Thermodynamics, information, complexity in artificial and living systems.

The history of thermodynamics generated the list of systems that respect, without exceptions, the principles established by Clausius, Kelvin, Carnot, Boltzmann, Gibbs, Maxwell … (just to mention the main contributors to this discipline). In spite of that, the understanding of “transformations” in living organisms, originating from studies started at the beginning of the 20th Century, opened the question on the universal validity of the Second Principle of Thermodynamics. In fact, even some of the aforementioned eminent physicists were aware of possible paradoxes when the system contains non linear elements, or when there are constraints due to rules referring to “codes” somehow present in the system.