Ecological Modelling 220 (2009) 18741879

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Ecological Modelling
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolmodel

Thermodynamics of irreversible processes and quantum eld theory:

An interplay for the understanding of ecosystem dynamics
Emilio Del Giudice a,b , Riccardo M. Pulselli c , Enzo Tiezzi c,
a
b
c

INFN, Milan, Italy

International Institute of Biophysics, Neuss, Germany
Department of Chemistry, University of Siena, Siena, Italy

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Available online 27 May 2009
Keywords:
Thermodynamics of irreversible processes
Quantum eld theory
Dissipative structures
Coherence domains
Ecosystem dynamics

a b s t r a c t
Ecological modelling has not yet received from basic hard sciences, like conventional physics and chemistry, an adequate conceptual support. Mechanistic simulation techniques are very far from achieving a
satisfactory understanding of ecosystem dynamics.
In this paper we discuss how to build a bridge between basic sciences and ecodynamics, able to justify
the emergence of novelties.
It is shown that two important theoretical frameworks, thermodynamics of irreversible processes and
quantum eld theory, exhibit signicant convergences on a number of points. They provide a rationale
for the appearance of different phases of the same system, for the onset of non-linear self-consistent
dynamics able to give rise to domains extended in space and evolving in time in an irreversible way, for the
appearance of self-organization which is the main feature of life. A possible dynamical implementation
of the thermodynamic concept of negentropy is suggested. The emergence of autocatalytic features is
discussed.
2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The emergence of novelties is the most important and spectacular feature of natural evolution. Life has grown on Earth showing
evolutionary features and producing the appearance of patterns of
increasing complexity. How is that possible? Usual simulation techniques are able to describe the behaviour of ecosystems, but leave
many unanswered questions about their formation. The behaviour
of living species has been successfully described, but the dynamics
of their appearance has not yet been deciphered.
In this context we refer the reader to the interesting article of
Ulanowicz (2009) that appears in the present issue of this journal.
In the present paper we tackle the question: how is it possible to understand the emergence of novelties in the conceptual
framework of contemporary physics and chemistry?
In modern times two different approaches have been followed to
deal with complex systems, such as living organisms or ecosystems.
The rst one, the thermodynamic approach, looks at the system as
a whole and extracts from its behaviour in space and time a global
principle that characterizes its dynamics.

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: tiezzienzo@unisi.it (E. Tiezzi).
0304-3800/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2009.04.035

Within this approach the most relevant factors governing the

system evolution are grasped from the very beginning (evolutionary and holistic approach), e.g. the behavioural patterns of
animals, the organic codes in biochemistry, the biodiversity in the
ecosystems, the homeostasis requirements in living organisms, the
predominant role of information in the break-up of the entropy of
a complex living being.
The other approach, usually named dynamical, tries to reconstruct the observed complexity from its elementary components
(reductionist approach), trying to grasp the law of formation of
the phenomenon. This approach contains necessarily an element
of abstraction, since the components of the system are conceived
at the beginning as stripped of some features they have in the real
situation. The dynamical process of formation of the phenomenon
produces these missing parts as a consequence of the very process of evolution, so that the theory can be compared to reality
only at the end of the process. The dynamical approach tries to
revive in the thinking the process of creation that gave rise to the
phenomenon. Examples of this modus operandi are the bodies
moving without attrition in the Galileian approach or the atoms in
the 19th century atomistic proposal. The validity of such abstractions can be tested only post hoc, namely in the case of their
capability of reconstructing the observed patterns of nature or, better, to help to discover aspects of nature hitherto unsuspected. An
historical example has been in the 19th century the discovery of a

E. Del Giudice et al. / Ecological Modelling 220 (2009) 18741879

new planet, Neptune, as a consequence of the discrepancy between

the observed orbit of Uranus and the one calculated on the basis of
the classical mechanics equations applied to the set of the planets
known at that time.
A dialogue between the two approaches appears then fruitful
for both. The present paper is just an attempt to move the rst step
along this way. The authors, that come from the two approaches,
have written the article just as a record of this dialogue.
As a matter of fact a wide gulf is present in the current opinion
between the two approaches since scientists too much concerned
with the properties of elementary components appear unable to
grasp the importance of the environment where the atomic actors
are performing and how their actual dynamics in the given environment is different from the dynamics conjectured into the empty
space.
We nd it more convenient to describe rst the second approach.

