Directionality principles in thermodynamics and evolution

Directionality in populations of replicating organisms can be parametrized in terms of a statistical concept: evolutionary entropy. This parameter, a measure of the variability in the age of reproducing individuals in a population, is isometric with the macroscopic variable body size. Evolutionary trends in entropy due to mutation and natural selection fall into patterns modulated by ecological and demographic constraints, which are delineated as follows: (i) density-dependent conditions (a unidirectional increase in evolutionary entropy), and (ii) density-independent conditions, (a) slow exponential growth (an increase in entropy); (b) rapid exponential growth, low degree of iteroparity (a decrease in entropy); and (c) rapid exponential growth, high degree of iteroparity (random, nondirectional change in entropy). Directionality in aggregates of inanimate matter can be parametrized in terms of the statistical concept, thermodynamic entropy, a measure of disorder. Directional trends in entropy in aggregates of matter fall into patterns determined by the nature of the adiabatic constraints, which are characterized as follows: (i) irreversible processes (an increase in thermodynamic entropy) and (ii) reversible processes (a constant value for entropy). This article analyzes the relation between the concepts that underlie the directionality principles in evolutionary biology and physical systems. For models of cellular populations, an analytic relation is derived between generation time, the average length of the cell cycle, and temperature. This correspondence between generation time, an evolutionary parameter, and temperature, a thermodynamic variable, is exploited to show that the increase in evolutionary entropy that characterizes population processes under density-dependent conditions represents a nonequilibrium analogue of the second law of thermodynamics.

Address of the resident officers and instructors of Harvard University,

This folder contains an original handwritten document and a nineteenth-century copy.

Correspondence of Colonel N. Hooke,: agent from the court of France to the Scottish Jacobites, in the years 1703-1707.

Listed as nos. 92 and 95 in the club's Catalogue of books, 1898.

Correspondence of Edmund Burke & William Windham,: with other illustrative letters from the Windham papers in the British museum,

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Gray and his friends; letters and relics in great part hitherto unpublished.

Introductory essay.--I. Unpublished letters, chiefly of foreign travel. Gray, Walpole and Ashton.--II. Correspondence and remains of Richard West.--II. Gray to John Chute.--IV. Gray to Percy and Brockett.--V. Miss Speed to Gray.--VI. Gray's notes on travel.--VII. Thoughts and verse fragments.--VIII. Collectanea and conjectures.--IX. Latin poems.

Correspondence of Lieut-General the Hon, Sir George Cathcart, K. C. B.,

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Correspondence respecting the proceedings of the European commission for the organization of Eastern Roumelia ;presented to both houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty.

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The works of Jonathan Swift : containing additional letters, tracts, and poems not hitherto published; with notes, and a life of the author /

v.16. Epistolary correspondence. Letters from August 1714, to September 1724.--v.17. Epistolary correspondence. Letters from September 1725 to May 1732.--v.18. Epistolary correspondence. Letters from May 19, 1732, to October 23, 1736.--v.19. Epistolary corresondence. Letters from October 30, 1736, to February 14, 1750. Appendix to the original correspondence between Dean Swift and his friends. Correspondence between Swift and Miss Vanhomrigh. Index.

Correspondence of the late President Adams.

Sixty-three letters, Apr. 10, 1809-Feb. 10, 1810.

[Correspondence respecting Cape Colony, 1883-6]

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Correspondence of Sir John Macdonald; selections from the correspondence of the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander Macdonald,G. C. B., first prime minister of the Dominion of Canada,

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Correspondence of Sir Robert Kerr,

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