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Research concerning the relationship between the thermodynamic quantity entropy and both the origin and evolution of life began around the turn of the 20th century. In 1910 American historian Henry Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume A Letter to American Teachers of History proposing a theory of history based on the second law of ...
Below the level of living systems, he defines space and time, matter and energy, information and entropy, levels of organization, and physical and conceptual factors, and above living systems ecological, planetary and solar systems, galaxies, etc. [3] [4] [5] Miller's central thesis is that the multiple levels of living systems (cells, organs ...
Leibniz was also one of the main inspirations for the important movement in philosophy known as German idealism, and within this movement and schools influenced by it entelechy may denote a force propelling one to self-fulfillment. In the biological vitalism of Hans Driesch, living things develop by entelechy, a common purposive and organising ...
Vitalism holds that living organisms differ from other things in containing something non-physical, such as a fluid or vital spirit, that makes them live. [33] The theory dates to ancient Egypt. [34] [21] Since Early Modern times, vitalism stood in contrast to the mechanistic explanation of biological systems started by Descartes.
All living things contain two types of large molecule, proteins and nucleic acids, the latter usually both DNA and RNA: these carry the information needed by each species, including the instructions to make each type of protein. The proteins, in turn, serve as the machinery which carries out the many chemical processes of life.
Nomological determinism is the most common form of causal determinism and is generally synonymous with physical determinism. This is the notion that the past and the present dictate the future entirely and necessarily by rigid natural laws and that every occurrence inevitably results from prior events.
Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things."
A physical change involves a change in physical properties. Examples of physical properties include melting, transition to a gas, change of strength, change of durability, changes to crystal form, textural change, shape, size, color, volume and density. An example of a physical change is the process of tempering steel to