2. Quantum eld theory

Quantum eld theory (QFT) has started to elaborate a new point
of view, where the dynamics of particles is necessarily connected to
their environment, that, for historical reasons, is termed vacuum
(Umezawa, 1993).
QFT has become in recent years a powerful tool for understanding the formation of extended domains, that cannot be split into
independent component atoms and where some selected physical variables assume specied non vanishing values, which depend
on space and time. These physical variables assume the role of elds
that add up to the mutual interactions of the microscopic components and give rise to a complex dynamics that becomes quite
different than the dynamics of the same microscopic components
in the empty space.
The above domains thus play the role of environments governing the evolution of the components, of vacua, in the language
of Quantum Physics. QFT predicts the existence of innitely many
vacua basically different among them. The time evolution of these
vacua does not follow the same symmetry principles than the evolution of the components in the empty space as governed by the
EulerLagrange equations in the empty space. In these vacua some
or all symmetries existing at the Lagrangian level are spontaneously
broken, in particular the time reversibility, so that the evolution of
the system across its vacua makes its historical description possible
(Del Giudice et al., 1988).
With respect to the dynamics occurring in the empty space, the
dynamics in these vacua appears to depend on codes provided
by the constraints on the behaviour of the components induced
by the artifacts of the nontrivial eld structures of these vacua.
This feature is useful to understand, for instance, the phase transitions where each phase is the consequence of the dynamics of
components in the framework of the peculiar eld structures of the
relevant vacuum.
The emergence of all these different vacua is the consequence of
the interaction of the ensemble of microscopic components (that
form altogether the matter eld) and the extended long-range
gauge elds, whose existence is dictated by the requirement that
quantum uctuations of the components should not be directly
observable (local phase invariance of the Lagrangian).
The discussion of this point exceeds the scope of the present
paper and we refer the reader to the literature (Preparata, 1995; Del
Giudice and Vitiello, 2006a,b). We limit ourselves here to point that
the relevant gauge eld in the interaction of atoms and molecules,
that are the main actors of the biosphere, is the vector potential
of the electromagnetic eld, which thus should play, as we will
see in the following, a pivotal role in the self-organization of living
matter.

1875

In the above case, extended spacetime domains appear, where

the matter eld and the e.m. eld are tuned together and oscillate
on a common frequency (in the physical jargon, they are coherent);
they are termed for this reason coherence domains. Coherence
prevents the splitting of the components into independent entities,
at least below an energy threshold.
In this way, it is possible to meet a requirement that Prigogine
has stressed as essential to the existence of a nature where life could
have originated. In Tiezzi (2003), the problem has been summarized
as follows:
Prigogine reects that Poincar asked himself whether the physical universe was isomorphic to a system of non interacting
units. Energy (the Hamiltonian, H) is generally written as the
sum of two terms: the kinetic energy of the units involved
and the potential energy of their interactions. Poincar asked
whether the interactions could be eliminated. This is a very
important question. If the answer is yes, then there may be no
coherence in the universe. It was therefore lucky that he proved
that interactions cannot generally be eliminated, because of resonances between the various units.
The Brussels school worked for years on these problems, identifying a class of dynamic systems known as Large Poincar
Systems (LPS), for which it is possible to eliminate Poincar
divergence and integrate a class of non integrable Poincar
systems. An LPS is a system with a continuous spectrum, characterized by interactions involving integrations over resonances.
These LPS are not integrable in the usual sense because of
Poincar resonance, but can be integrated by new methods by
eliminating any Poincar divergence.
As a matter of fact, classical physics does not allow a convincing
proof of the above property, that on the contrary is quite easy in the
framework of QFT. The dynamics is just that suggested by Poincar
and Prigogine, namely an interaction among components not based
on scatterings occurring at denite space and time, but on the contrary a coherent resonant coupling among components mediated
by a gauge eld able to propagate at the phase velocity, that can
be as large as possible, not bound by the speed of the light. As a
consequence, within these extended domains, the time acquires a
completely different meaning than in the empty space or within
non coherent regions. But the problem of time exceeds the scope
of the present contribution.
Let us discuss now how these extended domains emerge in the
frame of quantum physics.
Let us start from scratch.
The main result of quantum physics is the elimination of the
concept of inert isolated body, which is a pillar of classical physics.
The analysis of Walter Nernst (see his book republished in 1969)
at the beginning of the 20th century showed convincingly that the
observed behaviour of the specic heats of solids at very low temperature could have been understood only by accepting that solids
exchange energy and momentum not only with the thermal bath,
but also with another reservoir, termed by Nernst with the name
vacuum.
Let us discuss this point with some details.
Nernst investigated the low temperature T limit of the molar
specic heat capacities C of solids. C is the amount of heat to be
supplied to a mole (namely an ensemble of an Avogadro number of
atoms or molecules) of a solid in order to increase its temperature
by 1 C. It is well-known that temperature is proportional by a pure
scale constant to the average kinetic energy of the components, so
that the molar heat capacity C corresponds to a denite jump of
the total kinetic energy of a mole of the solid. Let us assume that
temperature T is low enough to stay below the lowest structural
change of the solid, so that in the interval of temperature under

