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The prerequisitions of life
"What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy. ... Thus the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of he orderliness (=fairly low level of entropy) really consists continually sucking orderliness from its environment. ... An organism's astonishing gift of concentrating a 'stream of order' on itself and thus escaping that the decay into atomic chaos - of 'drinking orderliness' from a suitable environment - seems to be connected with the presence of the 'aperiodic solids', the chromosome molecules, which doubtless represent the highest degree of well-ordered atomic association we know of - much higher than the ordinary periodic crystal - in virtue of the individual role every atom and every radical is playing here."
Erwin Schroedinger in 'What is Life?', first published 1944
"So that is chaos. The psychological idea is, that that is also the chaos that whatever is being represented in Genesis as the 'Spirit of God' extracts order out of at the beginning of time."
taken from the Jordan Peterson video "There are two reasons things fall apart" (unauthorized): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4LpaKnjYz0 / Around minute 12.
And, paraphrasing further content from this same presentation, "There are two reasons things fall apart - human error and natural entropy." - Jordan Peterson
The physical order of the material world
I have chosen these two excerpts because they show, for one, the necessity of what is being termed 'order' for the manifestation of life in the universe, and for another, that though there may be some common understanding of what constitutes 'order' as opposed to 'disorder', its origins are unclear. Is 'order' a prerequisite or a consequence of life? Does one exist without the other?
By invoking Genesis, above, Dr. Peterson - though, as psychologist, concentrating on its representation in the human mind - is referring to the objective, physical order of the material world, in fact, its very existence; not a spiritual or subjective one, dependent only on the mind of the beholder; and Schroedinger, a physicist, discussing the very material aspect of life, is most presumably doing so as well.
Assuming also that they are both referring to the same phenomenon - could there be another? - this physical, material 'order' would have to be induced through physical, material means, a physical force - not a spiritual concept.
What force could that be? A physical agent, 'extracting order from chaos' in the universe (Peterson), from which all negative entropy, and finally, all life springs forth (Schroedinger)?
Taking a closer look, Dr. Peterson, like so many, embeds this concept of 'order' out of 'chaos' in the idea that humans, through life, have to struggle to overcome the 'disorder' or 'chaos' surrounding them; thus putting humans - and with them all other forms of life - into the position of the primary force at the beginning of time, which he himself mentions described as the 'Spirit of God' - while Schroedinger asserts that life 'extracts' this order from its surroundings, but makes little reference to what put it there.
I contend that what I describe as Dr. Peterson's position to be a delusion. Humans do not fight chaos (only in their dreams), but exacerbate it. One look around the room and then out of the window into any natural surrounding is a statement to that fact, separating an environment that has been created and tampered with by any living being from that which has not - noting even the difference of flora and fauna to that effect. For humans, among others, are thermodynamic beings.
Indeed I believe that, as Schroedinger states, humans need to 'extract' for themselves their necessary measure of order from their surroundings, which implicitly has to be created without their doing. Schroedinger describes this action by showing that humans, through the plants in their food chain, ultimately "have their most power supply of 'negative entropy' (in) the sunlight". Indeed, though life is thermodynamic in itself, applying power to the living cell in form of energy usually does it no good. We need to feed, not cook ourselves.
But all of this is just kicking the can down the road.
For what lies beyond our natural surroundings? And if that highly ordered world surrounding us has not fallen apart by now, and shows no sign of doing so outside the human mind - would not that force or agency, which seems to be creating - and maintaining! - the current physical, dynamic order as we exist, nurturing life through a flow of negative entropy, then have to be recent in itself - if not eternal?
The following may be flawed and redundant; having no formal training, I will try to be as precise as I can. My scope and terms of expression, too, will be those of a layman; and the subject is circular in nature. Or globular, if there is such a thing.
So, where to start? For once the concept is clear, any vantage point is as viable as any other; all will lead you to the same final conclusion.
The laws of thermodynamics, as movement through heat, describe an irreversible event; a source is depleted, a sink is filled, and entropy is increased - which, for the sake of this argument, will be described as "disorder" - meaning less distinction, less potential, less differentiation, more randomness than before; it is, as one can see, a relative definition, and I have read somewhere that the entropy level of zero would be a perfect crystal at a temperature of absolute zero.
Well then, what about a cloud of absolutely motionless, absolutely even distributed hydrogen atoms filling the space of the entire universe, at a temperature of absolute zero? An expanded crystal, so to speak? Would that qualify? Or would that rather constitute an infinite level of entropy, or rather, disorder? In other words: How does the spatial concentration of matter factor into it, the equidistance of the atoms? And what about the opposite, a black hole?
