Autocatakinesis, Evolution, and the Law of Maximum Entropy Production

Advances in Human Ecology, Vol. 6 ^ | 1997 | Rod Swenson

[betty boop]

Autocatakinetics, Evolution, and the Law of Maximum Entropy Production
By Rod Swenson

An Excerpt:
Ecological science addresses the relations of living things to their environments, and the study of human ecology the particular case of humans. There is an opposing tradition built into the foundations of modern science of separating living things, and, in particular, humans from their environments. Beginning with Descartes’ dualistic world view, this tradition found its way into biology by way of Kant, and evolutionary theory through Darwin, and manifests itself in two main postulates of incommensurability, the incommensurability between psychology and physics (the “first postulate of incommensurability”), and between biology and physics (the “second postulate of incommensurability”).

The idea of the incommensurability between living things and their environments gained what seemed strong scientific backing with Boltzmann’s view of the second law of thermodynamics as a law of disorder according to which the transformation of disorder to order was said to be infinitely improbable. If this were true, and until very recently it has been taken to be so, then the whole of life and its evolution becomes one improbable event after another. The laws of physics, on this view, predict a world that should be becoming more disordered, while terrestrial evolution is characterized by active order production. The world, on this view, seemed to consist of two incommensurable, or opposing “rivers,” the river of physics which flowed down to disorder, and the river of biology, psychology, and culture, which “flowed up,” working, it seemed, to produce as much order as possible.

As a consequence of Boltzmann’s view of the second law, evolutionary theorists, right up to present times, have held onto the belief that “organic evolution was a negation of physical evolution,” and that biology and culture work somehow to “defy” the laws of physics (Dennett, 1995). With its definition of evolution as an exclusively biological process, Darwinism separates both biology and culture from their universal, or ecological, contexts, and advertises the Cartesian postulates of incommensurability at its core, postulates that are inimical to the idea of ecological science. An ecological science, by definition, assumes contextualization or embeddedness, and as its first line of business wants to know what the nature of it is. This requires a universal, or general theory of evolution which can uncover and explicate the relationship of the two otherwise incommensurable rivers, and put the active ordering of biological, and cultural systems, of terrestrial evolution as a time-asymmetric process, back into the world.

The law of maximum entropy production, when coupled with the balance equation of the second law, and the general facts of autocatakinetics [see below], provides the nomological basis for such a theory, and shows why, rather than living in a world where order production is infinitely improbable, we live in and are products of a world, in effect, that can be expected to produce as much order as it can. It shows how the two otherwise incommensurable rivers, physics on the one hand, and biology, psychology, and culture on the other, are part of the same universal process and how the fecundity principle, and the intentional dynamics it entails, are special cases of an active, end-directed world opportunistically filling dynamical dimensions of space-time as a consequence of universal law. The epistemic dimension, the urgency towards existence in Leibniz’s terms, characterizing the intentional dynamics of living things and expressed in the fecundity principle, and the process of evolution writ large as a single planetary process, is thus not only commensurable with first, or universal, principles, but a direct manifestation of them.

The view presented here thus provides a principled basis for putting living things, including humans, back in the world, and recognizing living things and their environments as single irreducible systems. It provides the basis for contextualizing the deep and difficult questions concerning the place of humans as both productions and producers of an active and dynamic process of terrestrial evolution, which as a consequence of the present globalization of culture is changing the face of the planet at a rate which seems to be without precedent over geological time. Of course, answers to questions such as these always lead to more questions, but such is the nature of the epistemic process we call life.

[betty boop]

Oh, so that's the big deal with entropy...we living creatures so badly wanting to avoid it! We are living contradictions to the 2nd Law.

Actually Ronzo, I think Dennett had it all wrong to speculate that living systems somehow contradict the second law, that they have some way to "beat" its application to themselves, by maybe "paying the entropy tab." I rather think that we living creatures are in a certain way the fulfillment of the second law. Consciousness (sentience, awareness, self-consciousness) is the key that turns this lock.

But in order for this insight to be valid, Boltzmann's model would need to be recognized for the restrictive view that it is. Boltzmann himself recognized that his analysis pertained to "perfect gases" only; extrapolating from there to living organisms is fraught with peril, cosmologically speaking. :^) Or so it seems to me.