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E. Del Giudice et al. / Ecological Modelling 220 (2009) 18741879

consideration the whole supply of energy gives rise to a change of

the total kinetic energy and, hence, of temperature. Consequently
the molar heat capacity should be equal to a denite jump of energy
(the increase of T by just 1 C) and thus should be independent of
T. This statement corresponds to the celebrated law of Dulong and
Petit that is experimentally valid for temperatures not too low.
However, should this law be valid also in the limit T 0, a catastrophe would occur, since the change of entropy,

T
S =
T0

Q
=
T

T
C

dT
T
= C ln
T
T0

(1)

T0

would diverge for T 0, Nernst was able to show that this catastrophe actually did not occur since C was not constant at all, but
vanished in the limit T 0 as T3 , so making S nite as it should
be.
The conclusion of Nernst was the result of careful experimental
investigations and gives rise to the third principle of thermodynamics, which is actually the conceptual basis of quantum physics
(Nernst, 1969).
The vanishing of the molar heat capacities posed, however, a
major problem to classical mechanics. Equal jumps of the total
kinetic energy of the solid body required a decreasing supply of
energy at decreasing T! How was this possible? The measured molar
heat capacity is the intake of all the detectable energies entering
the body, whereas the level of molar energy (as measured by T)
increased by a constant amount (1 C). There was evidently a mismatch between the variation of the content of energy of the body
and the supply of energy from outside, that allowed no alternative
to the statement that a hidden source of energy should have been
present at work. Since all the external bodies, that formed altogether the thermal bath, were under control, there was no other
option than to admit that the mysterious supplier of energy was
nothing else than . . . the vacuum. Nernst was so daring to propose
this bold conclusion and thus he, a chemist, should be recognized
as the real father of quantum physics!
This new reservoir of energy and momentum, the quantum vacuum, becomes detectable when the other reservoir, the thermal
bath, releases a ow of energy small enough, as occurs at low T.
At high temperature, on the contrary, the contribution of the thermal bath is large enough to make the contribution of the quantum
vacuum negligible. The presence of this alternative reservoir, the
vacuum always at work, made actually unreachable the absolute
zero temperature.
The introduction of the vacuum as a physical agent destroyed
a pillar of classical physics, namely the existence of the isolated
body. Bodies were no longer able to be isolated, since they could
well have been disconnected from the thermal bath by enclosing
them in suitable boxes or by pulling them far enough from the other
bodies, but they could not be disconnected from the vacuum.
Consequently the vacuum becomes a bridge that connects all
objects among them. No isolated body can exist and the fundamental physical actor is no longer the atom, but the eld, namely
the atom space distributions variable with time. Atoms become the
quanta of this matter eld, in the same way as the photons are the
quanta of the electromagnetic eld. The relationship between the
physical objects and the vacuum make the rst ones intrinsically
uctuating and accounts for the celebrated uncertainty principles.
This is a well-known story that can be found in the textbooks of QFT
(Umezawa, 1993).
There is, however, a more important point. The vacuum in QFT
cannot be uniquely dened; there are innitely many inequivalent
vacua, whose time evolution is not given by the Lagrangian governing the behaviour of the ensemble of the given physical actors
in a given vacuum. As a matter of fact, the same Lagrangian would