Is this important?
On the one hand, yes; to illustrate the problem. On the other hand, the more important thought to develop is that in an irreversible event, such as described by the laws of thermodynamics, potentials are degraded which can not be net re-"graded" by a similar thermodynamic event; the process itself cannot be reversed, by definition. Even if new 'grading' is possible as a process - yes, you can clean up your room - even more energy potential is thereby degraded, more entropy produced, which in itself can be described as the loss of a given potential.
We can state:
The physical laws of thermodynamics describe a self-diminishing process. Any thermodynamic event will result in an irreversible loss of energy potential and of what we might call negative entropy, "order" or "difference" or perhaps "potential".
Any thermodynamic effort to re-establish the former state will only augment the deficit, thus decreasing the potential of further thermodynamic events; eventually to zero.
Heat flows from hot to cold, it never flows back; so where does it originate?
The source and the sink
Every thermodynamic event requires a "source" and a "sink" for the energy involved; in fact, it is driven by the difference between source and sink, incrementally diminishing this difference along the way, thus equally incrementally weakening the process itself, until - potentially - there is no more difference between source and sink and the thermodynamic process grinds to a final halt.
There is no way in thermodynamics that this final state of things can then be altered in any way.
And this - the final state of things - describes the state of the above mentioned cloud of absolutely motionless, absolute evenly distributed hydrogen atoms filling the space of the entire universe - which could also be used to describe a beginning; the important thing here to note being its motionless, even distribution of energy, of zero or not.
According to the laws of thermodynamics, this motionless mass of equal temperature has no way to move forward in any way; for this would require an external source and sink. It is, too, the description of eternal cold and darkness.
Now, it does not even matter if there may be some motion or a small difference of temperature in that mass of atoms; by the laws of mechanics, of thermodynamics and friction, this would equalize itself over time. And it may even not matter at what scale you read the entropy of that evenly distributed mass.
As the universe, by definition, cannot develop an external source and sink - which by the way would instigate one single process - it needs to develop a myriad of internal sources and sinks; and this without the utilization of thermodynamics, as this would violate its laws.
Enter gravity
Without gravity, i. e. the mutual attraction of matter, the universe would remain in a steady state, with or without motion.
The force of gravity, however, separates matter from space - or rather, it concentrates matter and concentrates emptiness - again independent of an expanding, contracting or stable universe; and in doing so, it creates motion and difference of temperature within that formerly inert mass - with or without the event of nuclear fusion. It thereby creates energy and negative entropy, where there was none - and these will then instigate thermodynamic processes.
To state it once more:
The force of gravity organizes matter and space in the universe in such a way as to create vast differences in temperature and concentration of mass, finally resulting in nuclear fusion where conditions apply; this constitutes a finite number of sources and surrounding empty space as the overall sink.
And it is important that these gravitational processes may not be ruled by the laws of thermodynamics, as they do not exploit potentials, but instead create them.
Where this all leads
For one thing, it establishes a second type of process in the universe, which, relentless, unalterable and self-augmenting, does not abide by the laws of thermodynamics, but complements them and establishes their prerequisites; for another, it thereby establishes the prerequisite for any thermodynamic process right here on Earth - including life, human life and its economics - and, yes, for perpetual motion.
This process, directly or indirectly, is the source of any movement, of any temperature above absolute zero, and thereby of all energy and light.
It is the cause of any concentration of matter, finally creating chromosomes and feeding them on negative entropy to keep them stable.
Fast forward to life on Earth
After the force of gravity had, over time - and never mind if, and how much, it distorts that - ordered the universe to its present form, meaning that as soon as matter had spontaneously organized itself, within its space, to its present, if transient form, thermodynamics resulted in those circumstances that were suited to it.
For instance, our Sun / Planet Earth combination, in which the Sun, as a source, emits energetic radiation - and with that, according to Schroedinger, negative entropy - which it derives from processes ultimately caused, again, by that same force of gravity - the Earth is a recipient; thus turning the entire planet into a thermodynamic entity within a surrounding sink, with a hot side and a cold side, and energy-induced movements of volatile matter such as gasses and fluids, transferring energy from the hot to the cold side of things.
That this receiving planet happens to rotate speedily, may be of importance to us in detail; it is however not necessary for that to be so. And yes, many processes on Earth, like rainfall, are a mixture of both gravitational and thermodynamic events, as the Earth, with the Moon, is a gravitational entity in itself, still generating heat; this will be important regarding the emergence of life.
It is quite probable that thermodynamic events, at least practically, take place only in gravitational surroundings; if only because they need concentration and separation of matter to do so, which by itself has the property of gravity or mutual attraction.
