Thermodynamics and The Universe

You're talking about something else now. In this response you're making statements about entropy change, but my response wasn't to a comment from you about entropy change. I responded to your comments about the amount of entropy in life versus a rock. Here's the most relevant portion again from your Message 129: Entropy is a measure of disorder. Highly ordered life would have low entropy. As I said before, the raw materials of life mixed up and compressed into a rock have much *higher* levels of entropy than the same materials realized as a large colony of bacteria. Life is highly ordered and hence has *lower* entropy. Entropy is not like radioactivity, clicking off with relentless precision for half-life after half-life. Just because something is highly ordered and has low entropy does not mean that it is increasing in entropy today. In the very long term, systems with low entropy will experience greater increases in entropy than systems that already have high entropy. But that doesn't allow you to reach any conclusions about what is happening today. Today the sun is still shining on the cowpat, the rock and the earth, and whether the net result is an increase or decrease in entropy, God only knows. Is there really anyone advocating taking both approaches at the same time? You can approach the analysis from a traditional thermodynamic perspective, or from an information entropy perspective, but to analyze from both perspectives would require separating physical entropy from information entropy. I haven't heard of anyone doing this before.--Percy

That would be true for an ice crystal as compared to a water droplet, both operating at or near equilibrium. But a living organism is a dissipative structure that operates far from equilibrium, and in doing so it pays the entropy pig big time. For an organism to be so highly ordered it must consume energy and produce entropy at much higher rates to remain that way...because life operates much futher away from equilibrium than rocks, water, and ice. (I'm basing my entire argument on Prigogine's theory, as I understand it.)My point is that while the organism is highly organized and complex, it is compelled to vigorously carry out metabolism and other processes that are engaged in thermodynamic entropy production.”HM

A better way to think about this is to consider how likely a state is. If it is relatively unlikely then it has low entropy. The ordered state of ice is less likely than the random motion of water molecules which is in turn less likely than the even more random motion of steam molecules, representing a progression from less to more entropy.In the same way, life has lower entropy than the same chemical constituents just randomly mixed together, because the organization of chemicals in life is much less likely than a random mix. Unlike water, where raising the temperature from ice to water to steam merely causes state changes and increasing entropy, adding heat to life drives chemical reactions that both store and release energy, and whether the net change in entropy is positive or negative is anyone's guess in many situations.As near as I can make out, you seem to be equating higher metabolic activity with higher entropy. What leads you to believe Prigogine is saying anything like this?--Percy

But... at this 'compelling' point (motion to reproduce different in plants without mitochondria and aminals(as a kid I heard pronounce it) with) no matter the metabolism...,in other words your reference to DNA and "information" entropy may be heterogeneous in a homogenous thought of "sexual selection" without regard to the phyla.Phylogeography of mitochondrial DNA seems to divide Diamondback Terrapins and Horseshoe crab geography the same way but how would this be related to MANGROVE diversity say? Is that a matter of information"" or "thermodynamics?"You insist on organisms BEING far from equilibriums, but what parts of what organisms are how far and by what measure or metric?As for the comparison to phase transition diagrams, at least for me, all I need recall is that Will Provine in his book on Sewall Wright, contextually where Will was trying to conceptualize Wright's use of either gene combinations per individual or gene frequencies in a population, was Will resting his case by a simple comparison to these non-living "diagrams" and yet it was done AFTER a discussion of the supposed non-adaptive characters that are nonetheless thought heritable.Here is the macro/micro boundary problem made more obvious.The only thought I have ever had that can retain the phase diagram and remain IN LIFE is if catastrophe theory was applied to the same CONTINUUM. I have not seen this done and instead you are pushing"" for the discrete effects while where your point comes out instead in my reading is towards "more philosophy" of reductionism, like Weiner’s cybernetic justification and the idea that bodies are machines rather than a detail of the forces (gravity, e-m, weak, strong) responsible for the chemical bond high energy metabolically operated on and specifically simple claims of replication vs. metabolism or as Dr. Gladyshev had it, "synergistically" (sic!).I do not need Prigogine's "theory" to have it appear that Shrodinger meant something with his term "aperiodic" crystal. My Grandftather's PhD Thesis (before DNA)while attempting to differentiate the effects of homo, hetero and wild zygous types flies developing different morphologies under different temperature regimes included speculations about how Arrhenius's work
http://www.shodor.org/UNChem/advanced/kin/arrhenius.html
may be part of the organization of inheritance. This was not "analog" nor based on "information theory".

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Phylogenetic Systematics

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Do we really know that this "barrier"(dark triangle) diagrammed by Hennig (no matter whether it was conceptualized from Croizat first or not) that may be Earth or Mars in your content implies a non-equilibrium thought (is sexual dimorphism vs. polymorphism an ordinal or a cardinal thought??)).Edited by Brad McFall, : deleted one character-spelling

I sense that we have a dsiconnect on the meaning of a dissipartive structure. I must admit that I am only an isolated reader of Prigogine and others who advocate far-from-equilibrium behaviors. If that is what life is, and if that is what an organism is”a dissipative structure”then I must assume that disproportionately high rates of energy consumption and entropy production are needed to hold a biosystem in its highly organized and complex far-from-equilibrium position. I don't agree , for the reasons I have stated above. I have read several of Prigogine's books and book chapters. Here's one example that may work for you. In Prigogine's Preface to his book From Being to Becoming (1980) he states:

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In molecular biology there have been fundamental progress without which this discussion would not have been possible. But I wish to emphasize other aspects: namley, that living organisms are far-from-equilibrium objects separated by instabilities from the world of equilibrium and that living organisms are necessarily "large," macrosciopic objects requiring a coherent state of matter in order to produce the complex biomolecules that make the perpetuation of life possible.

