{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,6]],"date-time":"2025-12-06T04:55:39Z","timestamp":1764996939482,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":45,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2012,2,10]],"date-time":"2012-02-10T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1328832000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Entropy"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Life is considered something different from non-living things, but no single driving force can account for all the different aspects of life, which consists of different levels of hierarchy, such as metabolism, cell physiology, multi-cellular development and organization, population dynamics, ecosystem, and evolution. Although free energy is evidently the driving force in biochemical reactions, there is no established relationship between metabolic energy and spatiotemporal organization of living organisms, or between metabolic energy and genetic information. Since Schr\u00f6dinger pointed out the importance of exporting entropy in maintaining life, misunderstandings of entropy notion have been obstacles in constructing a unified view on the driving forces of life. Here I present a simplified conceptual framework for unifying driving forces of life at various different levels of hierarchy. The key concept is \u201centropy deficit\u201d, or simply, \u2018inhomogeneity\u2019, which is defined as the difference of maximal possible entropy and actual entropy. This is equivalent to information content in genetic information and protein structure, and is also defined similarly for non-homogeneous structures in ecosystems and evolution. Entropy deficit or inhomogeneoity is a unified measure of all driving forces of life, which could be considered a scientific equivalent to \u2018\u00e9lan vital\u2019 of Bergson.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/e14020233","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2012,2,10]],"date-time":"2012-02-10T11:23:18Z","timestamp":1328872998000},"page":"233-251","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":11,"title":["Scientific \u00c9lan Vital: Entropy Deficit or Inhomogeneity as a Unified Concept of Driving Forces of Life in Hierarchical Biosphere Driven by Photosynthesis"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"14","author":[{"given":"Naoki","family":"Sato","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Life Sciences, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan"},{"name":"JST, CREST, Sambancho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0075, Japan"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2012,2,10]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Schr\u00f6dinger, E. 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