ABSTRACT
The theme of F. E. Yates’ reply is the “emergence of biological time.” It is clear that the main topics characteristic of Yates’ conception of biological time are its flow, its direction, and its alleged irreversibility. Since Yates considers the latter to be incompatible with biological time, one wonders how biological time is going to emerge in homeodynamics. Nor does Yates explain how the kind of “time,” allegedly generated by homeodynamical processes would lead to “biological time”; that is, how it obtains direction, flow, and irreversibility. He quotes the example that in many organisms the circadian rhythm persists even when the system is isolated from all environmental time clues. Yates argues that the flaws need to be “fixed” in order to obtain a new, extended physics, for which he has coined the name of “homeodynamics.” This new theory is allegedly capable of dealing with complexity and the emergence of biological time.