produce different equations of motion in different vacua, so that

they should be supplemented by an equation describing the time
evolution of the vacuum; such equation is not satisfying the same
symmetry principles of the Lagrangian, so that a Lagrangian invariant under time translation or time reversal acting in a vacuum
evolving along a time arrow would produce a physical description
containing the same property.
The above conceptual framework has been tested in a simple
(compared with the complexity of the ecosystems), but non-trivial
case: the phase transition between the vapour and the liquid, e.g. in
the case of water. Referring, for details, to the published literature
(Arani et al., 1995), we summarize here the main results.
In the gas phase, the water molecules are mutually independent
apart from the collisions that are, however, unable to excite the
electronic levels of the molecule: actually thermal collisions are
able to produce excitations much smaller than 7.6 eV (the energy of
the lowest excited state) corresponding to a temperature of more
than 80,000 C! The molecules move within a vacuum where the
electromagnetic eld is basically absent apart from occasional rare
(on the scale of the atomic times!) photons passing by, swiftly, and,
more important thing, apart from vacuum uctuations. Each one of
these uctuations could excite some molecules, provided that their
frequency  could correspond to the molecule excitation energy Eexc
according to the equation:
Eexc = hv

(2)

where h is the Planck constant. The range of the typical molecule

excitations (some eVs) corresponds to a range of wavelengths of
thousands of Angstroms that, at the usual gas densities, involve tens
of thousands of molecules. So a single uctuation involves a large
number of molecules and establishes a possibility of collectivization
among molecules, much wider than the collision mechanism. The
excitation of molecules induced by the vacuum uctuation implies
a temporary loan of energy from the vacuum to the molecules
that should be returned within an appropriate very short time dictated by the value of the Planck constant. However, during the
uctuation molecules are able to produce energy that is released
to the vacuum since the electric current, produced by the charged
components moving during the change of molecular conguration,
couples with the electromagnetic eld of the uctuation, producing thus an energy. The balance of energy E during the uctuation
is:
E = AN Einteraction

(3)

where A is constant and N is the number of molecules present in

the region (coherence domain) spanned by the wavelength  = c/
(c = speed of light) of the uctuation.
It has been shown (Preparata, 1995), on the basis of the general
laws of QFT, that

(4)
Einteraction = BN N
Then, the energy debt of the molecules toward the vacuum is
totally extinguished when N (which is actually a density since refers
to a given volume) is such that:
E = ANcrit BNcrit

Ncrit = 0

(5)

In such a case the situation where molecules oscillate between

two congurations (the excited and the fundamental ones), in tune
among them since acted upon by the same wavelength, requires
no expense of energy and becomes stationary. Moreover, when N
exceeds Ncrit , the ensemble of molecules becomes a net producer of
energy that should be released to the thermal bath. The minimum
energy state is reached when the density becomes the largest possible in consideration of the hard cores of the molecules performing

E. Del Giudice et al. / Ecological Modelling 220 (2009) 18741879

the congurational oscillation; actually the molecule involved in

this oscillation has a larger radius than the non oscillating one.
Calling Ngoal the nal number of molecules packed in the coherence domain, the energy L released to the thermal bath (latent heat
of the phase transition) is:
3/2

L = E = BNgoal ANgoal

(6)

This outow of energy implies a corresponding change of the

entropy of the ensemble; molecules are shifted from a macrostate
rich of microstates, since molecules were mutually independent,
to another macrostate poor of microstates where molecules are
correlated by an electromagnetic eld oscillating in tune, so that
is much more ordered. According to thermodynamics, this transition could occur only in an open situation. The system needs
to get rid of the excess energy given by Eq. (6); should the outow of energy be forbidden, the transition would not occur. The
above treatment describes carefully the details of a vapourliquid
transition (including the large increase of the density during the
transition) and allows, in the case of water, to calculate the relevant
thermodynamic quantities.
Of course, this example is still far from the cases interesting for
ecological modelling since deals still with inanimate matter where
meaning codes and self-organization are not present yet.
Its utility rests only in showing in a veriable case how a change
of vacuum might occur.
Let us shift now to a more interesting topic: how information
can enter into the play?
A rst feature of this new vacuum is that it is lled by a non vanishing electromagnetic eld trapped in the ensemble of molecules:
it is possible to show, using the general laws of QFT, that this eld
is unable to be irradiated outwards, since the coherence domain
acts with respect to it as a cavity. This eld oscillates on a dened
frequency (Arani et al., 1995). According to general laws of elec
trodynamics, this eld is able to give origin to selective forces (F)
among molecules depending on their specic frequencies of oscillation. Suppose that two molecules, 1 and 2, able to oscillate with
frequencies 1 and 2 enter into a eld oscillating on the frequency
 the vector potential of the e.m. eld (remember that
0 . Calling A

 we have:

 = rot A)
E = (A/t); H
F = const.

