In the 1930s, Lars Onsager published his famous 'reciprocal relations' describing free energy conversion processes. Importantly, these relations were derived on the assumption that the fluxes of the processes involved in the conversion were proportional to the forces (free energy gradients) driving them. For chemical reactions, however, this condition holds only for systems operating close to equilibrium-indeed very close; nominally requiring driving forces to be smaller than k B T. Fairly soon thereafter, however, it was quite inexplicably observed that in at least some biological conversions both the reciprocal relations and linear flux-force dependency appeared to be obeyed no matter how far from equilibrium the system was being driven. No successful explanation of how this 'paradoxical' behaviour could occur has emerged and it has remained a mystery. We here argue, however, that this anomalous behaviour is simply a gift of water, of its viscosity in particular; a gift, moreover, without which life almost certainly could not have emerged. And a gift whose appreciation we primarily owe to recent work by Prof. R. Dean Astumian who, as providence has kindly seen to it, was led to the relevant insights by the later work of Onsager himself.

中文翻译：

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论水之厚厚。

20 世纪 30 年代，Lars Onsager 发表了他著名的“互惠关系”，描述了自由能转换过程。重要的是，这些关系是基于以下假设得出的：转换中涉及的过程的通量与驱动它们的力（自由能梯度）成正比。然而，对于化学反应来说，这个条件只适用于接近平衡状态的系统——实际上非常接近平衡状态。名义上要求驱动力小于 k B T。然而，此后不久，令人费解的是，至少在某些生物转化中，无论距离平衡有多远，似乎都遵循倒数关系和线性通量力依赖性系统正在被驱动。对于这种“自相矛盾”的行为是如何发生的，目前还没有成功的解释，这仍然是一个谜。然而，我们在这里认为，这种异常行为只是水的礼物，特别是它的粘度；此外，如果没有它，生命几乎肯定不可能出现。我们对这一礼物的赞赏主要归功于 R. Dean Astumian 教授最近的工作，正如天意所见，他是在 Onsager 本人后来的工作中得出了相关见解。