The Free Energy Requirements of Biological Organisms; Implications for Evolution
Name
Wolpert-2016-The Free Energy Requ.pdf
Size
330.99 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c32adaeaf7bf2f190ba0f3916209bc7c
Author(s)
Wolpert, David
Date Issued
April 2016
Journal
Entropy
Publisher
MDPI AG
Citation
Wolpert, David. "The Free Energy Requirements of Biological Organisms; Implications for Evolution." Entrophy 18:4 (2016), 138.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Recent advances in nonequilibrium statistical physics have provided unprecedented insight into the thermodynamics of dynamic processes. The author recently used these advances to extend Landauer’s semi-formal reasoning concerning the thermodynamics of bit erasure, to derive the minimal free energy required to implement an arbitrary computation. Here, I extend this analysis, deriving the minimal free energy required by an organism to run a given (stochastic) map π from its sensor inputs to its actuator outputs. I use this result to calculate the input-output map π of an organism that optimally trades off the free energy needed to run π with the phenotypic fitness that results from implementing π. I end with a general discussion of the limits imposed on the rate of the terrestrial biosphere’s information processing by the flux of sunlight on the Earth.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3390/e18040138
