Thermodynamics and The Universe

The metaphor is correct, and I expect Percy would agree.So let me ask: If I placed a fresh deck of cards on the ground, and next to it I placed a shuffled deck, which of the two decks comprises (i.e., has) more entropy? The shuffled deck, of course. But there is no delta s in either deck; in both decks delta s = 0. Aside from the energy it took to arrange these decks on the ground, and to organize one of them (in manufacturing) and shuffle the other, the entropy involved has no dynamical function. Its rate of change is zero. Both decks rest at dynamic equilibrium.On the other hand, life involves coordinated activities that never come close to equilibrium. For life, there is no meaning to delta s = 0, unless you included death as part of life. Organisms live so far from equilibrium that measuring an equilibrium s is meaningless, and that only delta s has meaning. Such is the dynamics of a dissipative structure. I would suppose its "macro entropy" production (Prigogine) trumps its "micro entropy" production by at least an order of magnitude.That's why manure, from moment to moment, has a much greater delta s than a rock of equal size, whose delta s approaches zero.”HM

Becuase entropy = disorder, and the shuffled deck has more disorder than the fresh deck. Because delta macro S is the whole dissipative structure's cost of operating far from equilibrium, and it's more than trhe sum of all the delta micro Ss.”HM

I want to make it clear that I am just a novice student of dissipative structures”only a isolated reader. I come to forums like this one to get my ass kicked into proper alignment and my head corrected for ignorance (and stupidity). If you have a better understanding of Prigogine than I then please educate me. I've tried my best to address all of your issues. If a car burns one gallon of gas per hour to maintain a speed of 30 mph over a period of 48 hours, the rate of fuel burning and entropy production from hour to hour and day to day does not change. However, this was accomplished by burning 48 gallons of fuel, which amounts to a lot of irreversible entropy production over time:dS/dt 0.Prigogine states in the first chapter of his From Being to Becoming (1980):

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The second law then implies the existence of a function S, the entropy, which increases monotonically until it reaches it maximum value at the state of thermodynamic equilibrium:

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dS/dt 0.

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This formulation can be extended to systems that exchange energy and matter with the outside world (see Figure 1.2).

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Figure 1.2. An open system in which d_iS represents entropy production and d_eS represents entropy exchange between system and environment.

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We must distinguish two terms in the entropy change, dS; the first, d_eS, is the transfer of entropy across the boundaries of the system; the second, d_iS, is the entropy produced within the system. According to the second law, the entropy production inside the system is positive:

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dS = d_eS + d_iS,

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d_iS 0.

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I hope I've cleared more than muddied the waters. For your part, can you provide something more than mere negation to force your points? I'd appreciate a few relevant quotes from experts to support your argument.”HM

Ilya Prigogine won the 1977 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his advances in irreversible thermodynamics and his theory of dissipative structures. I have an article from Science (Procaccia & Ross, Nov. 18, 1977, pp. 716-17) describing Prigogine’s work. I’ll try to summarize it here with relevant excerpts:

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Biological systems show a high degree of organization and order. In a remarkable article published in 1952, A. Turing proposed a model for the structural origin of biomorphogenesis based on a set of hypothetical chemical reactions with nonlinearities and feedback loops coupled to diffusion, and showed thereby the possibility of the formation of macroscopic, spatial structures. However, this work was essentially ignored. It was the insight and determination of Prigogine and his co-workers to recognize the potential importance of the subject and to stimulate activity in the scientific community . [He] turned to thermodynamic issues, in particular the extension of thermodynamic theory to include the possibility of creation of order.

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Lars Onsager had won the 1968 Nobel Prize in chemistry for proving that thermodynamic methods can be applied to nonequilibrium situations not too far from equilibrium.

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This important result, known as Onsager’s reciprocal relations, opened the way for an extensive discussion and application of the thermodynamics of near-equilibrium phenomena. Onsager also made a statement concerning the “principle of least dispersion of energy,” which applies to stationary states in the linear regime. The statement implies that a physical system open to fluxes evolves until it attains a stationary state where the rate of dissipation is minimal. Prigogine proved this implication with great generality in 1945 and called it the principle of minimum entropy production.

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From there, Prigogine developed his theory of dissipative structures to account for organization occurring in systems operating far from equilibrium. He went on to prove that entropy production is a Lyapounoff function (re: a math model of the stability of stationary states).

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As the system is driven far from equilibrium, it may become unstable and then evolve spontaneously to new structures showing coherent behavior. Prigogine refers to the equilibrium and near-equilibrium states as the thermodynamic branch, whereas the new structures are called dissipative structures. The important point is that beyond the instability of the thermodynamic branch, physical systems show a new type of organization relating the coherent space-time behavior to the dynamical processes inside the system.

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For a while, at least, back in the ”80s and ”90s, Prigogine was highly regarded for his fresh insight into biological processes, namely evolution.

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The general conclusion of Prigogine’s work is that there is only one type of physical law, but different thermodynamic situations: near and far from equilibrium. Destruction of structure is the typical behavior of thermodynamic equilibrium. Creation of structure may occur, when nonlinear kinetic mechanisms operate beyond the stability limit of the thermodynamic branch. All of these various situations obey the dicta of the second law of thermodynamics.

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To me, a biologist pretending to understand evolution, Prigogine’s discoveries seem important. They would seem to answer Schodinger’s question: How does life manage to accomplish self-organization and not disobey the second law?Still, I am left asking, What has Prigogine done for me lately?”HM

1. Nobel Prizes are not usually awarded right away; Watson & Crick didn’t get theirs until 1962.2. Have you considered the actual principles”the physicochemical ones”that enable biological self-organization? I believe Prigogine is the only scientist to demonstrate convincingly those principles that enable self-organization to occur far from equilibrium. Indeed that's what his theory of dissipative structures is all about.3. Please keep in mind that I am older than most on this forum. I took my last exams in engineering with a slide rule. That was in 1970-71, three years before the HP-35 came out. If you will open your historical timeframe just a bit more, you could see how scientists back then struggled with how the self-organization of biological life flies, apparently, in the face of the Second Law and its disording principle. We all had copies of Schrdinger’s little orange book What Is Life & Mind And Matter (1958), and we liked the challenge he presented to physicists and chemists (pp. 3 & 4):

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How can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry? . enough is known about the actual material structure of organisms and about their functioning to state that, and to tell precisely why, present-day physics and chemistry could not possibly account for what happens in space and time within a living organism.

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He goes on to discuss order, disorder, and entropy in open systems with irreversible processes. Schrdinger could be credited for anticipating the principles of dissipative structures”he and Onsager. But Prigogine brought them around successfully enough to be awarded the 1977 Nodel Prize in chemistry. Mystery solved, I thought. At least now there are known thermodynamic principles that are friendly to biological life. And thus Prigogine became my hero.Sorry for belaboring the history lesson. Old farts will do that.”HM

If that is true then please identify and explain the thermodynamic principles that enable biological self-organization to occur. I've made my shot at it. What do you have to contribute beyond your snooty arrogation? Let me see if I can get this straight: You don't know anything about Prigogine's work, but you think that my understanding of his theory is inaccurate. Irrelevant to the topic of 'Thermodynamics and the Universe'? I don't think so, considering the trouble I took to expain the relevancy of Prigogine's principles. Is that your idea of how to counter a principled argument? Your forum is becoming more of a smash-mouth attitude party than an organ of reasonable debate.What is the point of this forum, anyway?”HM

Speaking of hilarious gaffes: Message 76: No code? DNA simply catalyzes...? You didn't mean to say this, did you?”HM