12 22
2
(12 02 )

(22 0 ) + 2


grad(A)

(7)

where is the width of the resonance. It can be seen that this force
is peaked around 1 = 2 = 0 and is small elsewhere; moreover is
 decreases
signicant only on the boundaries of the region, where A
sharply to zero.
Thus the CD (coherence domain) is able to attract on its
boundaries and make them interacting in a non diffusive way, independently of random collisions and on much shorter time scales, the
molecular species able to coresonate with its trapped electromagnetic eld. The energy output of the induced chemical reactions is
subsequently released to a medium whose components are electromagnetically correlated, so that this energy ow is invested not
in thermal uctuations, but in electromagnetic uctuations, that
might change in turn the frequency of the e.m. eld and, according
to Eq. (7), the involved molecular species. We get then the possibility of building a chemical code, that breaking the initial polygamy
of the molecules, open in the empty space to every chemical intercourse, pushes them towards a monogamic behaviour dictated by
a code originated by the interplay between chemical reactions and
electromagnetic excitations. Flows of a priori uninformed energy
become, through the selective actions dependent on frequency,
indications on which molecules are summoned and allowed to
interact, namely the embryo of an information code (Del Giudice,
2007).

1877

In this scheme the array of CDs transforms a set of random

inputs into an ordered sequence of autocatalyzed events (these
were shown in some schemes in Jrgensen et al., 2007). Along this
path the stochastic features of the evolution could get a clarication; the word stochastic comes from a Greek word that translates
the work of the archer that aims at a target having a probability of
getting it dependent on its own choice and on randomly uctuating events, in other words the success of the archer relies on a
combination of choice and chance. This occurs also in the interplay
between molecular events and electromagnetic governance. The
element of choice is given by the code implicit in the coherent e.m.
structure, the element of chance by the random molecular events.
The perspective is open of unraveling the complexity of ecosystems
as emerging from the achievements of the ecologists quoted in the
literature (Jrgensen et al., 2007).
Ecosystem dynamics are rooted in congurations of autocatalytic processes (Jrgensen et al., 2007), which respond to random
inputs in a non-random manner. Autocatalytic processes build on
themselves, giving rise to self-organization.
There are many examples in the Darwinian evolution and in
ecosystems theory:
a. the evolution of obligate mutualistic pollinators, such as yuccas
and yucca moths (Tegeticula, Parategeticula), which eventually
displace other pollinators (pp. 6676 in Jrgensen et al., 2007);
b. the marsh gut ecosystem (Jrgensen et al., 2007) and its relationship to ascendency;
c. the estimated stored exergy among the biota inhabiting Surtsey
Island; and
d. the BelousovZhabotinsky (BZ) reactions.
Coming back to water, there is a second important feature. As
shown in Arani et al. (1995), the oscillation of the water molecules
in the coherent state occurs between two congurations. The lowenergy conguration is the ground state conguration where all
electrons are tightly bound; in the high-energy conguration one
electron is excited just below the ionization threshold, the excitation energy being 12.06 eV whereas ionization occurs at 12.60 eV. So
in the coherence domains of liquid water, where the above oscillation occurs, there is a reservoir of quasi-free electrons that produces
two consequences:
i. The residual small binding energy (half of an eV) makes possible
a quantum tunnelling of these electrons out of the coherence
domain. Thus the coherence domain becomes a chemically
reducing agent, whereas non coherent water molecules are
mildly oxidant.
ii. It is possible to excite coherence domains producing vortices of
such quasi-free electrons by using small amounts of energy. It has
been shown (Del Giudice and Preparata, 1994, 1998) that these
excited levels of the water coherence domains have a very long
lifetime (up to weeks or months) since coherence prevents their
thermal decay and allows only a release of energy through a resonant channel as occurring, for instance, through the dynamics
of Eq. (7).
In order to exploit fully the above two properties it should be
necessary to separate permanently the coherent fraction of water
and the non coherent fraction that, at non vanishing T, as shown in
Arani et al. (1995), is produced by the thermal collisions with the
ambient molecules. In normal water molecules undergo a complex
time evolution where they evolve continuously back and forth from
coherence.
The situation changes when coherence domains are stabilized
by the interaction with a wall, a surface, a large molecular structure

