Order from chaos is simultaneously a mantra of physics and a
reality in biology. Physicist Norman Packard suggested that life
developed and thrives at the edge of chaos. Questions remain,
however, as to how much practical knowledge of biology can be
traced to existing physical principles, and how much physics has to
change in order to address the complexity of biology. Phil
Anderson, a physics Nobel laureate, contributed to popularizing a
new notion of the end of ""reductionism."" In this view, it is
necessary to abandon the quest of reducing complex behavior to
known physical results, and to identify emergent behaviors and
principles. In the present book, however, we have sought physical
rules that can underlie the behavior of biota as well as the
geochemistry of soil development. We looked for fundamental
principles, such as the dominance of water flow paths with the
least cumulative resistance, that could maintain their relevance
across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, together with
the appropriate description of solute transport associated with
such flow paths. Thus, ultimately, we address both nutrient and
water transport limitations of processes from chemical weathering
to vascular plant growth. The physical principles guiding our
effort are established in different, but related concepts and
fields of research, so that in fact our book applies reductionist
techniques guided by analogy. The fact that fundamental traits
extend across biotic and abiotic processes, i.e., the same fluid
flow rate is relevant to both, but that distinctions in topology of
the connected paths lead to dramatic differences in growth rates,
helps unite the study of these nominally different disciplines of
geochemistry and geobiology within the same framework. It has been
our goal in writing this book to share the excitement of learning,
and one of the most exciting portions to us has been the ability to
bring some order to the question of the extent to which soils can
facilitate plant growth, and what limitations on plant sizes,
metabolism, occurrence, and correlations can be formulated thereby.
While we bring order to the soil constraints on growth , we also
generate some uncertainties in the scaling relationships of plant
growth and metabolism. Although we have made an first attempt to
incorporate edaphic constraints into allometric scaling, this is
but an initial foray into the forest.
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