图 书 馆
有性生殖中的合作Sexual reproduction as cooperation |
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| 课程网址: | http://videolectures.net/bzid2011_prokhorovich_shcherbakov_reprod... |
| 主讲教师: | Victor P. Shcherbakov |
| 开课单位: | 俄罗斯科学院 |
| 开课时间: | 2011-10-21 |
| 课程语种: | 英语 |
| 中文简介: |  |
| 课程简介: | What is life? And what is death? There are two ways of existence: animate and inanimate. Second Law of thermodynamics predicts the final dissipation of everything in the Universe. Longevity it is a quantitative measure of any existence. The Universe is evolving entity: ephemeral forms of being are replaced by the long-lasting ones. Evolution of the Universe may be portrayed as resistance to chaos. The four fundamental interactions prevent immediate dissipation of the inanimate world; the living world resists chaos by means of sensible behavior. I name a behavior sensible if it is aimed at survival of the behaving entity. Biological evolution might also be portrayed as self-knowledge of Nature: mind from matter (Delbrück; Teilhard de Chardin). The mind is not just epiphenomenon of life. It is the fifth fundamental interaction preventing the living world from dissipation, a major instrument for survival of the living entities. To survive means to resist any change, not only decay. The words »mind«, »knowledge«, »sense« should not be taken as metaphors. They are good terms. The cells of my body know how to replicate DNA. This knowledge does not differ principally from my knowledge of how to read and write, being of course much more important for my survival than my literacy. The total knowledge a biological entity enjoys is the knowledge of how to reproduce itself. In inanimate nature, all the processes are directed from a less probable state to a more probable state: movement to equilibrium. Life is a movement to a less probable state. It is a river flowing upward. A stone falling from the mountain is an example of a physical process; an alpinist climbing up a mountain is an example of a biological process. The latter needs not only energy, but intention (will) and mind. The laws of physics are not violated during this »climbing up«. Instead, they are harnessed by the goal-directed programs of life in such a way that low probable, virtually impossible events become the most probable. A living entity may disappear for two reasons: it may die or it may change. In both cases the previous entity ceases its existence. Evolution implies disappearance of the ancestor entity. To exist means to exist long. Biological species know how to exist long. This is miraculous knowledge because living entities are improbable things. We are »quite unable to grasp the extreme complexity of the simplest of organisms« (Prigogine). It is not complexity in itself that is miraculous but the fact that biological complexity is highly organized. Complexity implies availability of a large space of the states for the system, while the term »organized « implies that only very few of the states are compatible with vitality, i.e. living systems are non-equilibrium, low-entropy systems. We do not say that organisms violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Instead, we say that living things are open systems, continuously sharing matter and energy with their environment. Organisms export entropy to environment, thus keeping their internal states far from equilibrium. This is a correct description of the state of affairs, yet it is not an adequate explanation of biological organization. Energy is necessary but not sufficient for implementation of life. It needs knowledge. The living entities survive due to their sensible behavior. Taking the word behavior in the broadest sense, we may speak about the behavior of molecules, cells, organisms, populations, and ecosystems. |
| 关 键 词: | 生命的探究; 有性生殖; 合作; 生态平衡 |
| 课程来源: | 视频讲座网 |
| 最后编审: | 2019-10-22：cwx |
| 阅读次数: | 29 |