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01-05-2005, 04:29 PM

The second law of thermodynamics states that over time, entropy increases, and ordered systems decrease.

So for example it's easier to break an egg than it is to put the pieces back together again; a concentration of heat in a pan will tend to dissipate into the air if left off the stove; and the pure gin will dissipate into the tonic water from the moment it is poured into the glass, as will the water from the melting ice.

What the second law tells us is that our bodies will wear out and die, that our strongest constructions will crumble, that our hard-drives will eventually crash.

However, while nature imposes these restrictions on life, purity, order and tidyness, it also, in the realms of self-organising processes, provides a means of countering these effects. The egg must be laid before it has a chance to be broken, the pan heated before it is allowed to cool, and the gin distilled before it has a chance to addle our conciousness. While those processes appear to be artificial and not of scientific interest, they are real natural processes (albeit of a higher order of complexity than our scientists prefer when doing their sums)

The universe creates order through the simplest of means - it turns out that some forms of organisation in turn help the formation of similar forms of organisation. Crystals form around a seed, planets form from within clouds of dust, stars ignite and provide energy to fuel organic reactions - at each step, the second law is being *temporarily* ignored.

If the universe is a closed system, and if the second law of thermodynamics is correct (and if our assumptions about time are correct), then our future will end as an amorphous, mixed-up place with no centre, no organisation, no concentration of anything that could be considered a feature. Some people think that a black-hole is an alternate description of a high-entropy system, but I don't know enough about that to comment.

However, there is this unrefutable ability of nature to balance it's own destructive power with this counter, organising, building one. We're living in a world where organisation is winning over disorganisation. Individually yes we all continue to die, but if the trend that we see on Earth could be applied to the rest of the universe (and this is a very iffy supposition to make) and organisation and self-replication continues to thrive in a universe that slips into disorder so readily, might the constructive force eventually outweigh the destructive one?

I know, it's late and this is starting to sound mystical, but coming back down to earth - my point is that if the 2LoTD says that things tend to disorder, there ought to be another law that describes this evident property of things to spontaneously order themselves. Here on earth that second property isn't doing too badly at all.

01-05-2005, 04:29 PM	#18 (permalink)
zen_tom Guest	The second law of thermodynamics states that over time, entropy increases, and ordered systems decrease. So for example it's easier to break an egg than it is to put the pieces back together again; a concentration of heat in a pan will tend to dissipate into the air if left off the stove; and the pure gin will dissipate into the tonic water from the moment it is poured into the glass, as will the water from the melting ice. What the second law tells us is that our bodies will wear out and die, that our strongest constructions will crumble, that our hard-drives will eventually crash. However, while nature imposes these restrictions on life, purity, order and tidyness, it also, in the realms of self-organising processes, provides a means of countering these effects. The egg must be laid before it has a chance to be broken, the pan heated before it is allowed to cool, and the gin distilled before it has a chance to addle our conciousness. While those processes appear to be artificial and not of scientific interest, they are real natural processes (albeit of a higher order of complexity than our scientists prefer when doing their sums) The universe creates order through the simplest of means - it turns out that some forms of organisation in turn help the formation of similar forms of organisation. Crystals form around a seed, planets form from within clouds of dust, stars ignite and provide energy to fuel organic reactions - at each step, the second law is being temporarily ignored. If the universe is a closed system, and if the second law of thermodynamics is correct (and if our assumptions about time are correct), then our future will end as an amorphous, mixed-up place with no centre, no organisation, no concentration of anything that could be considered a feature. Some people think that a black-hole is an alternate description of a high-entropy system, but I don't know enough about that to comment. However, there is this unrefutable ability of nature to balance it's own destructive power with this counter, organising, building one. We're living in a world where organisation is winning over disorganisation. Individually yes we all continue to die, but if the trend that we see on Earth could be applied to the rest of the universe (and this is a very iffy supposition to make) and organisation and self-replication continues to thrive in a universe that slips into disorder so readily, might the constructive force eventually outweigh the destructive one? I know, it's late and this is starting to sound mystical, but coming back down to earth - my point is that if the 2LoTD says that things tend to disorder, there ought to be another law that describes this evident property of things to spontaneously order themselves. Here on earth that second property isn't doing too badly at all.