§ 2 First Law of Biological Energetics
It is easy to understand, after these remarks, the significance and the scope of this assertion which contains the first principle of biological energetics—namely, that the phenomena of life have the same claim to be called energetic metamorphoses as the other phenomena of nature.
Irreversibility of Vital Energies.—However, there is one characteristic of vital energies which deserves the closest attention. Their transformations have a direction which is in some measure inevitable. They descend a slope which they never re-ascend. They appear to be irreversible. Ostwald has rightly insisted on this fundamental characteristic, which no doubt is not that of all the phenomena of the living being without exception, but which is certainly that of the most essential phenomena. There are reversible phenomena in organisms; there are energetic transformations which may take place from one form of energy to another, or vice versâ. But the most characteristic phenomena of vitality do not act in this way. We shall presently see that most functional physiological acts begin with chemical and end with thermal action. The series of energetic transformations takes place in an inevitable direction, from chemical to thermal energy. The order of succession of ordinary energies is thus determined in the machine of the organism, and therefore by the conditions of the machine. The order of transformation of vital energies is still more rigorously regulated, and the phenomena of life evolve from childhood to ripened years, and thence to old age, without a possible return.
The laws of biological energetics are three in number. First of all, there is the fundamental principle which we have just developed, and which is, so to speak, laid down a priori; and there are two other principles, those established by experiment and summing-up, as it were, the multitude of known physiological effects. Of these two experimental laws, one refers to the origin and the other to the termination of the energies developed in living beings.