The roles of time, space and matter are subjects of endless debates in science. Considering finite interaction speeds is against using a ”nice and classical physics” with its nice mathematical formulas, but omitting the different speeds misled and may mislead research in several fields. Biology produces situations where the complexity of phenomena and the needed carefulness meets the ones needed in cosmology. The difference is that, in biology, the consequences of phenomena are immediate and they can be studied experimentally.
To describe the related phenomena, we must scrutinize, case by case, which interactions are significant and which interaction(s) can be omitted; instead of setting up ad-hoc models for living matter that contradict each other and fundamental scientific principles when used outside their narrow range of validity. To provide their correct physics-based description, we must understand the corresponding behavior of living material, including that it works with slow ion currents, electrically active, non-isotropic, structured materials, and consequently, its temporal behavior (the speeds of interactions) matters. We must consider macroscopic and microscopic phenomena (continuous and discrete features) at the same time, different science fields, and their interplay (or mixing). ”Living complex systems in particular create high-ordered functionalities by pairing up low-ordered complementary processes, e.g., one process to build and the other to correct”. [72] We must check the validity of our abstractions.
First of all, we introduce (and, in this aspect, correct the current common understanding) that neurons’ ”output product” [15] is created and transmitted by thermoelectric processes instead of net electric phenomena or net thermodinamic. Feynman was right, also in this point: ”nature is not interested in our separations, and many of the interesting phenomena bridge the gaps between fields.” [6] We derive the correct mathematical and physical handling processes, not considering the disciplinary boundaries, pointing to where the disciplinary omissions and approximations are not valid, deriving the required correct handling of the physical processes together with with the mathematics required to handle them. We use the theory developed in section 2.4, where (among others) the time derivatives of the processes are introduced, in this way enabling the quantitative mathematical description of the neurons’ abstract operation, that serves as a basis for discussing quantitatively the neural computing processes (as we dscuss in section 2.4.5, these derivatives are the laws of motion of ions) and their information handling. However, these corrections must be carried out in disciplinarily separated chapters.
As Schrödinger and Feynman implicitly suggested, we revisit the approximations that led to classical physics (where we derived the well-known ’ordinary’ laws). We scrutinize the ”construction” and ”working” of living matter in a cross-disciplinary way, using non-ordinary approximations and abstractions. Then, laws based on the same first principles in a different approximation can describe living matter. We show that nature and its observable phenomena are complex; it is pointless to dispute which of the scientific disciplines describes neuronal behavior. The non-disciplinary approach shows that the firm and fast electric interaction sufficiently well describes neuronal operation after introducing the equivalent ”thermodynamic electrical potential”.