Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary.
Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA.
Biosystems. 2024 Jan;235:105090. doi: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2023.105090. Epub 2023 Nov 25.
The development of biological concepts in the 19th century was followed by the emergence of approaches to formulate the principles of theoretical biology. Ervin Bauer in 1920, and in more detail in 1935, suggested the basic principle that can be accepted as the fundamental law of biology: "The living systems are never in equilibrium; at the expense of their free energy they constantly perform work to avoid the equilibrium required by the laws of physics and chemistry under existing external conditions." Many researchers interpreted biology with the help of physical quantities but Bauer was the first to build a general and already molecular-based biological theory. The main point of Bauer's concept is not the non-equilibrium, but the function of organism producing the non-equilibrium, the capacity for self-adaptation, and the power for changing its functions in such a way that the system gets the state of non-equilibrium always anew. We will discuss Bauer's theorem, the contemporaneous objections, and the divergent opinions about his work by succeeding generations of scientists.
19 世纪生物学概念的发展之后，出现了制定理论生物学原理的方法。1920 年，Ervin Bauer 首次提出了一个基本原理，可以被接受为生物学的基本定律：“生命系统永远不会处于平衡状态；它们以自由能为代价，不断地做功，以避免在现有外部条件下物理和化学定律所要求的平衡。”许多研究人员借助物理量来解释生物学，但 Bauer 是第一个建立一般的、基于分子的生物学理论的人。Bauer 概念的主要观点不是非平衡，而是产生非平衡的生物体的功能、自适应能力，以及以系统总是获得新的非平衡状态的方式改变其功能的能力。我们将讨论 Bauer 的定理、同时代的反对意见，以及后继几代科学家对他工作的不同看法。
