Enzo Tiezzi Fermare il Tempo Raffaello Cortina

1. Enzo Tiezzi Fermare il Tempo Raffaello Cortina Enzo Tiezzi Steps Towards an evolutionary Physics WIT Press Enzo Tiezzi The Essence of Time WIT Press Enzo Tiezzi Verso una Fisica Evolutiva Donzelli Editore

2. Steps Towards an Evolutionary Physics Enzo Tiezzi Department of Chemical and Biosystems Sciences, University of Siena.

3. Werner Heisenberg Max Planck Gregory Bateson Francisco Varela Ilya Prigogine : “...nos esse quasi nanos gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possim plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea” “...we are dwarves sitting on giants’ shoulders. Thus we can see more and farther than them not because we are taller or have a better sight, but because we are risen and we profit of their gigantic height” John of Salisbury, XII century, Metalogicon, III, 4 “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" Isaac Newton, letter to Robert Hooke, 1676

4. University of Cadiz Aula Magna May 3 2005 10:00 AM

5. MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE - DRESDEN - GERMANY (HOLGER KANTZ) SCHOOL OF COPENHAGEN – DENMARK (SVEN JORGENSEN) UNIVERSITY OF BRUXELLES – BELGIUM (ILYA PRIGOGINE) WESSEX INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY - UK (CARLOS BREBBIA) CAMBRIDGE MIT - USA

6. Conservation without evolution is death. Evolution without conservation is madness. GREGORY BATESON Bateson underlines a fundamental characteristic of biological evolution and the biosphere. Cross-fertilization between evolutionary and conservative aspects is a conditio sine qua non for life and its maintenance. The First Principle of Thermodynamics is concerned with conservation, the Second Principle regards evolution. Time, oscillation, instability, and chaos are accorded scientific dignity by the second principle. At equilibrium, energy and matter are blind; far from equilibrium they begin to see. ILYA PRIGOGINE

7. “in order to understand reality, let us divide it into parts, as many as possible” C A R T E S I O “the whole is more than the sum of its parts” P A S C A L

8. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. BLAISE PASCAL Pascal’s proposition underlines another fundamental characteristic of the biosphere and living systems, tracing the first watershed between material non-living systems and living systems. It is contrary to the proposition of Descartes that scientific knowledge is enhanced the more the whole is divided into parts. Descartes’ approach works for material non-living systems but not for the living ones. As pointed out by G.L. Stebbins: “ The systematic ordering of the basic components or units of any structure is correlated with similar orders in other similar structures, enabling the structures to cooperate in specific functions, e.g. the synthesis of sugar by photosynthesis. Relational order helps organisms to carry out chemical reactions and cause coordinated movement of the parts (thermodynamics and kinetics).”

9. At all levels we observe events associated with emergence of novelty, that we can in turn associate with the creative power of Nature. ILYA PRIGOGINE Cycles, arrow of time and events represent a new lexicon for chemistry and physics, which finally become evolutionary, taking up the challenge of complexity in an evolving biosphere. Chance and choice (stochasticity) and the interactions between them are the basis of a new ecodynamicscience. Quality and quantity are both necessary for the global description of Nature. Biodiversityis the result and the salient property of biological evolution.

10. The adventure of biological evolution is marked by chanceevents and exact choices: it is a stochastic adventure in the etymological meaning of the word, from the Greek “stokazomai” to “aim at the target” in archery. The arrows are distributed in an apparently random way around the bull’s eye, but the end of the archer chooses, as far as he can, the direction of the arrow: the system combines chance with selection

11. As underlined by the palaeontologist Roberto Fondi: “Cells differ from other physical systems by virtue of the increased complexity inherent in their epigenetic development, or in other words due to a series of geneses, each of which creates new structures and new functions. No machine or inanimate physical system can increase its complexity as can the simplest living cell”. This means that the information necessary to assemble proteins, which DNA merely copies, can only result from the increase in complexity inherent in an epigenetic process.

12. Roberto Fondi adds that it is impossible to interpret the living world as a “mere assemblage of objects dominated by the rigid deterministic dialectic of chance and necessity”.

