Re: [Fis] 2004 FIS session: concluding comments

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004, Stanley N. Salthe wrote:

> 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.)

Stan, An excellent encapsulation of the "dialectical" nature of the living
universe! I will only add that these opposing propensities, as the occur
in ecosystem trophic networks, can be quantified using information -
theoretic indices. (Ecology, the Ascendent Perspective. Columbia
University Press, 1997.)

> 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.

As the two of us have discussed many times before, however, I do not agree
that the order- creating propensities must be considered ontologically
subservient to the tendencies of the Second Law. As with all dialectical-
like configurations, causality should be considered intractably mutual.
(Is gravity *subservient* to the Second Law?)

> So, we are less than maximally accelerated substance, sometimes called
> 'negentropy'.

My preference is away from considering living entities as "substance" and
favors more the notion of "configurations of processes". (As Popper put
it, "... we are not things, but flames ... nets of chemical
*processes* ...")

Furthermore, I tend to eschew Schroedinger's term "negentropy", because it
maintains one's focus on entropy as the primary attribute and because it
refers to a state, rather than to an amalgamation of processes.

Bob

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Robert E. Ulanowicz | Tel: (410) 326-7266
Chesapeake Biological Laboratory | FAX: (410) 326-7378
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Received on Tue Jun 15 22:24:05 2004