BIOLOGICAL ORDER AND ENTROPY 



The organism, if it wants to work, has to burn something, just 

 as the steam engine does. It might burn sugar, for example. But 

 it is clear that what is important in the molecule of sugar is not the 

 structural negentropv of its atoms, the probability that these atoms 

 are arranged in a certain order. What is important is the energy of 

 the chemicar bonds. The organism takes in food and burns it. It 

 separates and binds atoms and molecules. Work, with a correlative 

 degradation of energy, is produced at the expense of the energy of 

 the chemical bonds. The organism is unable to make use of energy 

 /";/ abstracto; it has to perform oxidoreductions. The energy of light 

 allows the plant to separate hydrogen ions from the molecule of 

 water. When light meets atoms, work is produced and energy is 

 degraded. But, according to some physicists I have consulted, it does 

 not seem sound to state that the plant that uses light as its source 

 of energy feeds on the negative entropy of light. 



The same seems to be true for the energy of the chemical bond. 

 Unless work is produced, one cannot speak of free energy and of 

 its entropic component. When, as a result of a chemical reaction, 

 the energy of a chemical bond of food is utilized, heat is pro- 

 duced and a part of the energy degraded. In the original chemical 

 bond, one part is available for work, and the other is potential 

 entropy. But energy of high grade, such as the energy of light or 

 of a chemical bond, cannot be subdivided into positive and negative 

 entropy. 



Negentropy is a grade of energy. Orderliness is a probability. 

 The organism does not handle concepts of grade or logarithms of 

 probabilities. The organism handles atoms or molecules and the 

 energy of light or of chemical bonds. Nevertheless, some of the 

 physicists I have consulted decided that Schrodinger's formula was 

 perfectly acceptable, whereas others claimed that it did not make 

 sense at all. A general agreement was reached only on one point. 

 If fed with pellets of negative entropy, as positive as negative entropy 

 might be, even a physicist would succumb. 



REFERENCES 



Brillouin, L. (1956). Science and Inj orfnatio7i Theory. Academic Press, New 

 York. 



[97] 



