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.
As I tried to explain in post 62, there is more than one kind of entropy. Shannon entropy for instance decreases (reduction of uncertainty) with successful communication in biological systems.
This, information theory, is one segment of the "unphysical" considerations which complete the whole picture in an evolution of one.
For more on Shannon entropy v physical entropy in "information theory and molecular biology": Theory of Molecular Machines. II. Energy Dissipation
You don't say you're a monist like general_re?
> gene sequences do not just form from molecules without the information to do so.
What leads you to this blinding insight, given that amino acids "just form from molecules", and proteins "just form from molecules?"
> Evolution and abiogenesis do not account for where this information comes from.
Actually, evolution explains it just fine.
> The theory of evolution itself does not ask or answer the question "what is life?".
Nor does the theory of relativity ask or answer the question "what is light?".
> I very strongly agree with Swenson that more than physical processes are necessary to explain the emergence and evolution of the biosphere
Sadly for you and Swenson, lab experiments have shown that basic physical processes are quite up to the task. No magic needed.
> If you have an explanation for any of the above which is by physical processes alone...
Yes. As to "information:" It's stunningly obvious, and I'm always amazed that people choose to ignore the obvious physical nature of it. A very short gene sequences adds another term, via replication error or whatever; the mere addition of another gene is more information, just as adding one letter at random to a word is more information. Whether that information is useful or not is something the environment will determine, based on its effects on the gene sequence/organism as a whole. If it's a net positive, it stays. If a negative, it dies. Just that simple. Increased genes = increased information.
As to the rest, I fail to see why you need to resort to magic to explain 'em.
you: Actually, evolution explains it just fine.
How does the theory of evolution - which does not even address abiogenesis much less information theory - explain the emergence of information (successful communication, not the message)?
Ultimately it seems to me that dualism refers to a complementarity that ultimately resolves in Unity. Somehow or other, the Universe is the eikon of that Unity. (There are religious implications here.)
At least that's where my thinking is tending these days. Does this make me a monist or a dualist?
Poor Boltzmann, lost out to ultra-empiricist Mach. Lost everything.
you: Sadly for you and Swenson, lab experiments have shown that basic physical processes are quite up to the task. No magic needed.
> How does the theory of evolution - which does not even address abiogenesis much less information theory - explain the emergence of information (successful communication, not the message)?
Read my previous post. Evolution explains it just fine.
> If there are lab experiments to explain the emergence and evolution of information
Look up the Miller experiments, which demonstrated the production of amino acids from much simpler chemicals, and the follow-up experiemnts by Fox which demonstrated simple physical principles turning those amino acids into proteinoid-based protolife indistinguishable for the oldest microfossils.
> Information is not the message (DNA/RNA)
ERRRR. DNA is self-replicating. DNA is thus both message and messenger.
> autonomy, semiosis, complexity and intelligence
You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
read later
> These amino acids and proteins have no way of knowing (information) what that order should be.
True enough. Those gene sequences that get it randomly wrong die. Those that get it randomly right live. Just that simple, no magic or "intent" required.
Yes, well, there's always hope for a clown when his socks are down. </c3po>
> To believe a structure as complex as DNA can be formed randomly from amino acids and proteins without the guidance of any intelligence is amazing faith.
Hardly. Does it stagger your imagination to understand how a DNA gene five amino acids long could form? If five units, adding a sixth is easy. And a seventh. And an eighth. Soon enough, given billions of years, it is quite easy to see how DNA as long as you want can evolve.
> In order for a strand of DNA to be viable all of this has to be ordered exactly right. This simply is impossible to be done randomly.
WRONG. It is quite possible. In fact... you can see the evidence of it all around you. Besides... it all doesn't ahve to be "exactly right." there is quite a volume of "junk" genes in the DNA of every sizable critter, including you.
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