Re: [Fis] 2004 FIS session: concluding comments

Michel said:

>As stated by Pedro, FISers may send their concluding comments
>until the final closure of the session occurs, at the end of June.

     As a philosopher of nature, I would like to again present my view of
the BIG picture here. ( So far, no physicists I have presented this to have
objected.) We have two basic tendencies in Nature --
collecting/centripetal versus cascading/centrifugal. The first,
(historically: decoherence -> strong forces -> gravitation -> organization,
all showing increasing 'information') occurred because the acceleration of
expansion in the Big Bang has been so great that the system went rapidly
out of equilibrium and is still doing that. The collecting is just an
aspect of acceleration. The "equal and opposite" reaction of the Universe
we call the Second Law of thermodynamics, referring to the tendency of the
Universe to regain thermodynamic equilibrium. (We can asume that the
Universe is an isolated system because it could not expand acceleratedly if
it were not effectively so.)
     Inasmuch as effective work cannot be done with much greater energy
efficiency than about 50% on average, it is clear that the production of
organization and order through this route is yet another way to help the
Universe on its way toward equilibrium. Viewed this way, the Second Law is
a final cause of everything that happens.
     Of course, some things that happen just dissipate some gradients with
nothing left over but fragments of lesser quality than the orginal
gradients. These -- like tornadoes and varieties of war -- can be seen to
be particularly clearly in servitude to the Second Law. But even the
results of work in, say, living systems, accomplish the same thing. Here
the new gradients (offspring) are not of lesser quality than those that
performed the work, but the many fragments and heat produced from external
gradients more than compensate for this maintenance of the status quo in
one small region.

So, we are less than maximally accelerated substance, sometimes called
'negentropy'. As living systems we participate in informational
traditions, in the service of preserving which, we also actively dissipate
as much energy -- some from other traditions -- as possible. That is, we
are not so much energy efficient as profligate in maintaining our versions
of information in the face of enormous dissipative forces. The keynote is
strife and struggle, Sturm und Drang, and our culture. poweed by fossil
fuels, seems to be celebrating this perspective particularly excitedly (if
presumably unconsciously) at the moment!

STAN

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Received on Tue Jun 15 20:42:13 2004