The Ski-Lift Pathway: Thermodynamically Unique, Biologically Ubiquitous

Standard thermodynamics routinely studies transitions between low- and high-entropy states. We explore a few questions not considered so far: What is the most efficient way to attain a specific high-entropy state? And what is the most efficient way to move from one specific high-entropy state to another? Surprisingly, the direct pathway is not the simplest one. We std a seemingly counterintuitive pathway that attains the desired state efficiently by lowering the system’s entropy first much below the desired state's entropy and then re-increasing it in a controlled manner. We dub it "the Ski-Lift Pathway" (SLP), and explore its bearing on the issues of complexity and information. We then show that this dynamics is ubiquitous in all biological processes.