Irreversibility and Life

This work discusses irreversibly directed processes in living and non-living nature, as well as interesting ways of coexistence of thermodynamic and cybernetic processes. The reader will gain an understanding of the profound properties of time in pairs of existence-disappearance, existence-emergence,... and the reconciling function of contradictions - bitropy. The concluding focus is on the organizing properties of the life process on Earth and its elementary acts - evolution. It presents ways in which irreversible processes enter the psychological sphere of humans. The book follows the fundamental ideas of V.I. Vernadsky and contains a number of insights into global ecology.