Principles of Bioenergetics

Book Preface

Energy and life. These are the phenomena of objective reality, subjective notions, and simply the words of our language. It has been already over 2000 years that philosophers have been arguing about the essence of these terms. Scientists have been trying to comprehend them for centuries. It has been already for many decades that the positive emotional impact of these words has been used in the advertising industry to attract consumers’ attention. Millions of people use the words ‘‘energy’’ and ‘‘life’’ every day while being satisfied with only an illusion of intuitive understanding of their meaning.

What is the secret of such popularity? We would like to suggest that evolution of human language has been determined by the success of those individuals who could attract wide attention to the notions that proved to be the most essential for the very existence of the society as a whole and its individual representatives. Advantages of civilization allow modern people to avoid many problems that previous generations had to face. This makes it possible to change the system of priorities. ‘‘Energy and life’’ seem to be not of such a crucial importance today— both for an individual and human society in general. Emotional attractiveness encoded in the language can be viewed today as a historical step on the path that was taken by people so as to understand Nature around them as well as themselves. The years 1961–1995 witnessed achievement of unbelievable progress in understanding of the molecular mechanisms of energy supply. This fact could create the illusion that practically everything has already been discovered in , and the next generations of biologists would better choose some other areas of scientific research.