1878

E. Del Giudice et al. / Ecological Modelling 220 (2009) 18741879

that protects them from the impact of collisions by the extrabinding they are providing.
This interfacial water is thus different from normal water. Stabilized coherence domains are able to develop both properties listed
above. First, they give rise to a relevant electron transfer and exhibit
a relevant redox negative potential with respect to bulk water.
Second, since water coherence domains acquire an internal
spectrum of excited levels they can give rise to a further coherence.
As molecules can become coherent by oscillating between a pair
of congurations of theirs, so coherence domains, seen in turn as
elementary entities, can become coherent by oscillating between
two levels of their spectrum. A coherence among the coherence
domains can thus emerge in water, and in water only. This is the
origin of the unique role of water in nature and in life! Through
the coherence among the coherence domains, water becomes the
essential tool for organizing matter on a large scale. Since the relaxation of the excitations of the coherence domains of water cannot
occur thermally, as said before, but can occur through resonances
with external molecules, the ground for organized chemistry could
arise. But this is a perspective for the future.
The peculiar ordered structure of interfacial water has also been
recognized and discussed in Tiezzi and Marchettini (2007), where
it has been pointed out that a dynamics based on molecular collisions should produce a macrostate very rich of microstates and this
situation should be enhanced near a wall where there should be a
larger number of collisions, whereas, in the liquid state of water,
self-organization leads to ordered macrostates poor in microstates.
A possible conclusion that can be drawn from the discussion of
Tiezzi and Marchettini (2007), coupled with the QFT point of view
presented above, is that the dynamics of interfacial water is not
governed by collisions.

3. Evolutionary thermodynamics
In this section we will discuss the thermodynamic approach,
based on the creation of dissipative structures and self-organization
(Tiezzi, 2003; Tiezzi and Marchettini, 2007; Tiezzi, 2006a,b;
Prigogine, 1954; Prigogine, 1980).
In 1977, Ilya Prigogine was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his theory of far-from-equilibrium systems and dissipative
structures. A new opening was proposed with respect to consolidated approaches, starting from an ecodynamic view of nature,
a revolution in scientic thought, or according to some, a clear
break between two branches of the same science. The break into
two worlds or two views of the world, reductionism according to
Descartes versus holism according to Pascal, the illuminism of technological and manipulative man versus evolutionism of adapting
systems, or the determinism of univocal solutions and predictive
models versus the emergentism of unpredictable, but still understandable, irreversible events. All this foreshadowed the birth of
a true scientic paradigm that revolutionized the epistemology of
science and its techniques. It was not a question of producing something out of nothing, but rather a kind of ordering of things. Indeed,
order out of chaos is an expression dear to the Prigogines school.
The theory of far-from-equilibrium systems and the evolutionary physics of Ilya Prigogine are the keystones of this paradigmatic
transition: Far from equilibrium, matter acquires new properties,
typical of non-equilibrium situations, situations in which a system
is not isolated but subject to strong external conditioning. These
completely new properties are necessary to understand the world
around us. In this way, science seems to rediscover the fascination
of complexity and the value of time and history, of the singularities and diversity of nature and the unpredictable, although still
understandable, creative behaviours that can be observed in the
real world. Faced with the need to investigate the world and the

