The author of the original paper speaks to criticisms: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/12/author-of-controversial-arsenic-.html?rss=1
<http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/12/author-of-controversial-arsenic-.html?rss=1>Science is making the paper freely available for the next two weeks so anyone who wants to chime in doesn't need to buy a copy: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2010/12/01/science.1197258.abstract -- rec -- On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 11:07 AM, Stephen Guerin <[email protected]>wrote: > Russ, you had a small typo in your Shrödinger quote. > > Instead of extracting "energy", Schrödinger actually defined living systems > as extracting "negative entropy" from the environment: > "the only way a living system stays alive, away from maximum entropy or > death is to be continually drawing from its environment negative entropy. > ..Thus the devise by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a > fairly high level of orderliness (= fairly low level of entropy) really > consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment." > > You can download the original at > http://whatislife.stanford.edu/LoCo_files/What-is-Life.pdf. In the notes > area he says negative entropy is equivalent to free energy but didn't want > to confuse non physicists. > > You can see this quote and a nice discussion on by Eric Schneider and James > Kay in "What Is Life: The Next 50 Years" http://bit.ly/dO7mCE > > Feeding on free energy is very similar to Kauffman defining living systems > as autonomous agents that extract work from their environment. > > BTW, Boltzmann also said a related bit: > "The general struggle for existence of animate beings is therefore not a > struggle for raw materials - these, for organisms, are air, water and soil, > all abundantly available - nor for energy which exists in plenty in any body > in the form of heat (albeit unfortunately not transformable), but a struggle > for entropy, which becomes available through the transition of energy from > the hot sun to the cold earth." > You can read this chapter at http://bit.ly/hYsuUd > > > > > > > On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Russ Abbott <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > I his 1944 "What is Life," Schrödinger identifies a fundamental > characteristic of living beings as being able to retain a relatively lower > level of entropy by extracting energy from the environment. Since > As compounds are so much less stable than P compounds the strategy that the > As bacterium uses to maintain its low entropy level > will probably constitute the most important aspect of this recent discovery. > I wonder if these bacteria use relatively more energy to survive than > comparable P bacteria or if they discovered a technique to maintain their > structure that is not as dependent on stable As/P compounds. > > > > -- Russ > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