Swenson writes (in "Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Behavior," 1997):

"In Clausius' (1865) words, the two laws thus became: "The energy of the world remains constant [first law of thermodynamics]. The entropy of the world strives to a maximum [second law]," and with this understanding, in sharp contrast to the "dead" mechanical world of Descartes and Newton, the nomological basis for a world that is instead active, and end-directed was identified. Entropy maximization as Planck first recognized provides a final cause, in Aristotle's typology, of all natural processes, "the end to which everything strives and which everything serves" or "the end of every motive or generative process" (Bunge, 1979). … The active, macroscopic nature of the second law presented a profound blow to the mechanical world view which Boltzmann attempted to save by reducing the second law to the stochastic collisions of mechanical particles, or a law of probability."

I am so struck (awestruck is more like it) by the profound resonances of these two laws to Heraclitus' (c. 500 B.C.) philosophy. Swenson writes [ibid.]:

"The first and second laws of thermodynamics are not ordinary laws of physics. Because the first law, the law of energy conservation, in effect, unifies all real-world processes, it is thus a law on which all other laws depend. In more technical terms, it expresses the time-translation symmetry of the laws of physics themselves. With respect to the second law, Eddington (1929) has argued that it holds the supreme position among all the laws of nature because it not only governs the ordinary laws of physics but the first law as well. If the first law expresses the underlying symmetry principle of the natural world (that which remains the same) the second law expresses the broken symmetry (that which changes). It is with the second law that a basic nomological understanding of end-directedness, and time itself, the ordinary experience of then and now, of the flow of things, came into the world. The search for a conserved quantity and active principle is found as early as the work of Thales and the Milesian physicists (c. 630-524 B.C.) and is thus co-existent with the beginnings of recorded science, although it is Heraclitus (c. 536 B.C.) with his insistence on the relation between persistence and change who could well be argued to hold the top position among the earliest progenitors of the field that would become thermodynamics. Of modern scholars it was Leibniz who first argued that there must be something which is conserved (later the first law) and something which changes (later the second law)."

Heraclitus, sometimes called the “Riddler,” could say: “The unapparent connection is more powerful than the apparent one” [Fragment 54]; for “Nature loves to hide” [Fragment 123].

A. Grandpierre’s observation [2005, WIP] that, “the realm of the Finite [existence] cannot exist without the realm of Infinity, since the Finite can change only by its connection with Infinity, and it can maintain itself only through continuously changing” is a profound recapitulation of Heraclitus’ central insight about the Universe: That it is a One that can maintain itself and “evolve” only by undergoing a process of ceaseless change.

Grandpierre refers to what we might call the “cybernetic concept of Life”: “Life is the basic activity of the Universe that continuously sews together the existing universe with the universe of possibilities. Life sews together the actualized possibilities and generates a much larger set of new possibilities.”

Entropy maximization is the universal process that connects existent reality to the non-existent (not yet manifested, but potentially manifestible) "realm of possibilities." And thus the universe has a "future" to evolve into (so to speak). I have a deep suspicion that biological self-organizing processes -- which are seemingly informative or information-based processes -- have a critical role to play in universal entropy maximization.

Just some thoughts....

Thanks so much for writing, Ronzo!

[biblewonk]

Autocatakinetics,

I think you have to be really limber to do it.

[JohnnyM]

what use is a DNA gene five amino acids long? It is nothing. You need one thousands of amino acids long in a particular order for it to be useful for instruction.

JM

[betty boop]

Thank you for your kind words, Stingy Dog!

[RightWhale]

Does this make me a monist or a dualist?

Monist. Definitely.

[betty boop]

There is no more "energy" in a more evolved system than in a more primitive one, so the use of the term "order" is somewhat misleading.

There is no more "energy," but there are more possible ways for the available energy to be deployed in "more evolved" as compared to "lesser evolved" systems.

I'm not trying to "invalidate evolutionary theory." I'm seeking to understand it in terms of a more universal frame of reference -- what Swenson calls "the evolution of the Population of One."

Thanks so much for writing, Iron Jack. Long time no see!

[betty boop]

I think it is saying that Tasmanian devils are different than dust devils. ;-)

LOLOLOLOL!!!!!!

Both devils are autocatakinetic systems. But only the Tasmanian can alter its own path....

[FastCoyote]

"Okay - I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a clue what this is talking about. Anybody out there to summarize in layman's terms?"

