Re: [Fis] 2004 FIS session: concluding comments

From: Gyorgy Darvas <[email protected]>
Date: Wed 16 Jun 2004 - 10:26:31 CEST
At 15:12 2004. 06. 15.t Conve -0500, Stan wrote:

    (We can asume that the
Universe is an isolated system because it could not expand acceleratedly if
it were not effectively so.)
    ...

  Viewed this way, the Second Law is
a final cause of everything that happens.

These are contradicting.
     In fact, thermodynamics looks at the Universe as an isolated system. This is true for its outside boundaries.
Yet, it is not isolated "inside". It has many-many subsystems inside. These are not isolated, because they are in a permanent exchange of energy, matter, etc. with their environment, i.e., the rest of the Universe. In turn the "rest of the Universe" has open boundaries (inside). The "Second Law" cannot be applied just in these small (but many) open "subsystems".
     The curiosity is, that any "emergence" (= "everything that happens") takes place there. In short, all new qualities (like higher hierarchical level physical structures, biological molecules, living matter (cells), etc.) emerge just where one cannot apply the Second Law in the lack of the closure/isolation condition.
     In philosophical terms the Universe "evolves" due to the existence of subsystems, where the conditions of the Second Law do not prevail.

Gyuri

Symmetry Festival 2003   http://www.conferences.hu/symmetry2003/
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Received on Wed Jun 16 10:29:41 2004

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