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Thermodynamic Perspectives

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Abstract

All biological processes require energy. Models of biological processes must therefore ultimately be shaped by considerations of energy budgets: Is there enough energy available for the process to take place? How is the heat generated by the process dissipated? And so on. Indeed, since an organism is a complex processing plant in which multitudes of chemical and physical processes occur concurrently, it is not hard to conclude that evolution would likely have favored mechanisms that are energetically efficient over those that are not [189, 420, 674]. Biologists are well aware of the importance of thermodynamics (see, for example, [436, 437]); however, their typical introduction to that topic is through courses in chemistry and physics that emphasize the study of systems at, or very near, equilibrium (see Section 15.3.1). In such courses, connections between thermodynamics and dynamical systems are seldom addressed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837–1923), Dutch theoretical physicist.

  2. 2.

    Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821–1894), German physician, physicist, and inventor of the ophthalmoscope.

  3. 3.

    Named for Johann Friedrich Pfaff (1765–1825), German mathematician.

  4. 4.

    In honor of Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832), who first proposed it.

  5. 5.

    Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius (1822–1888), German physicist and mathematician.

  6. 6.

    Lars Onsager (1903–1976), Norwegian-born American physical chemist and theoretical physicist.

  7. 7.

    Svante August Arrhenius (1859–1927), Swedish physical chemist.

  8. 8.

    Henry Eyring (1901–1981), Mexican-born American theoretical chemist.

  9. 9.

    More precisely, we should write \((\varDelta G^{\circ })^{\ddag }\), where the superscript ∘ indicates that all reactants are in their standard states. We have dropped the ∘ in the equations that follow in order to simplify the notation.

  10. 10.

    After the Austrian chemist Rudolf Franz Johann Wegscheider (1859–1935).

  11. 11.

    Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (1917–2003), Belgian physical chemist.

  12. 12.

    Per Bak (1948–2002), Danish theoretical physicist.

  13. 13.

    Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov (1903–1987), Soviet mathematician; Nikolai Vasilyevich Smirnov (1900–1966), Soviet mathematician.

  14. 14.

    For example at http://tuvalu.santfe.edu/~aarmc/powerlaws/.

  15. 15.

    Didier Sornette, Swiss mathematical physicist

  16. 16.

    Lev Davidovich Landau (1908–1968), Soviet physicist; Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg (1916–2009), Soviet physicist.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. W.M. Keck Science Department, The Claremont Colleges, Claremont, CA, USA

    John Milton

  2. Graduate School of Mathematics, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

    Toru Ohira

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Milton, J., Ohira, T. (2014). Thermodynamic Perspectives. In: Mathematics as a Laboratory Tool. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9096-8_15

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