It will take a while for me to digest, but my first reading SEEMS close to what I think, as a mechanical engineer who is very into thermodynamic processes. In closed systems, disorder (entropy) controls the evolution. In open systems, local order creation accelerates universal entropy, so evolution is actually preferred, not disallowed as creationists assume, by the second law.

That said, to me there appears to be an evolutionary gradient, an attractor, to which we are drawn (a directionality to evolution). So, I think of myself more as a crevo than evolutionist OR creationist. God created a evolutionary gradient.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply!

You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.

We have a fatal inability to communicate, orionblamblam. I am using terms with precise, defined meanings and you are insisting they mean something else.

Information (paraphrased, successful communications)

Claude Shannon is the "father" of information theory: Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communications

Information theory has been been used in molecular biology for decades. The definition of the term as it is used is as follows:

Glossary of Molecular Information Theory

information: Information is measured as the decrease in uncertainty of a receiver or molecular machine in going from the before state to the after state.

"In spite of this dependence on the coordinate system the entropy concept is as important in the continuous case as the discrete case. This is due to the fact that the derived concepts of information rate and channel capacity depend on the difference of two entropies and this difference does not depend on the coordinate frame, each of the two terms being changed by the same amount."

--- Claude Shannon, A Mathematical Theory of Communication, Part III, section 20, number 3

Information is usually measured in bits per second or bits per molecular machine operation.

It is a very, very common mistake to think of the message itself as information. The content of the message makes no difference to the theory. The elements are:

When we speak of information theory in molecular biology, we are speaking of the entire picture above, not just the message which is the DNA or RNA.

Researchers in this area whom I follow include Schneider, Adami and Yockey.

Autonomy

Autonomy is self-governance. It could be anything from mycoplasma, amoeba, molecular machinery within an organism (like vision), the organism itself, a collective of organisms – like a colony of army ants, hive of bees – or the whole biosphere.

Researchers I’m following in this area include Rocha and Kauffman. Here are some links: Rocha: Syntactic Autonomy and Kauffman: Autonomous Agents

Semiosis

Semiosis is any action or influence involving the establishment or perception of relationships between signs. Semiotics More specifically to biology, it is called “biosemiotics”.

As the above article from Rocha indicates, symbols (such as the DNA/RNA) must emerge along with autonomy to give rise to self-organizing complexity (if that is the complexity form being asserted). For more on the research and investigators: Biosemiotics

Complexity

Here are the two basic types of complexity:

NECSI: Complex Systems

Complexity is ...[the abstract notion of complexity has been captured in many different ways. Most, if not all of these, are related to each other and they fall into two classes of definitions]:

1) ...the (minimal) length of a description of the system.

2) ...the (minimal) amount of time it takes to create the system.

The length of a description is measured in units of information. The former definition is closely related to Shannon information theory and algorithmic complexity, and the latter is related to computational complexity.

And here are various types of complexity:

NIST: Kolmogorov Complexity

Wikipedia: Cellular Automata (aka Self-Organizing Complexity)

Adami: Physical Complexity

NECSI: Functional Complexity

Wikipedia: Irreducible Complexity

Specified Complexity

Principia Cybernetica: Metatransition (a kind of punctuated equilibrium)

Intelligence

Intelligence in a biological sense means memory plus problem solving. This is observed in individual cells - organisms, obviously – and Swarms (or collectives)

________________________

If you follow the links, you will notice that none (AFAIK) of these researchers are anti-evolutionists, Intelligent Design supporters or Young Earth Creationists. They are primarily mathematicians and physicists looking to solve the “unphysical” questions of biological life.

Notwithstanding that, however, I assert that this entire effort outlined above will ultimately destroy the "randomness" pillar of evolution theory: M + NS > Species. At that is the primary objection to evolution raised by Intelligent Design supporters.

So, even though these researchers are not ID, IMHO they will end up accomplishing the same objection through the backdoor.

[FastCoyote]

"Not only does evolutionary theory not violate the seecond law, it seems to be a consequence thereof."

That is my point. The creation of local order at the expense of greater universal disorder is actually a preferred entropy state. I'm sure you can see that, but telling it to some of the creationists is a futile endeavor.

Still, the beauty of entropy DRIVING evolution is quite breathtaking. So, evolution is safe, the intriguing question is whetheer there is a deterministic direction to evolution, is there a gradient and direction leading to a unique endpoint, or is the endpoint non-deterministic?

