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Molecules, Dynamics and Life: An Introduction to Self-Organization
of Matter deals with one of the most significant, mystifying phenomena in
modern physics: how inert matter can acquire self-organizing properties once thought
unique to living things. The issue of self-organization lies at the center of
a larger theoretical revolution in physics -- the belief that the fundamental
laws of nature are irreversible and random, rather than deterministic and reversible.
The concepts and processes underlying this new way of thinking are formidable.
Molecules, Dynamics and Life makes these concepts and processes accessible,
for the first time, to students and researchers in physics, chemistry, biology,
and the social sciences. Molecules, Dynamics and Life
is divided into three parts connected by the logic of the self-organization concept.
Part I covers matter and chemistry. Individual chapters treat the history and
evolution of matter, our present day concepts of the atom, chemical kinetics,
and irreversible processes including equilibrium and nonequilibrium thermodynamics
and evolutionary and stability criteria. Part II develops
kinetic methods for the study of dissipative structures. Starting with a survey
of self-organizational phenomena in various areas of the natural sciences, this
section discusses the Beloussov-Zhabotinski reaction and describes the self-organizational
phenomena using a theoretical approach. Part III examines
self-organization and its relationship to coherence in biosystems. It begins with
a summary of the theoretical evolution of living organisms, then explores the
communication process at the cellular level, and concludes with a discussion of
the structural aspects of important present-day macromolecules, showing how they
evolved from simple molecules. Dr. Agnessa Babloyantz
is a senior staff member at the University of Brussels, where she got her degree
in chemistry and her doctorate in physical chemistry. She
has worked and lectured for several years in the United States before joining
the Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics group at the University of Brussels. Her
current interests lie in the area of modeling of biological phenomena from the
standpoint of self-organizing systems, such as prebiotic systems, morphogenesis
and brain dynamics. |