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Prigogine also speaks of "macro entropy"”the macroscopic cost of macroscopic self-organization”and this may be what you are either objecting to or ignoring.”HM

Brad, what makes you assume that I should care a twit to decipher this or anything else you write?

It looks to me like you're still confusing two different concepts. These are two different things:

1. The amount of entropy contained within a system.
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2. The rate and direction of entropy change within a system.

What you've done above is respond to arguments about #1 with arguments about #2. That a system is rapidly producing entropy tells you nothing about the amount of entropy it contains.Your Prigogine quote doesn't directly bear on what we're discussing, but I think you've misunderstood what Prigogine means by far-from-equilibrium processes and dissipative structures. A dissipative structure is one which is far from thermodynamic equilibrium. An example of a system in thermodynamic equilibrium would be a gas which has been left undisturbed for some time, and so all the gas molecules have had a chance to exchange and even-out energy and momentum, making the gaseous mixture homogeneous. The lack of energy differences in the gas would mean that no energy is available to do work, and so this system would have very high entropy. By definition, a system in thermodynamic equilibrium is in its highest possible state of entropy.Since a system in thermodynamic equilibrium has high entropy, and since a dissipative structure is far from thermodynamic equilibrium, it must therefore have low entropy. It cannot be any other way.--Percy

If you don't care to, dont respond. Others do that!! (then it would be on me, or at least I might get such an impression if I was not confident in what I said... obviously this one is not, nor is it "on" ...)...The whole post GIVEN YOUR POINT was to have demonstrated that there was a confusion of heterogenity and homogenity going on precisely where you attempt to discuss a difference between planet-rock and our rocky planet.

Well, then I guess you're right, since I've been talking about entropy production (dissipation) all along. Admittedly, when I was saying a pound of manure has more entropy than a pound of rock I was actually meaning the manure produces more entropy than the rock. Yes, it is rate and direction that I was talking about”dynamical change. However, I am wondering now if knowing the "amount" of entropy contained in a structure has any measurable meaning. Isn't the "amount" of change the key feature of interest in dynamics?”HM

Yes, of course. The lower the entropy the greater the potential of the system to perform work. Knowing that gasoline is low in entropy compared to smog, which would you choose to power your car? I can see now that that's what you were interested in, it's just that you sometimes phased things that seemed like statements about amount of entropy rather than about entropy change. Both entropy and entropy change can be of interest depending upon what you're looking at. Given that this discussion developed out of comments from Buzsaw, who was confusing QM with thermodynamics on a planetary scale, I'm uncertain what we're focusing on. But I'm pretty sure that we don't know if entropy on earth as an open system is increasing or decreasing. Arguments like Buz's that are based upon claims that this is something we can know are specious.--Percy

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

I'm not following that at all. Why would one arbitrary sequence of cards have "more entropy" than another? I was under the impression that delta S could only be determined for individual processes. So, unless you can accurately sum delta S for every process, how does delta S for an organism have any meaning?

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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

When Prigogine says equilibrium he means thermodynamic equilibrium. Processes that take place far from thermodynamic equilibrium are merely those which take place in a system with low entropy. The mistake you're making is in thinking that dS=0 is only possible for thermodynamic equilibrium. This isn't true. dS=0 can equal 0 for any system. On average from day to day dS=0 for most human adults, since they roughly take in as much matter and energy as they give off. The entropy S of me today is likely very close to the entropy of me yesterday, meaning that my dS is very close to 0. During a period of a few weeks where my activities are the same and I neither gain nor lose weight and my entropy is measured on a daily basis (not something we can really do, but we're speaking hypothetically), likely my entropy is a little more some days and a little less other days, but on average the difference will be 0.So now let's examine precisely what you go on to say about entropy and life: This is insufficiently precise for a definitive reply, but I can at least note that of course dS=0 has meaning for life. Any living organism is an open system, and during periods when it is simply maintaining itself, neither growing nor dying, dS=0 will be approximately true. This is an example of the misunderstanding I addressed before. This, too, is imprecise, so critiquing it isn't something I'm going to attempt, but there is no reasonable interpretation of what you said that is correct. Thermodynamic equilibrium is not defined as dS=0, but rather is defined as a system in a state where dS cannot be anything but 0. But clearly an open system where as much work is being imported as exported has dS=0. I don't think you have a clear understanding of what Prigogine means by a dissipative structure, and the ambiguity in your understanding is causing you to draw false conclusions. This is as untrue today as it was all the other times you said this. Manure is an open system. In an open field with the sun beating down on it, a recent cowpat that is full of microorganisms will likely have a negative dS, while a rock would have a positive dS. In other words, the rock would have greater dS.--Percy

Huh? You need to think about this a bit more...Can you spell anthropocentric ABE: actually, sorry, I'll take some of that back because the inter-suite alignment is fairly clearly non-anthropocentric.Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.