DYNAMIC EQUILIBRIA IN INERT SYSTEMS

The principle of homeostasis became a central and abiding theme in the physiology of animals. Once adopted, it was never abandoned, because for all life homeodynamic systems have great survival value, conferring control over external perturbation that would otherwise disrupt internal processes. The result was a balance of opposing forces of perturbation and counter-response that characterises homeodynamic systems. But how did such systems originate?

Maia emerges as a mechanism that creates stability in growth rate, but what within the organism is the particular mechanism that accounts for the observed behaviour? What are the specific elements which create the kind of output that we have come to recognise as typical of growth control mechanisms? Before looking in more detail at living control mechanisms, we should be aware that some kinds of regulatory behaviour can also be found in non-living physical and chemical systems. As they preceded whatever biological evolution added later, such systems may have provided the precursors of homeostasis.

About a hundred sentences of what the Greek philosopher Heracleitus wrote still survive; his one book was lost, yet his ideas on cosmology continue to have an influence. He derided men for failing to understand the logos, meaning the reason, or the order that pervades in universal processes.