ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on self-organization, self-regulation, biological information, and evolutionary retention of earlier advances. Ilya Prigogine in his seminal work showed that physical, chemical, and some biological systems far from thermodynamical equilibrium tend to self-organize by reducing their entropy and forming dissipative structures. In 1932, Walter Cannon, impressed by “the wisdom of the body” maintaining physiological equilibrium with such efficiency, devised the term homeostasis, a Greek work meaning to remain thse same. The chapter considers the first law of thermodynamics to the human body as an example of a homeostatic biological system. Homeostasis is a remarkable property of highly complex open systems. A homeostatic entity such as a cell, a large industrial organization, or a society of ants is an open system that maintains its structure and functions using multiple dynamic equilibria closely controlled by interdependent control mechanisms. The chapter explains, from the point of view of thermodynamics, how the body adapts to thermal stress.