In view the fact that life on Earth came forth before the event of photosynthesis - life is a precursor to photosynthesis, not the other way around, and can and does exist without it - life in either form is a consequence of gravity bringing forth complex forms of matter, which are then able to metabolize energy- and negentropy-laden chemicals, or, indeed, produce them in abundance by tapping into the stream of energy-laden negative entropy emanating from centers of gravity in its proximity.
Biological life then evolved, on Planet Earth, beneficially immersed in a combination of protective and nurturing gravitational force fields, from single cells to complex organisms, and one strand finally to mammals, primates and humans.
The latter then achieved the ability to develop phantasies beyond the simple mapping of their surroundings - which, to reiterate, exist even without them doing so, and to their benefit - and with that, mechanical entities, or machines, to process even higher quantities of energy-laden negative entropy.
It is important to note two things
One, animals, humans and machines - and, by the way, plants, though that is difficult to see - are, like the planet they mostly adhere to, thermodynamic entities in themselves; their sinks are, as usual, their surroundings, and their sources can all be traced back to recent or former gravitational processes.
Yes, this does include uranium; and should there be the possibility of simulating gravitation through enough pressure to initiate nuclear fusion, then that itself at some point requires a gravitational precursor, and be that the Earth itself.
Two, animals, humans and machines - and plants - are all forced to abide by the laws of thermodynamics ruling these processes.
Meaning:
No animal, human or machine - or plant - is able to feed itself.
Let that sink in.
No human being is able to feed itself, by law of thermodynamics.
Meaning:
No human being, unable even to sustain itself, will ever be able to generate a profit.
In fact, by the same rule, no animal is ever able to generate a profit, and no machine is ever able to generate a profit. No entity ruled by the iron laws of thermodynamics is able to; these very laws forbid it.
Categorically and universally.
Humans, like animals - or plants and machines - are consumers by nature, not producers; one definition of them being therefore "resource-seeking, incentive-driven entities".
This can be readily observed in any animal:
It moves, just to feed itself, on a resource it cannot supply; movement due to thermodynamic metabolism is the very description of physical work, and this description can be equally applied to a combustion engine - or any other thermodynamic entity.
Switching to electricity or any other form of mechanical energy will not help, as the laws of thermodynamics will prevail.
You cannot short-circuit a thermodynamic process and then expect it to go on
To put it simply:
The zebra moves, chews carbohydrates, digests them, builds body mass and defecates - all of this is thermodynamic work - and the lion hunting the zebra does the same.
None of them, not even the grass, can bring forth that which they feed upon; for what they produce is always worth less than what they consume.
And no matter where they are, within the food chain, they all rely ultimately on some near center of gravity to provide them with their primary source of energy end negative entropy, which they then degrade and dissipate throughout their surroundings.
Which, again through gravity, then take it upon themselves to re-grade and re-load that which has literally been dumped on them. Heat is ultimately dissipated into empty space, and amorphous droppings ultimately turned into fresh, nourishing, and highly ordered carbohydrates, such as grass.
This takes time, and so zebras and lions have to wander to keep the source ahead and the sink behind them.
And humans, to all their frills and fancies, being thermodynamic entities, do little else.
Other than animals, however - and I am becoming a bit tired at this point - humans are capable of, and subject to, narcissistic phantasies; these force them to "think positive" and imagine a profit where there is only loss.
Being net consumers by design and definition, they imagine themselves to be creators - which they may be, within the possibilities provided to them by their gravitational surroundings, just as zebras and lions create themselves or termites build towers; but net producers or creators they are not, and never will be, nor will any of their mechanical offspring.
Nothing ever driven by releasing energy while increasing entropy can ever be a net creator, this being forbidden by the very circumstances they exist and the laws they act by.
Creation is therefore, by this definition, reserved to the inanimate matter in the universe surrounding them. And that should be a narcissistic injury par example.
Which is probably the reason for the services of Dr. Peterson to be in such demand.
Humans living closer to nature are usually acutely aware of this; like their primate cousins, apart from cooperating to achieve a common goal, they do trade favors as well; but, being humans, they are able to abstract and rationalize this, and thus collect favors not only in memory - which is prone to defaulting on the debt by "forgetfulness" -, but symbolized in the form of arm bands and such - these represent early forms of monetary savings in the bank, or a set of treaties.
What is therefore common to all forms of money, treaties, arm bands or dollar bills: They all represent a debt owed to the holder - which, by the way, makes them dangerous, and why forging them, or destroying them, is considered treason.
