Linkage of Physico-Chemical Processes in Biological Systems

Abstract

IT is a truism of general physiology that living organisms are actively co-ordinated systems, that is, systems in which there is co-ordination of action as well as of structure. It would be no exaggeration to say that the discovery of the quantitative correlation of processes is the major task of modern general physiology, a correlation which, in the present state of science, can be exactly expressed only interms of the existing concepts of physics and chemistry. Failure to recognize the linkage of intracellular chemical processes with physical diffusion processes involving unequal distributions of ions between the living cell and its fluid environment has often given rise to misunderstanding. The following simple example will serve to illustrate the point.