Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19981228214050.00bcb820@mail.monmouth.com> Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1998 21:40:50 -0500 From: Wilbur Streett <mailto:WStreett@MAIL.MONMOUTH.COM> Subject: Re: LIFE IN REVERSE To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
At 03:02 PM 12/28/98 -1000, you wrote: <snip>>>>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.
You can't support the position, so you claim that I'm "wrong". That's one of the demonstrated poor argument approaches.. Thermodynamics is a Scientific Theory, and has a specific base set of assumptions. I quoted them back to you more than a year ago.
If only you would indeed be a man of your word and make this your last word on the subject, but I know you better. Last time you claimed that you were going off to do something else. I guess you forgot that I was here?
>It's important
>because it means that all economic development occurs at a net loss.
You made that statement before also, and I proved that without a statement of the context that you were talking about, it was ficticious.
>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
Once again, you don't supply any context as a basis for you statement.
We went through this time and time again. Go back and read the archives.. this is an old story.
>Ilya Prigogine won a nobel prize for applying thermodymanics to open
>systems.
>http://nobelprizes.com/nobel/chemistry/1977a.html
Yes, and in the introduction to his writing, he admitted that there was no basis for his application of Thermodynamics to economic theory, but it made for interesting reading. You posted it directly to the list, and I dragged out the statement that you missed. Come on Jay. You have a better memory than that, don't you?
>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:
>From Heat Engines to Dissipative Structures
>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.
I'm sorry that you don't understand what systems theory is Jay.
>"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.
So you are admiting that the Economy is an open rather than closed system, which by it's very definition means that it does not fit the definition of a thermodynamic system.
>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 ]
and as was discussed before, the econonic system is not a physical, but social system, so the formula presented above does not hold.
Any other hyperbole that you want to launch, Jay?
Jay, I have won awards in Physics, Chemistry and Math. You aren't going to change my mind by quoting material from different sources that are irrelevant to the topic at hand.
NONE OF THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. Please continue to find your supports in a forum more appropriate for your hyperbole.
Wilbur
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