In hmolscience, Gilbert Chauvet (1942-) is a French mathematical physicist, physiologist, and philosopher noted, in animate thermodynamics, for his 1992 to present effort to outline a mathematics themed melting pot theory of biological organization, themed on what he calls "orgatropy", one of many entropy antonyms.
Overview
In 2004, Chauvet, in his The Mathematical Nature of the Living World, attempts to integrate biology, physics, thermodynamics, physiology, and neuroscience through the lens of mathematics all centered around an effort to explain how living organisms originated from non-living matter; or rather, in plain speak, supposedly, to explain what separates the two or maintains the perceptual dichotomy. [1]
His 2006 book Understanding the Organization of Living and its Evolution Towards Consciousness attempts to expand on his model to explain human consciousness, among other subjects. [2]
In framing out his theory, Chauvet seems to be knowledgeable about a number of historical “what is life” thermodynamics theories, discussing, for instance, the ideas of Ludwig Boltzmann, Max Planck, Erwin Schrodinger, and Ilya Prigogine, along with lesser known theories such as the network thermodynamics theories of Aharon Katchalsky, among others.
In respect to the second law, Chauvet introduced a term he calls “orgatropy”, a term he originally introduced in 1992 to explain organizations aspects of neural networks, as what seems to be an contraction of organization + entropy, to account for the organization principle found in biology and evolution in relation to entropy. [3] He defines orgatropy as the thermodynamic “potential of functional organization”, which is the “functional equivalent of the second law of thermodynamics applied to living organisms”. [1]
Difficulties on theory
See main: Entropy (portmanteaus), Entropy antonyms
Chauvet's notion of "orgatropy", of course, is incorrect, being that Gibbs free energy is the thermodynamic potential of animate organizations found naturally on the surface of the earth, whether internal bodily or social organizations. The invention or coining of new entropy-like terms to explain biology or reconcile the life vs non-life issue are common to thinkers who venture into this arena; historical examples are numerous: anti-entropy, disentropic, ectropy, ektropy, entropy ethics, entropy reduction, entropy reversal, genetic entropy, gentropy, inverse entropy, local entropy decrease, entropy islands, low entropy, mental entropy, syntropy, syntropic, teleonomic entropy, genopsych, among others.
Education
Chauvet states that from an early age, he has always been puzzled by the questions of ‘what is life?’ and ‘what is the difference between living beings and the matter that makes up living beings?’ This set of questions, a subject about which he states that he has spent at least 30 years on, drew him into research. Chauvet completed a MS in pure mathematics (1964) and MS in applied mathematics (1965), both at University of Poitiers; a PhD in solid state physics (1968), with a dissertation on “Optical Constants in Metals at High Temperatures”, and a PhD in theoretical molecular physics (1974), with a dissertation on “Symmetry Groups and Force Constants in Complex Molecules”, both at the University of Nantes, and a PhD in medicine (1976), in biomathematics, at the University of Angers. Chauvet currently his professor emeritus of the Angers Medical School.
See also
● Francis Edgeworth
● Spiru Haret
References
1. Chauvet, Gilbert. (2004). The Mathematical Nature of the Living World: the Power of Integration (thermodynamics, 15+ pgs; orgatropy, 7+ pgs). World Scientific Publications.
2. Chauvet, Gilbert. (2006). Understanding the Organization of Living and its Evolution Towards Consciousness (abs). Publisher.
3. Chauvet, Gilbert. (1992). “A Theory of the Functional Organization of Biological Systems Applied to Neural Networks”, in: First European Congress of Mathematics (pgs. 536-) (orgatropy, pg. 542-43), Paris, July 6-10.
External links
● Gilbert Chauvet (articles) – Gilbert-Chauvet.com.
● Gilbert Chauvet (about) – Gilbert-Chauvet.com.
