Cell Language Theory, The: Connecting Mind And Matter

434 The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and Matter

b2861 The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and Matter “6x9”

the third entity as substance (also called nature or God) while

Merleau-Ponty referred to it as flesh [290].

My own preference is the triadic school, because this choice is sup-

ported by the following facts:

1. The units of energy (e.g., Kcal/mole) and information (e.g., bits) are
   different.


2. The energy of the Universe is constant (the first law of thermodynamics)
   but the information content of the Universe may and need not be con-
   stant (for example, extinctions can occur unpredictably thereby reduc-
   ing the information content of the biosphere and hence the Universe).


3. Energy is represented as a vector field, while information is associated
   with the scalar field of the cosmic plenum [422].


4. In molecular machines in action (see Section 3.4), energy and infor-
   mation are indistinguishably intertwined into one entity called con-
   formons (i.e., sequence-specific conformational strains of polymers)
   [65]. Conformons can be viewed as specific instantiations of gnergy
   in the living cell. The conformon concept was supported by the
   results of the statistical mechanical analysis of supercoiled DNA
   double helices in bacteria. These results are consistent with the fact
   that gene expression requires the storage of mechanical energies in
   sequence-specific sites within DNA duplexes, and such sequence-
   specific DNA deformations are called SIDDs (stress-induced DNA
   duplex destabilizations) [79, 80, 226], which are synonymous with
   conformons [25, pp. 240–3].

10.14 A “Philosophical Table” for Classifying

Information, Entropy, and Energy

The concept of entropy was introduced by R. Clausius (1822–1888) in

thermodynamics as a state function of a thermodynamic system, namely,

a number that characterizes the physical state of the system independent

of its past history [59]. This thermodynamic concept was then extended

to the field of information theory by C. Shannon (1916–2001) in 1945

who, at the (somewhat haphazard) suggestion of von Neumann (1903–

1957), named his quantitative measure of information “entropy” (thus

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