The Nature of Living Things. An Essay in Theoretical Biology

162 Pages·1972·2.37 MB·English

by  Stephen Black (Auth.)

Stephen Black M R C S Eng., L R C P Lond.
Former holder of Research Awards in Radiation Biology under
the Dan Mason Research Foundation at the West London
Hospital, Hammersmith, and in Psychophysiology under the
Medical Research Council in the Division of Human
Physiology, Hampstead, and one time Director of a Psycho-
physiological Research Unit under the Nufield Foundation
THE NATURE OF
LIVING THINGS
An Essay in Theoretical Biology
M A R T I N S E C K E R & W A R B U R G L T D
W I L L I A M H E I N E M A N N M E D I C A L B O O K S L T D
By the same author :
M I N D A N D BODY (William Kimber, 1969)
f
. . . sets, out, unflinchingly, to answer the "how" question
concerning the mind-matter interaction. . . . Despite being hard
going in parts, this book is fascinating. First, because it grapples
honestly, convincingly, and stimulatingly with the thorniest
problem in the world. Second, because it presents us with the
continuity of thinking underlying Dr Black's many research
papers/—Neil Kessel, MA, MB BChir., MRCP, DPM, in the
British Medical Journal.
First Published 1972
© copyright Stephen Black 1972
ISBN ο 436 04001 3
Printed in Great Britain
by Willmer Brothers Limited, Birkenhead
NOTE
This essay describes a theory on the nature of life and mind
which has already been proposed in a number of scientific
papers. The two most important of these were presented
at the 8th European Conference on Psychosomatic Research
at Knokke in May, igjo and at the 4th International
Congress of Psychosomatic Medicine in Paris during
September of the same year. For references: see Bibliography.
The author's present address is: Gorsedene Mill House,
Lower Beeding, Horsham, Sussex, England.
DEDICATION
Ta those living things: my children Tim, Trudi, Jackie
and Shannon—and my grandchildren Jane, Julia,
Pernille and Pippa.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks are due to Professor C. H. Waddington, CBE,
ScD, DSc, LLD, F RS, of the Institute of Animal Genetics in
the Univernty of Edinburgh and to Professor /. M. Thoday,
ScD, F RS, of the Department of Genetics in the Univernty of
Cambridge, both of whom kindly read the manuscript of this
book and offered constructive criticism and made a number
of helpful suggestions. I would aho like to thank Professor
Colin Cherry, DSc (Eng.), MIEE, for his advice on those
sections of the book which deal with the theory of com-
munication, Dr R. W. Reid, MA, MSc, PhD, head of the
Science and Features Department BBC-TV, for his suggestions
on presentation and Mr Frederic Warburg, the President of
Martin Seeker and Warburg Ltd, for his encouragement over
many years. Finally, I am deeply indebted to my wife Kathy,
without whose supporting strength the slow development of
these ideas would never have been possible.
Stephen Black
Lower Beeding, igjss
NOTE ON REFERENCES
Where specific and dated reference is made to published
work quoted in the text, the title and source of the reference
are given in full under the name of the author in the
Bibliography.
The surface of the earth is impregnated with life. Between
the ice caps to north to south, most of the land is perman-
ently coated with vegetation and the surface of the unfrozen
sea everywhere swarms with plankton. To a depth of five
miles in the sea and to a height of five miles on land, natural
surgical sterility of earth, air and water can never be guaran-
teed, except perhaps in the craters and lava flows of active
volcanoes. At the present point in geological time, the earth
is carpeted like this in three hundred thousand plant species
and is crawling with the two million animal species they
support.
Life appeared on earth three thousand million years ago
and the inanimate crust is deeply permeated with the debris
of living things. Fossils of one kind or another have been
found in most of the sedimentary rocks which were laid down
during the last two thousand million years and huge masses
of the crust itself are entirely composed of carboniferous and
cretaceous rocks of purely biological origin. In many parts
of the world, the sky remains the only aspect of the prevailing
scenery which is not a product of life, as among the rounded
chalk hills of the English downlands. What is the nature of
this curious chemistry?
ι
Two hundred and fifty thousand miles away in space the
surface of the moon is apparently sterile. Moon dust can be
injected into mice without infection resulting and on the
evidence, isolation of returning astronauts could have been
discontinued after the first moon shots. The sands of the
Sahara will blossom into life at any hint of water, but the
surface of the moon appears to be a true desert. Battered
in the vacuum of space by solar radiation and meteorites, the
lunar landscape remains a disordered wasteland of boulders,
craters and glassy dust—Neil Armstrong's 'magnificent deso-
lation'.
Those televised pictures from the moon typify the effects
of energy. This is the raw stuff of the universe. Energy is
manifest in the movement of matter and concentrated into
atomic particles it appears as the material substance of every-
thing we know, dead or alive. But energy also appears as
heat, radiation, electricity and in many other ways. Atoms
are bound to atoms to form molecules by chemical energy
and a moving body has kinetic energy, like a car at speed. In