However, it must be remembered that this debt is incurred by action, which is itself represented by a thermodynamic deficit; money, and its virtual worth, therefore could be described as a fitting and realistic expression of debt accumulated by work in the physical world.
Which, once again, is the reason why human societies with the highest thermodynamic turnover regularly are those with the highest amount of debt - and wealth, which is just its flipside, the positive expression of a negative debt owed - if this has not been insidiously traded off one way or another. Which, in turn, is at least one reason why globalizing the economy is no solution to global debt.
There is much more work to be done here - like pondering on the problem that the issue of money is the issue of debt, which them has to be 'paid' or 'worked off' by indebting the individual to its surroundings, the passing on and accumulation of eternal debt, which does not go away because the money does not go away.
For the moment let it be said:
Humans, like their quasi-predecessors, the animals, and their quasi-offspring, the machines, are thermodynamic entities that are condemned to exist by degrading their surroundings. They cannot create, they can only destroy. If they desist, or are prevented from doing so, they stop - and / or die.
That thermodynamic process, by which these profit themselves, is deficitary by physical law; and therefore, that what can be termed as their economy, is also deficitary by nature.
In primitive civilizations, this may be recognized; in more advanced ones - and these terms are used here as neutrally as possible - this recognition is routinely covered by mountains of hidden debt, which then periodically slide into the sea.
That, upon which humans physically feed and exist, has to be routinely provided to them from outside of their action, and - this is important - free of charge.
To paraphrase:
Humans neither made nor paid for what they are and have. Neither did animals or do machines; and both do not care.
Summing it up
The economic tab of any action, so to speak, is routinely - and with a quiet sigh - picked up by the inanimate surroundings in which such raucous thermodynamic entities are embedded; entropy is removed, energy replenished - and all of this is done, more or less silently, at one point or another, by the force of gravity, which continually grades and concentrates matter, thereby producing energy and negative entropy, i. e. order - sometimes with the destruction of matter itself, often without.
It is the force of gravity, this mutual attraction of lifeless matter, that transformed an absolute freezing, completely dark, lifeless and lightless, possibly moving, more or less uniformly spread cloud of fine dust - the very definition of "chaos" - of the consistence of cigarette smoke, so I've been told, of gas and fog, into relatively gigantic stellar objects on the one side, and empty spaces on the other, thereby creating movement, heat, direction, light, and perhaps even more that escapes me at the movement; over time compounding ever more and ever heavier elements, then on to regroup, grade, order and differentiate the stellar objects themselves by separating the fluids, gasses and solid matter on them, and in them, and around them, and finally even further to create ever more complex topographies and materials, until life itself springs forth and is sustained by the energy and - even more significantly - the negative entropy that the force of gravity itself creates in this process.
What we are thus witnessing, every day, and everywhere, is the process of creation - the one with a capital C; which, by the way - and this is crucial - does not follow the laws of thermodynamics, as we perceive them, for it is not touched by them.
And while all these gravitational processes can themselves be simulated, by the application of energy, of negentropy and the laws of thermodynamics - this energy, and that negative entropy, will then again have to, ultimately, be provided for by an uninfluenceable gravitational process from outside of that instigated thermodynamic simulation of gravity to avoid self-cannibalism.
Or nothing would be.
Edit on April 24, 2019: Some re-wording and formatting added for better readability.
Addendum
(July 19, 2019)
A perhaps clearer summary of the above
- All materials
heavier than hydrogen were - and are! - being forged in the center of stars
by nuclear fusion, as a consequence of the gravity of these stellar
objects.
- Each new atom, or collection thereof, so created is
more complex than its predecessor, and is created in an ever shortening
span of time. Thus the effect of gravity increases complexity, and so, by that definition, reduces entropy; it does so on all levels.
- All forms of energy
prevailing, such as heat, light, and movement, on Earth ultimately
originate in the Sun, the Moon or the Earth itself as a consequence of
the gravity of these stellar objects as well. The same applies for
others.
- Life on Earth is but the latest stage of complexity in this location in space and at this moment in time. Along with the energy it feeds upon and the material that it is composed of, living tissue is, simply put, just another consequence of gravity.
- The high- energy, low- entropy conditions brought forth by the self- accumulation and self- organization of matter through its own gravity sparks a thermodynamic reaction, of which human economy is a part. The laws governing this process will not allow a profit.
To wit:
All matter, by its own gravity, constantly enhances its own structure, order, grading and complexity, thereby providing the complement, or rather the prerequisite, for any thermodynamics.
It is not the other way around.
