A World Beyond Physics, Stephen Kauffman

Chapter 1: The world is not a machine

• The history of life is non-ergodic. Meaning, there are an astronomically large amount of potential amino acid sequences, such that the universe simply has no time to create a sample every single possible sequence. Life occupies a sub space of potential, and is thus ripe for instability, spontaneity, and creativity

  Chapter 2: The function of function

• The burgeoning complex biosphere is surely based on physics, but it flowers to a realm beyond
• A rock is matter that has no matter, the flowing river has no standalone function. However, a heart has a function and an auto catalytic perpetual reaction has a function. How can these functions be described by physics?

  Chapter 3: Propagating organization

• All living systems are open thermodynamic systems, and thus locally evade the second law of thermodynamics that states that disorder increases over time (entropy). Instead, living beings propagate ordered organization.
• “Work is the constrained release of energy into a few degrees of freedom.” - Peter Atkins
  • Expanding gas between a piston and cylinder. Gas is constrained, released along the cylinder, thrusting the piston. If there was no constraint on the gas, it would just expand in all directions and no work would be done
• The piston-cylinder constrains the gas expansions, limiting its expansion to limited degrees of freedom. This constraint channels the release of energy into work, not just entropy increase. Entropy still increases, just more slowly
• Constraints on the release of energy generate work, and work done can construct more constraints. This is how order self propagates. This is life.

  Chapter 4: Demystifying life

• Chapter outlines same idea, with the addition of auto catalytic sets of molecules/peptides catalyzing their own growth in a cyclical, interdependent, holistic manner. ###Chapter 5: How to make a metabolism

  To be continued