A theory of biochemical supersystems and its application to problems of natural and artifical biogenesis (dedikált példány) [antikvár]

FOREWORDThe utilization of basic notions, such as the point in geometry, the elementary charge in electricity, the molecule in chemistry, and the elementary cell in crystallography, has made the exact foundation of these disciplines possible. Such abstract elementary units still possess all properties, are characteristic of the phenomena investigated by the given discipline, but do not contain any other element, and cannot be resolved into further parts without losing exactly those properties which are essential in respect of their nature.An ultimate elementary unit, the "biological elementary unit" has long been pursued also in biology. Von Bertalanffy was inclined to accept the viruses as such because these are units capable of self-reproduction. Selye thinks the reacton to be such an object, which is the smallest hypothetical unit capable of excitability. Investigations on the origin of life have led scientists to the postulation of had-been elementary units: such simplest living systems that might possibly once have existed, were termed moneras by Haeckel, and protobionts by Oparin and others, while S. Fox sees the simplest form of the living matter in the protenoid microspheres.The author's motive in introducing the concept of the chemoton was clearly not the addition of just another term to biological language. The chemoton theory represents a conceptionally new approach to the deduction of the simplest physical-chemical macromolecular supersystems satisfying those criteria of life which have been reformulated by the author almost axiomatically, in a more exact presentation than commonly known from the literature. It is clear from the contents of this volume that the theoretical model of the chemoton can be utilized for the description and interpretation of the basic phenomena of life already in its present form thereby contributing to the recognition of the basic laws of biology and to the understanding of elementary mechanisms of function in living organisms.If Gânti's physically and chemically well-founded, and biologically new theory can be evolved to higher levels of mathematical exactness (above