Are interface, catalyst, and surfactant/amphipath the same thing?

In a previous entry (Are "interface" and "catalyst" the same thing?), I speculated as to whether "interface" and "catalyst" were essentially the same concept.

While pondering this (which btw has strengthened my belief in their equivalence), I began to suspect that surfactants (e.g., soap, detergent) are catalysts and hence interfaces. I suppose I had this suspicion because I wash the dishes so much. <grin> I observed how detergent speeds up the movement of water and food across the surface of a dish. I suppose I also thought it would be very cool if the SOAP protocol, which is clearly an interface specification, were analogous to a surfactant like soap! That would be truly ironic: a word chosen for its acronym, then the meaning of the acronym is rejected, and then the de-acronymed word having a deeper meaning. (As you can probably tell, I am always trying to make connections among everything.)

So I did what I always do and Googled surfactant and catalyst in various ways. Result? Connection! Surfactants are considered catalysts, at least by some. For example, "Surfactants are catalysts that work by effecting or changing the surface of a material," from Handbook Of Surfactant Analysis: Chemical, Physicochemical And Physical Methods.

Even better is the connection between surfactants and interfaces. According to the Wikipedia (where I usually go after Google), surfactants are known as amphipathic compounds because they are both hydrophobic and hydrophilic, and thus intrinsically locate themselves on the surface of (or interface between) water (and whatever). Thus, surfactants are, by their very nature, organic/aqueous interfaces! As far as I can make out, the derivation of amphipathic is amphi-, which Greek for "on both sides, around" combined with -pathic from pathos, which is Greek for "passion, suffering." Also, see the definition of amphipathic in this glossary. Thus, "suffering/passion on both sides." What a great definition of an interface.

But the connections gets even richer. It turns out that there is a whole field known as "Catalysis and Surface Science." Even better, my searching ran across an article in ScienceWeek entitled "ON CATALYSIS AND SURFACE SCIENCE." And once again (just as with other key concepts I am investigating, e.g., dissipative structures), a Nobel prize has already been awarded to Irving Langmuir (1881-1957) for his study of such amphipathic compounds and the "interfacial monolayers" they form. This reinforces my hope that much hunch that interfaces are the key to understanding complex systems.

But wait, it gets even better. In searching Wikipedia for "amphipathic," I came across the entry on Evolution of flagella and its Talk :References section. In the references section is the following quote: "I [Thomas Cavalier-Smith] argue that proteins were primarily structural not enzymatic and that the first biological membranes consisted of amphipathic peptidyl-tRNAs and prebiotic mixed lipids." (emphasis added). So, amphipathic compounds are not only catalysts and innate interfaces, but such compounds were integral to the origin of life. Wow! This connects so much of what I have been thinking about lately: how a systematic understanding of networks of loosely-coupled modular interfaces can explain everything from physics, to biology, to computer science, to the mind.

One last thread to tie in here, before I lose the thread. I have a hunch that surfactants and other amphipathic compounds are "transport catalysts" while most common catalysts are "transformation catalysts." (Note, I made up these terms, then I went to check to see if they were already in use, and--of course--connection. Here is a reference to membrane transport catalyst.) One spark behind my intuition is this quote regarding Transport Processes from Northwestern University's Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering: "Descriptions of transport of momentum, energy, and species, often accompanied by chemical reaction – i.e. fluid mechanics, heat transfer, mass transfer, and reaction engineering – are one of the central and most successful paradigms of modern chemical engineering." (emphasis added).

What I am getting at in this distinction between transport and reaction is something I see as fundamental in my understanding of Service-Oriented Architecture: to describe a service, you must describe both the transport to and the function of the service (the transformation it performs). Its also fundamental to my notion of computation itself, which I see as divided into three fundamental activities: communication (transport), transformation, and persistence (storage). In all of these activities, the action is at the interfaces, enabled and accelerated by catalysts.