Thermodynamics and the Evolution of Stochastic Populations

Abstract

The appeal of thermodynamics to problems outside physics is undeniable, as is the growing recognition of its apparent universality, yet in the absence of a rigorous formalism divorced from the peculiarities of molecular systems all attempts to generalize thermodynamics remain qualitative and heuristic at best. In this paper we formulate a probabilistic theory of thermodynamics and and set the basis for its application to generic stochastic populations.