keeping with a certain poetical simplicity to be found in the
more intimate secrets of Nature, energy is related to mass
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according to Einstein's equation Ε = mc , where Ε and m
are relatavistic energy and mass and c is the speed of light
in a vacuum.
According to the First Law of Thermodynamics, energy
can neither be created nor destroyed and the total amount
of energy in Nature is therefore constant. Nevertheless,
energy can flow on its own accord from one place to an-
other, but this will only happen so long as the energy level is
high where it comes from and low where it is going. Energy
on its own cannot climb the energy gradient: heat will not
flow on its own from a colder to a hotter body, electricity
never flows the wrong way from the domestic supply back
into the grid. Like water running down hill, energy always
seeks the lowest possible level, the widest distribution. This
is the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
But however orderly the flow of energy it always increases
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the disorder of matter wherever it flows. The energy of heat
is itself an increase in the disordered movement of the atoms
and molecules from which matter is made—an average in-
crease in speed. The ordered structure of a house disinte-
grates into disorder when its chemical energy is released as
the house burns down. When the internal energy of matter is
released in a nuclear explosion, even greater disorder results,
together with high energy radiation. The kinetic energy of a
car at speed destroys the car when it crashes. It may also
destroy the occupants to whom kinetic energy has been
imparted.
Because energy only flows naturally down the energy
gradient to become more evenly distributed throughout the
universe and because it can only create disorder wherever it
goes, the ordered nature of the universe must always tend
towards disorder. Armstrong's 'magnificent desolation' on the
moon is a picture of matter on this inevitable road towards
disorder.
This universal tendency towards disorder in response to
energy is described as 'entropy'. High energy creates high
entropy and when the energy is low, the entropy is low.
Entropy therefore decreases with temperature and it reaches
a theoretical zero at o° Absolute. This is the Third Law of
Thermodynamics. Since the energy flow is always down the
energy gradient, the Second Law may be expressed in the
statement that 'the total amount of entropy in Nature is
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always increasing .
The most curious feature in the chemistry of life is the
highly ordered state of matter it maintains at the energy
levels required to keep it going. In spite of the universal
entropy trend, living things are not only charged with energy,
but have continued to grow and multiply and increase the
ordering of matter for three million millenia. In this vast
ordering of matter which moulds the biosphere and even the
inanimate crust itself, life seems to be a reversal of the
entropy trend, a transgression of the Second Law.
In terms of cosmological space and time, this transgression
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of a natural law may still be only a local and temporary
phenomenon, as it is in the ordered molecular or atomic
structures of crystals. Indeed, thermodynamic experiments on
individual organisms have never been able to demonstrate
any such transgression and the Second Law remains inviolate
in the laboratory. Commonsense indicates, however, that
within the biosphere as a whole the description of life as a
continuing process which absorbs energy yet creates order
is essentially correct and so long as order is being created a
process of decreasing entropy must be going on.
Mathematically, decreasing entropy is described as 'nega-
tive entropy'. Whatever the thermodynamic findings on the
direction of entropy change in individual living organisms, it
is clear that if we raise the energy level of living matter to
increase the entropy, death results—as it does in the presence
of high temperatures, strong chemicals, powerful electric cur-
rents and intensive radiation. In these terms, a fly dies when
we swat it because once the ordered structure of its body is
destroyed by the energy imparted, the entropy of its tissues
is set irrevocably on a positive course. Car crash victims die
for the same reason.
Looked at in this way, the death of the individual in all
species is an eventual sliding back into the positive entropy
trend of the universe, while all around the earthly chemistry
of life goes on. This sliding back into the entropy trend is
called 'thermodynamic death' as distinct from 'clinical death*
when organs from the deceased can still be used for trans-
plant surgery.
At room temperature in man, thermodynamic death starts
only minutes after clinical death and speed is therefore essen-
tial if an organ removed for transplant surgery is to maintain
clinical life in the recipient. Clinical death is reversible under
the right conditions, but thermodynamic death of even a
single cell is irreversible. In keeping with the Second Law,
however, the onset of thermodynamic death can be delayed
by lower temperatures. In brain surgery, when the blood
supply to the brain has to be interrupted and brain cells may
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