Scale-free flow of life: on the biology, economics, and physics of the cell

Abstract

The present work is intended to demonstrate that most of the paradoxes, controversies, and contradictions accumulated in molecular and cell biology over many years of research can be readily resolved if the cell and living systems in general are re-interpreted within an alternative paradigm of biological organization that is based on the concepts and empirical laws of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. In addition to resolving paradoxes and controversies, the proposed re-conceptualization of the cell and biological organization reveals hitherto unappreciated connections among many seemingly disparate phenomena and observations, and provides new and powerful insights into the universal principles governing the emergence and organizational dynamics of living systems on each and every scale of biological organizational hierarchy, from proteins and cells to economies and ecologies.

Floridi’s “Open Problems in Philosophy of Information”, Ten Years Later

“…Improved understanding of information structures and dynamics in networks is important for broad range of phenomena from networks of neurons to social phenomena. Significant insight from biology [110] points towards a natural cohesive mechanisms between different levels of abstraction and should be taken into account.…”

“…Biologists too, such as Kurakin [110] add to this information-based view of the Universe/Nature: "When reconceptualized in equivalent terms of self-organizing adaptive networks of energy/matter/information exchanges, complex systems of different scales appear to exhibit universal scale-invariant patterns in their organization and dynamics, suggesting the self-similarity of spatiotemporal scales and fractal organization of the living matter continuum. "…”

Physical Computation as Dynamics of Form that Glues Everything Together

“…Strongly interactive networks (such as biological systems) give rise to non-linear processes and organize into structures that exhibit order on all levels of organization [45,46]. Self-organized criticality is found to be a hallmark of such systems, as the regime on the "edge of chaos" is the one with maximal informational capacity.…”

Connections between Warburg’s and Szentgyorgyi’s Approach about the Causes of Cancer

“…Increased amount of heat is liberated by intensive energy flux of the fermentative metabolism, which builds up a temperature gradient between the extra-and intracellular electrolytes. The growing temperature could reach a critical threshold of the heat flow, turning the heat-flow from conductive to convective [106], which is the phenomenon of the Bernard instability [107]. The ionic flows through the cellular membrane promoted by the convective heat flow, which increases the intake of glucose.…”

“…When the daughter cells do not find the way back to the cooperability, the cells are "frozen" in the uncontrolled proliferative α-state. The frozen state is a defect of the complex controlling mechanism [35], which correlates with the single "renegade cell" concept [106], Weinberg describes cancer as a long process to produce "a renegade cell" as an ancestor of the billion-cell group called cancer. Epidemiological research showed the complexity of the developing of cancer.…”