13. “Protein function depends only on the three-dimensional disposition of its amino acids. Since genes obviously cannot transport the information necessary for building proteins into this space (as if writing “apricot” on a strip of paper would enable the paper to roll up and become a real apricot), the enormous quantity of information necessary for that construction can only come from the increase in complexity inherent in an epigenetic process.” (Roberto Fondi)

14. Dyson identifies two origins of histories of life: that of proteins, the hardware of the computer that physically processes information, and that of nucleic acids, the sophisticated software that contains and transmits information. Life began twice, with different creatures, one capable of metabolism, the other of replication. Then they met, perhaps much later, a long time ago: a meeting favoured by chance, but less improbable than simultaneous origin.

15. According to Dyson, the creativity that unfolds almost by chance in complicated structures is more important as a moving force of evolution than Darwinian competition between replicating monads.

16. Ecosystems arise and evolve stochastically by co-evolution and self-organization. They are complex systems, the components of which are all interconnected, and they do not obey linear deterministic laws.

17. As Thomas Khun remarks, the passing of time often brings anomalies which existing theories are no longer able to explain. The divergence between theory and reality may become enormous and a source of serious problems. This is exactly what is happening today between current scientific theories and the natural situation of the planet K h u n 1 9 7 0

18. … It is difficult today to give an account of the hostility that such an approach was to meet. For example, I remember that towards the end of 1946, at the Brussels IUPAP meeting, after a presentation of the thermodynamics of irreversible processes, a specialist of great repute said to me, in substance: “I am surprised that you give more attention to irreversible phenomena, which are essentially transitory, that to the final result of their evolution, equilibrium” I L Y A P R I G O G I N E 1917 – 2003 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1977

19. Sven Jørgensen underlines that: “The recent development in system ecology represents a paradigm shift. The paradigm that is now receding has dominated our culture for several hundred years. It views the universe as a mechanical system composed of elementary building blocks. The new paradigm is based on a holistic world view. The world is seen as an integrated whole and recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena.”

20. Evolutionary physical chemistry or ecological thermodynamics (ecodynamics) is an important step in the direction of this paradigm shift. The main laws of classical physical chemistry have to be revisited at the light of a new time “gestalt”.

21. In the framework of evolutionary physics we deal with goal functions instead of state functions, the ecodynamic models have to be based on relations evolving in time; “far from equilibrium thermodynamics” (Prigogine) assumes upon itself the role of foundation of a new description of nature.

22. As pointed out by Ilya Prigogine, “although quantum mechanics and general relativity are revolutionary, as far as the concept of time is concerned, they are direct descendants of classical dynamics and carry a radical negation of the irreversibility of time”.

23. On one hand, the use of time-reversible classical and quantum physical chemistry approaches for studying matter at the molecular level and the behaviour of simple molecular systems has greatly improved man's understanding. On the other hand, we need new approaches and new time-irreversible theories able to describe the behaviour of complex living systems.

24. Far from equilibrium we witness new states of matter having properties sharply at variance with those of equilibrium states. This suggests that irreversibility plays a fundamental role in nature. We must therefore introduce the foundations of irreversibility into our basic description of nature (evolutionary thermodynamics).

25. A living creature or an ecosystem obey the laws of biological evolution: at any time they are different from what they were an instant before. This is the essence of life. In biology and ecology, reproducible experiments do not exist

26. Biological diversity is the product of long-term interactions at a genealogical and ecological level: the genealogical interactions regard the dissipation of Entropy by irreversible biological processes; the ecological interactions regard Entropy gradients in the environment.

27. I. PRIGOGINE (MOA lecture 1994) “Classic laws of nature are deterministic and reversible” “Thermodynamics and Entropy describe an evolutionary view of nature” “Entropy means evolution” “Irreversible processes, which create Entropy, distinguish between past and future” “We cannot describe nature without making a distinction between past and future”

28. P.T. Landsberg (Nature 1972) 1st law of Thermodynamics: “Internal energy exists” 2st law of Thermodynamics: “Entropy exists” I. Aoki (Ecological Modelling 1990) A system absorbs negative Entropy from its surroundings; A system is structured by its surroundings. 1st law: formulates the Energy concept. 2st law: formulates the Entropy concept. I. Aoki (Ecological Modelling 1988) “Flows of the conservative quantities: energy and matter” “The non-conservative quantity, entropy, also flows” “The occurrence of production term or source term is just the point that differs from the case of conservative energy and matter”

29. The first law formulates the Energy concept; • The second law formulates the Entropy concept. • The first law deals with flows of the conservative quantities: energy and matter. • The second law deals with flows of the non-conservative quantity: entropy.

30. Manfred Eigen (Nobel Prize in Biology) recently stated that biological evolution is evolution of information, and that the difference between chemical and biological molecules lies in their information.