[betty boop]

There's also a theory that since living things need to produce this flow of energy to survive, we are more effective promoters of the universe's drive towards total entropy than nonliving things, and so the 2LoT actually encourages life to exist.

I think this idea is implicit in Swenson's "fecundity principle," jennyp, in connection with/furtherance of the law of maximum entropy production. Thank you so much for your observations.

[mlc9852]

WHEW! I think I need to go back to the Yahoo boards! lol

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOL! Please don't let all the techno-jargon get in your way. The concepts are pretty straight-forward and not difficult to get one's arms around (until we look at the formulas of course).

The backdrop of all of it is the "will to live" - the "struggle to survive" - or as this article might say, the fecundity principle.

[mlc9852]

And that's what I've asked others on other threads about. When they talk of natural selection and nature, what drives it? This, I think, does a good job of explaining it, probably better than I realize. Thanks again.

[betty boop]

Insofar as most scientists tend towards the reductionist - psychology is biology, biology is chemistry, chemistry is in turn ultimately physics - I'm having trouble seeing said incommensurability as much more than a convenient strawman.

Not just scientists tend towards the reductionist, general_re -- philosophers also tend to do that, for they are similarly seeking to explicate fundamental, ultimate principles.

My point is any reduction is instantly at a "once-remove" from that which it seeks to reduce. In a certain sense, to some extent the reduction operates to distort or partly falsify reality -- an unintended consequence, to be sure. But an inevitable one, it seems.

In this article, Swenson wags his finger at Lewontin, Dennett, Levin, for suggesting that living systems have got some way to "cheat" on the second law. It was in that vein that he found the "first postulate of incommensurability" -- that between physics and biology. Biological systems have a physico-chemical basis; therefore there is no way to suspend the second law WRT such systems. What they do seem to be able to do is organize entropy in ways that help them to achieve biological ends. I know of several physicists who suggest that this involves an informative intervention of some kind, of a "successful communication" having taken place between the "molecular machine" and an information source....

Or as Avshalom Elitzur puts it, "Form has ontological precedence over matter."

So, have you decided whether you are a monist or a dualist? (A-G and I are trying to figure out which we are....)

[FastCoyote]

"In evolutionary theory, the only way it can happen is for an organism to accidently breed offspring that just happen to fill the new niche."

In my view, evolution is a feedBACK system, you make a change and then find out whether it works. But humans now are capable of feedFORWARD, we know if we don't stop North Korea now, in the future there may only be Koreans. It is possible other feedforward processes have existed. So, I think this thread puts to rest the absolutist creationist view, but opens up many cans of worms as far as alternative evolutionary scenarios, which may or may not fall under Intelligent Design.

[Alamo-Girl]

When they talk of natural selection and nature, what drives it?

Indeed. Well said, mlc9852! Thank you for your reply!

[orionblamblam]

> what use is a DNA gene five amino acids long? It is nothing.

Incorrect. A DNA gene five amino acids long is a self-replicating molecule. In the absense of greater competition, such as woudl ahve been the case on the primodrial Earth more than a billion years ago, this tiny molecular precursor to life would have been busy consuming and copying itself, and occasionally makign errors and adding to itself.

> You need one thousands of amino acids long in a particular order for it to be useful for instruction.

Nope. If you're looking for some sort of critter, perhaps, but that's irrelevant. A short stubby bit of DNA or RNA is quite capable of doing its thing and *becoming* a thousand-gene-long DNA code for a critter.

[Alamo-Girl]

Or as Avshalom Elitzur puts it, "Form has ontological precedence over matter."

So very true! I love the example you used on another thread of the human body surviving as a "form" despite all of its cells being replaced ever so many years.

So, have you decided whether you are a monist or a dualist? (A-G and I are trying to figure out which we are....)

A new "tag" may be needed for us. LOL!

Thank you so much for all of your engaging posts!

[betty boop]

This has been perpetually misinterpreted by by many without a physics education, including this author, to mean that the second law was caused by a necessary increase in disorder.

I'm sorry, 2ndreconmarine; I'm just not reading Swenson in a way that would allow me to draw the conclusion you reached (above).

In short, I don't think he said that "the second law was caused by a necessary increase in disorder" at all. I'm just not following you here. Help me out maybe?

Thanks!