Further pursuit of these thoughts would lead into abstract speculation. I would like to point out, however, that these abstruse questions are not at all far from the sickbeds of suffering patients. One of our most important drugs is digitalis, which is used to stimulate failing hearts. Hajdu and I showed that digitalis helps the heart to pump potassium back into its fibers and to retain it. The inability of a heart to maintain its potassium concentration may be one cause of its failure.
Living systems are clearly different from nonliving systems.
There must therefore be a difference in the way these two kinds of systems are thought about. Physics is undoubtedly the most basic science. In a way, biology is only an applied science, applying physics as a tool for the analysis of living systems. However, there are distinctions between physical and biological events. Suppose a process, left to itself, is likely to occur 999 times in one way for each time that it occurs in another.