31. An energy flow can lead to destruction (increase in entropy, for example a cannon ball) or organization (decrease in entropy, for example photosynthesis). The same quantity of energy can destroy a wall or kill a man; obviously the loss of information and negentropy is much greater in the second case. Energy and information are never equivalent.

32. Entropy has an intrinsic temporal parameter. Energy obeys spatial and material constraints; entropy obeys spatial, material and temporal constraints. If history and the succession of events are of scientific relevance, the concept of function of state should be revised at a higher level of complexity. The singularity of an event also becomes of particular importance: if a certain quantity of energy is spent to kill a caterpillar, we lose the information embodied in the caterpillar. But were this the last caterpillar, we should lose its unique genetic information forever. The last caterpillar is different from the nth caterpillar.

33. Finally if we consider the evolutionary transition from anaerobic to aerobic living systems, the ratio of energy to stored information is clearly different. The information that led to an evolution and organization of the two types of system is not proportional to the flow of energy.

34. According to Boltzmann, the struggle for life is not a struggle for basic elements or energy but for the entropy (negative) available in the transfer from the hot sun to the cold Earth.

35. "How would we express in terms of the statistical theory the marvelous faculty of a living organism, by which it delays the decay into thermodynamical equilibrium (death)? We said before that it feeds on negative entropy, attracting, as it were, a stream of negative entropy upon itself, to compensate the entropy increase it produces by living and thus to maintain itself on a stationary and fairly low entropy level." E.Schrödinger, "What is Life? The Physical Aspects of the Living Cells", Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1944

36. Morowitz points out that all biological processes depend on the absorption of solar photons and the transfer of heat to celestial sinks. The Sun would not be a negentropy source if there were not a sink for the flow of thermal energy. The surface of the Earth is at a constant total energy, re-emitting as much energy as it absorbs.The subtle difference is that it is not energy per se that makes life continue but the flow of energy through the system. H.J. Morowitz, Foundations of Bioenergetics, Academic Press, New York, 1978.

37. SOURCE SINK INTERMEDIATE SYSTEM According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics: dSss + dSint≥ 0 dSss > 0 whereas the only restriction placed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics on dSint is that: -dSint≤ dSss

38. 5.800 °K 5,6 x 1024 joule/yr 3 °K SINK INTERMEDIATE SYSTEM SOURCE NON EQUILIBRIUM SYSTEMS THEORY

39. All biological processes take place because they are fuelled by solar energy. Morowitz points out that it is this tension between photosynthetic construction and thermal degradation that sustains the global operation of the biosphere and the great ecological cycles. This entropic behaviour marks the difference between living systems and dead things.

40. Thus entropy breaks the symmetry of time and can change irrespective of changes of energy, being energy a conservative and reversible property, whereas entropy is evolutionary and irreversible per se. The flow of a non-conservative quantity, negentropy, makes life go and the occurrence of a negentropic production term is just the point that differs from analysis based on merely conservative terms (energy and matter).

41. THE DEATH OF THE DEER Far from thermodynamic equilibrium m E S -DS Information Towards thermodynamic equilibrium m E +DS -DSlost Information lost ENTROPIC WATERSHED

42. We may conclude that in the far from thermodynamic equilibrium systems (biology and ecology) entropy is not a state function, since has intrinsic evolutionary properties, strikingly at variance with classical thermodynamics.

43. But if energy and mass are intrinsically conserved and entropy is intrinsically evolutionary, how can entropy be calculated on the basis of energy and mass quantities? This question is still unanswered and all we can do is to note that the ecodynamic viewpoint is different from that of classical physics and classical ecology

44. Time Series Analysis • Dynamical systems provide a relevant class of time series models. • Concepts such as dimensions, entropies, Lyapunov exponents are nonlinear functions of the invariant distribution with precise meaning. • Many data sets are not deterministic but also non linear. • Markov chain as nonlinear stochastic process is an useful model. • Principal problem: previously unobserved events cannot be predicted. Holger Kantz, Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany.

45. The Probability Paradox White and black

46. Event Oxidation White Black

47. Evolutionary Event Chameleon White, Black  Yellow

48. Far from equilibrium Thermodynamics Oscillating reactions Black, White  Yellow

49. There are chemical systems that show phenomena of self-organization such as the formation of stationary spatial structures or periodic oscillatory states.

50. The BZ oscillating reactions