in a hitherto inadequately suspected state of matter which is in the main directed by these physical properties pushed almost to limit. This state of matter, the living matter, deserves to be called The Living State. Mishra proposes that given hydrogenic orbitals, atoms showing easy hybridisability and multiple valances, molecules with low-lying electronic levels, "loosestructure", and a metabolic pump in thermodynamically open system, various fundamental properties of living state can emerge automatically. Structurally these are all known to be present.

This book covers cosmology, infinity, existence, providence (destiny), and issues related to the nature of the universe and existence of God. The main focus is a new understanding of 'infinity'.

The author applies the universal precepts of information theory to the communication system of DNA.

In 1978, when the book Living Systems was published, it contained the prediction that the sciences that were concerned with the biological and social sciences would, in the future, be stated as rigorously as the “hard sciences” that study such nonliving phenomena as temperature, distance, and the interaction of chemical elements. Principles of Quantitative Living Systems Science, the first of a planned series of three books, begins an attempt to fulfill that prediction. The view that living things are similar to other parts of the physical world, differing only in their complexity, was explicitly stated in the early years of the twentieth century by the biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy. His ideas could not be published until the end of the war in Europe in the 1940s. Von Bertalanffy was strongly opposed to vitalism, the theory current among biologists at the time that life could only be explained by recourse to a “vital principle” or God. He c- sidered living things to be a part of the natural order, “systems” like atoms and molecules and planetary systems. Systems were described as being made up of a number of interrelated and interdependent parts, but because of the interrelations, the total system became more than the sum of those parts. These ideas led to the development of systems movements, in both Europe and the United States, that included not only biologists but scientists in other fields as well. Systems societies were formed on both continents.