Posted on 05/04/2005 10:48:30 AM PDT by 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.
...it seems that all living systems in nature possess some form of consciousness, from simple sentience, through “awareness,” through self-awareness, through consciousness, to the full-blown selfconsciousness, which is mandatory for thought, for reason to operate in the first place.
Gee, that sounds familiar! ;^)
Consciouness and existence are forever linked, it's impossible to logically divide one from the other.
IMHO, some correspondents may have leaped to the conclusion that this is an Intelligent Design article per se, resulting in a rash of dismissive statements which are not particularly relevant to the point being made by Swenson.
I don't read where Swenson is suggesting a designer and certainly he is not making a pitch for Young Earth Creationism - rather, he is looking at the ecology, the big picture, the evolution of one. He is saying (in my paraphrase) that the materialist approach of Darwin's theory is tunnel visioned.
Truly, you have done a much better job than Swenson himself in laying out the issue at hand, narrowing to the false "Cartesian Split". IMHO, we cannot have a fully informed view of nature (including evolution) without removing this bias.
For one thing, living systems are information rich which means the Shannon entropy in living systems decreases as information content increases, dissipating energy into the local surroundings to "pay the physical entropy tab".
And there is certainly more at work in living systems than just the gain in information content to defy the physical entropy! As you have mentioned, intelligence is involved as well: memory and problem solving. That intelligence is manifest not only in organisms but also molecular machinery and collectives of organisms - perhaps as the article suggests, an evolution of one.
My two cents...
you: Just a fancy way of saying that outside forces have been at work in our biological world, beyond those of observable phenomena. And yet the effect of these unobservable forces can be observed, much like we can see a tree moving in the wind, but cannot see the wind itself.
And there is certainly more at work in living systems than just the gain in information content to defy the physical entropy! As you have mentioned, intelligence is involved as well: memory and problem solving. That intelligence is manifest not only in organisms but also molecular machinery and collectives of organisms - perhaps as the article suggests, an evolution of one.
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.
The "evolution of one" makes perfect sense from a cosmological perspective. Though it seems "New Age," the crystal & meditation crowd probably understand this idea better than anyone. And yet there is nothing in Christian theology that would oppose something like this, in fact there are some theological hints that would lead one to believe that there is a lot more "life" to our universe than we realize.
Again I stress that the article is not theologically based but certainly believers of various stripes might be encouraged by it.
What a New Ager or Eastern mystic might see as "collective consciousness" a Christian might see as the willful creature spoken of in Romans 8:19-23:
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only [they], but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, [to wit], the redemption of our body.
Not to the militant evolutionist it isn't!!! :^)
You correct A-G, he's not making a case for/against creators or Darwin, just pointing out a few holes he's seen...
Thanks - I'll do some additional reading on this. Not something easily digested with the first cup of coffee of that morning! But you did an excellent job. Much appreciated.
While I would agree with your assertion that had the sun disappeared 4 billion years ago, evolution would have ground to a halt, from a purely thermodynamic standpoint this is not necessarily true. If there were some other entropy-increasing process on earth that process could theoretically be used to compensate for whatever decrease in entropy is entailed by evolution.
The point is that even in an isolated system, it is possible for one part of the system to undergo an entropy decrease as long as a compensating increase in entropy occurs somewhere else in the system. It is the TOTAL entropy of an isolated system that must increase, not the local entropy at any given point in the system.
Good morning, Ronzo! Nope. No graphic there. :^(
> Swenson's article is truly ideologically neutral.
Sadly, it is biased against facts, reason and logic.
you: Sadly, it is biased against facts, reason and logic.
See my post #5. His basic premise is fundamentally flawed.
Dear Ms. Boop,
I do find your converstation interesting. Indeed, if we are going to argue creationism vs. evolution, let's at least do it well. You and Alamo-Girl represent your side well.
It is a whole lot more interesting to argue with you, because it is intelligent, rather than the usual crevo threads which devolve essentially to:
You are an anti-God, satanist and will burn in hell.
No, you are stupid, your children are stupid, and your whole life is stupid.
After a while, this begins to wear on all of us.
Here is your post #5 repeated for easier reading for Lurkers:
you: Curiously enough, rivers are *forever* flowing down slopes. And they can keep that up because there are numerous other mechanisms at work... such as evaporation and rain, a cycle driven by an external energy source (the sun).
With such a basic blunder (vast oversimplification), seems a waste to spend a whole lot of time worrying about his concerns regarding the improbability of evolution. Anyone who can't even see the sun in the sky overhead is not someone who is likely to have much useful to say about whether or not evolution is "directed."
Nor is he declaring an improbability of evolution. He is putting evolution in the greater context – the evolution of one - that there are more than physical processes at work in the emergence and evolution of life.
The theory of evolution itself does not ask or answer the question "what is life?".
I very strongly agree with Swenson that more than physical processes are necessary to explain the emergence and evolution of the biosphere – as do many mathematicians and physicists who are working in the following areas of investigation:
I actually already have, ma'am.
Please see my post #28. The simple fact is that he got the entropy issue wrong. His argument is unphysical.
Entropy is a well-defined physical quantity with a mathematical definition. It is not a philosophical construct, although that can be inferred from the mathematical definition if you wish.
His definition and use of entropy was simply wrong. That is indisputable because it is a well-defined quantity. To the extent that the rest of his thesis depends on that, the rest must be wrong too. I believe that the entropy/order/disorder aspect was a central point to his thesis, therefore the rest fails.
The specific mathematical details are in my previous post.
Good morning 2ndreconmarine! I don't consider myself a creationist. :^) In fact, I am an evolutionist, though I think Darwinian theory is way too narrow a view of this vast and intriguing subject. That's probably because I really am looking for a "Theory of Everything" (ToE); and it seems to me that a ToE must address and explain, er, everything that exists in the universe. And it's clear to me that consciousness, epistemology, are existents about which Darwinist theory is totally silent.
And Swenson isn't a creationist either. He evidently thinks absolutely everything that takes place in the Universe proceeds according to the physical laws, especially the first and second laws of thermodynamics, the great law of what doesn't change (the first law) and the engine of universal change (the second law). If he has an opinion about God, I don't know what it is. But it is very clear to me that God is not "in" his theory.
FWIW, I'm as sick of the typical crevo nastiness as you are.
BTW, I didn't "disagree" with what you wrote in your earlier post. In fact, I found it fascinating as a mathematical approach to modeling the behavior of energetic systems in nature, especially in view of its sensitivity to the relevance of microstates to the determination of the macroscopic behavior of the system under investigation.
Thank you so much for writing!
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