enormous variety of organizational, regulatory, adaptive solutions

found in nature, social dynamics and real life, science must reformulate some of the questions it has been accustomed to ask. The
inadequacy of classical reductionist science is evident in the face of
the great problems that humankind must urgently tackle if it does
not wish to become an extinct species. The sciences of evolutionary
processes are nally called to study unrepeatable processes and to
try to nd a hypothetical reconstruction of successions of events in
an irreversible context.
The science that rst shed light to this new paradigm is thermodynamics. Vernadsky (1926), Prigogine and Stengers (1979),
Jrgensen and Svirezhev (2004) opened the thermodynamic gates
to enter into new scientic stories: stories related to open systems,
to co-evolutionary behaviours, to non-linear biosphere models and
to ecosystem theory.
If history and the succession of events are of scientic relevance,
the concept of state function should be revised at a higher level
of complexity. The singularity of an event also becomes of particular importance: if a certain quantity of energy is spent to kill a
caterpillar, we lose the information embodied in the caterpillar.
However, were this the last caterpillar, we should lose its unique
genetic information forever. The last caterpillar is different from
the nth caterpillar.
Stories take place in a setting, the details of which are not irrelevant to the story. What happens in the biosphere, the story of life,
depends on the constraints of the biosphere itself. Hence it is important to have global models of the biosphere in terms of space, time,
matter, energy, entropy, information and their respective relations.
Finally, if we consider the evolutionary transition from anaerobic
to aerobic living systems, the ratio of energy to stored information
is clearly different. The information that led to the evolution and
organization of the two types of system is not proportional to the
ow of energy.
Thus entropy breaks the symmetry of time and can change
irrespective of changes in energy, energy being a conservative
and reversible quantity, whereas entropy is evolutionary and irreversible per se. The ow of a non-conservative quantity, negentropy,
makes life ow and the occurrence of a negentropy production
term is the difference with respect to analysis based on exclusively
conservative terms (energy and matter).
We may conclude that in systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium (biological and ecological) (Tiezzi, 2006a,b), entropy is not a
state function, since it has intrinsic evolutionary properties strikingly
at variance with classical thermodynamics.
In the framework of evolutionary thermodynamics, we must
deal with goal functions instead of state functions: ecodynamic
models must be based on relations evolving in time; far-fromequilibrium thermodynamics (Prigogine) is the foundation of a new
description of nature.
Fundamentally, Prigogine states that in systems far from equilibrium, irreversibility can be originated from the appearance of order.
An order, and this is the innovation introduced by the Belgian scientist, which can be originated from a chaotic, homogeneous system. A
revolutionary thought that gives chaos, up to that moment avoided
as an argument not well dened scientically, a new role: that of
moulding, in time, an ordered reality.
A dissipative system or structure is a thermodynamically open
system operating far from thermodynamic equilibrium, and that
exchanges energy, matter, information with the environment that
surrounds it. In virtue of the exchanges with the exterior, the system
manages to organize itself. That is, it is characterized by the spontaneous breaking of symmetry, both spatial and temporal, and by the
formation of complex structures in which the interacting particles
show long-range correlations and interactions.
Therefore, dissipative structures maintain their non-equilibrium
thermodynamic state thanks to a continuous dissipation of energy

E. Del Giudice et al. / Ecological Modelling 220 (2009) 18741879

towards the exterior. The order produced by this dissipation generates new order and new organization (autocatalytic structures) but
if the ow of energy is interrupted or diminished, the structure
can collapse and may not return to its initial state (irreversibility). The system thus self-organizes in virtue of internal non-linear
processes that guarantee a balance among the free energy and the
negentropy, entering, and the entropy and low-quality energy, exiting. In systems far from equilibrium, the inert order of crystal,
held by the thermodynamics of equilibrium as the only producible
and reproducible physical order, leaves its place to self-organizing
processes that associate order and disorder, structures on one
side, losses and wastes on another, hence the name dissipative
structures, in order to highlight an association between order and
disorder that is, in the words of Prigogine, truly paradoxical at
rst glance.
4. Conclusions
The present paper is an introductory one. It describes the two
branches of science thermodynamics and QFT at rst in their
isolation and subsequently it shows the possibility that QFT could
conceive specic dynamical systems able to implement the requirements of thermodynamics. In this frame the occurrence of phase
transitions is dynamically described; this is a really new result that
allows us to understand how novelties could emerge during the
dynamical evolution of a system.
For instance, how water vapour could become liquid water or
how bulk water could become self-organizing water. This last point
raises the fundamental problem of the emergence of life, whose
properties are just opposite to the properties of inert non living matter. The understanding of the dynamical base of the active feature of
living organisms and ecosystems is the main goal of our approach.
Actually the biosphere cannot emerge by an assembly of basically
passive components. We need a factor intrinsically endowed with
the ability to produce self-organization.
In the present paper we have provided theoretical arguments
that identify liquid water as a candidate for this role. Experimental
evidence for this statement can be found in Tiezzi and Marchettini
(2007), Tiezzi (2006a,b), Magnani et al. (2004).
A rst example of the ecological consequences of this approach is
provided in Brizhik et al. (2009). More in the direction of ecosystems

1879

theory, this theoretical approach enhances some of the outcomes

provided in Jrgensen et al. (2007).
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