This increase in complexity (or reduction of entropy) as the key element presents itself in three, by now parallel, but consecutive stages; each one shorter than the one before, and each one accelerating itself (a property of all gravitational systems):
1. Physical:
All the known elements are produced over time in the gravitational centers of the stars, by nuclear fusion and under the determining influence of gravity, from the original, most primitive and simplest of all elements, hydrogen, which constitutes them as the only existing material in the beginning of the universe.
The number of different natural elements known to us is thus advanced from 1 to about 100, in addition to the variety of internal atomic structures of the individual elements.
2. Chemical:
These new elements are then scattered into space in supernovae and accumulate again in smaller centers of gravity, such as planets; and, again under the same determining influence of gravity, and over time (but in less than was necessary for their formation), themselves form ever new molecular combinations.
The number of new materials now present in the universe already becomes incalculable.
3. Biological:
Under appropriate conditions, some of the increasingly complex molecules acquire the ability to thermodynamically decompose other molecules and excrete waste, without themselves fundamentally changing; this by exploiting the material and energy streams produced by the gravitational centers in their proximity - their gravity, to be exact. Life begins, and with that evolution or change in ever shorter time.
The number of different molecules being able to be thus biologically generated is beyond any measure.
So life on Earth (or anywhere in space), as well as is Earth itself and every still dead planet, and the entire cosmos in its present form, is not a frighteningly unlikely coincidence, contradictory to all natural laws of decline and dissolution, but simply an inevitable result of 13 billion years of physical influence by the gravity of matter upon itself.
In one sentence:
In the course of now 13 billion years, the matter of the universe transformed itself, by its own gravity, and over several levels, from a dead cloud of hydrogen gas or plasma into a collection of highly complex, partially living and self- sensitive matter - and that is just the latest step in this place and by this time, for the transformation is ongoing.
Everything else is just a statistical probability, not a coincidence - "There are no coincidences".
Just as there are no real contradictions - instead, one of the assumptions involved is wrong (Ayn Rand).
A Second Opinion
(July 24 / Nov. 4, 2019)
I would like to draw attention to the paper of Charles H. Lineweaver and Chas A. Egan on the subject, which has just recently come to my attention:
Life, Gravity and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.pdf (2008)
Originally possibly here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222701808_Life_gravity_and_the_second_law_of_thermodynamics
in which the problem is recognized, as in their book
Origin(s) of Design in Nature (2008)
In this, Lineweaver and Egan state: "The relationship between entropy and gravity is fundamental and poorly understood". (P. 13, Gravitational Entropy)
Indeed.
From the review of the book co-authored by Charles H. Lineweaver,
"Complexity and the Arrow of Time" (2013):
"In this context the relationship between the thermodynamic concepts of entropy and free energy on the one hand, and complexity on the other, are tantalizing. The universe as a whole seems to have become more and more complicated since its infancy when there were no stars or galaxies and no matter other than hydrogen, beryllium, lithium and helium.
There are now three generations of stars, each with successively higher concentrations of heavier elements formed by nucleosynthesis in their ancestors. There are nearly one hundred elements found on Earth comprising nearly 5000 naturally occurring minerals, and including synthetic compounds there are about 60 million known chemicals. Physical complexity, like entropy, seems to have monotonically increased with time over the history of the universe.
However, as Paul Davies points out in his essay, there is no agreed upon general definition of the entropy of the gravitational field..."
Again, indeed.
If I understand the position of Lineweaver and Egan correctly, they postulate that gravity preserves negative entropy; in my view it creates it, and negative entropy is a result of physical forces, not an original state.
It seems to me that, throughout the past 150 years, and beginning with the first attempts to understand the workings of the steam or heat engine in theory, the most brilliant minds have been divided on how to handle the concept of entropy in a given context - as positive, or negative. This makes me suspect there may be some unremedied flaw in the somewhat arcane, unexplained, almost arbitrary original physical definition of entropy by Clausius, which apparently since has been modified or partly abandoned.
There always seems to me to be a bit too much explaining and interpreting needed, to cope with 'unexpected' logical or mathematical results, and it seems to me that such controversial behavior of a physical property may be an artifact; at least it seems worth while to test this possibility. What happens if you change the underlying definition of entropy from S=Q/T to S=T/Q, for instance?
As I have stated, in my view, life, living and the ability to observe, result from what Lineweaver & Egan call "gravitational collapse" as the prerequisite for thermodynamics. Thermodynamic "work" may then be seen as another form of thermodynamic "consumption".
And perhaps, just perhaps, what is now termed "free energy" might on the contrary be released or "freed" energy, as the result of the deconstruction of complexity, or negative entropy.
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