Message-ID: <003401be32c6$eb879fc0$0b73fea9@jay98> Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1998 15:02:33 -1000 From: Jay Hanson <mailto:j@QMAIL.COM> Subject: Re: LIFE IN REVERSE To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
----- Original Message ----- From: Wilbur Streett <mailto:WStreett@mail.Monmouth.com>>At 07:44 AM 12/28/98 -1000, you wrote:
>>----- Original Message -----
>>From: Wilbur Streett <mailto:WStreett@mail.Monmouth.com>
>>Wilbur, there are NO exceptions to the laws of thermodynamics.
>
>The laws of theordynamics are in reference to heat in a closed system.
>We've had this discussion before. You keep bringing up entropy, as if that
This is my last word on the subject: you are simply wrong. It's important because it means that all economic development occurs at a net loss.
Erwin Schrodinger (1945) has described life as a system in steady-state thermodynamic disequilibrium that maintains its constant distance from equilibrium (death) by feeding on low-entropy from its environment -- that is, by exchanging high-entropy outputs for low-entropy inputs. The same statement would hold verbatium as a physical description of our economic process. http://dieoff.com/page150.htm
Ilya Prigogine won a nobel prize for applying thermodymanics to open systems. http://nobelprizes.com/nobel/chemistry/1977a.html
THERMODYNAMIC SYSTEMS: #1 Isolated systems do not exchange energy or matter with the exterior. #2 Closed systems exchange energy wityh the exterior but not matter. #3 Open systems exchange both energy and matter with the exterior. [p.p., 4,5, MODERN THERMODYNAMICS: Dilip Kondepudi & Ilya Prigogine, Wiley, 1998 ]
"The third possible category is that in which systems are far from thermal and chemical equilibrium. Such systems are nonlinear and pass through indeterminate phases. They do not tend toward minimum free energy and maximum specific entropy but amplify certain fluctuations and evolve toward a new dynamic regime that is radically different from stationary states at or near equilibrium. "Prima facie the evolution of systems in the far-from-equilibrium state appears to contradict the famous Second Law of Thermodynamics. How can systems actually increase their level of complexity and organization, and become more energetic? The Second Law states that in any isolated system organization and structure tend to disappear, to be replaced by uniformity and randomness. Contemporary scientists know that evolving systems are not isolated, and thus that the Second Law does not fully describe what takes place in them—more precisely, between them and their environment. Systems in the third category are always and necessarily open systems, so that change of entropy within them is not determined uniquely by irreversible internal processes. Internal processes within them do obey the Second Law: free energy, once expanded, is unavailable to perform further work. But energy available to perform further work can be "imported" by open systems from their environment: there can be a transport of free energy—or negative entropy—across the system boundaries. * When the two quantities—the free energy within the system, and the free energy transported across the system boundaries from the environment—balance and offset each other, the system is in a steady (i.e., in a stationary) state. As in a dynamic environment the two terms seldom balance each other for any extended period of time, in the real world systems are at best "metastable": they tend to fluctuate around the states that define their steady states, rather than settle into them without further variation.
footnote:
* Change in the entropy of the systems is defined by the well-known Prigogine equation dS = djS + deS Here dS is the total change of entropy in the system, while djS is the entropy changed produced by irreversible processes within it and deS is the entropy transported across the system boundaries. In an isolated system dS is always positive, for it is uniquely determined by djS, which necessarily grows as the system performs work. However, in an open system deS can offset the entropy produced within the system and may even exceed it. Thus dS in an open system need not be positive: it can be zero or negative. The open system can be in a stationary state (dS = 0), or it can grow and complexity (dS < 0). Entropy change in such a system is given by the equation deS - djS < 0); that is, the entropy produced by irreversible processes within the system is shifted into the environment. [p.p. 106-107, VISION 2020, Laszlo; Gordon and Breach, 1994, 212-206-8900 ISBN 2-88124-612-5 ]
Jay