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To: Right Wing Professor; Alamo-Girl; marron; PatrickHenry; cornelis; StJacques; ckilmer; ...
The range of thermodynamic laws has long since been extended beyond Botzmann's ideal gases to chemical systems in general. The second law applies to everything; and the statistical interpretation of the second law applies to everything.

Of course the second law applies to everything, RWP! However, living systems "deal" with entropy in a far different way than classical gasses. Boiling it all down, what they do is try to maintain the greatest distance from thermodynamic equilibrium as possible; that is, as much as possible to channel the increase and spread of the entropy that would otherwise set up under the given physical conditions in order to perform useful work to maintain themselves. They are able to do this effectively by modifying their internal boundary conditions, which is something a gas cannot do. Entropy in a gas will just inexorably increase and spread out into the surrounding environment. Once we recognize that the ability to counter the tendency towards equilibrium is the sign or even benchmark of a living system, it becomes possible to recognize that the so-called "Boltzmann regime" is just the wrong model to describe how the second law affects living systems. People who want to understand "What is life?" realize that stochastic thermodynamic models are inadequate to the task of explanation. FWIW.

1,707 posted on 02/04/2005 6:48:28 AM PST by betty boop
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To: betty boop
Once we recognize that the ability to counter the tendency towards equilibrium is the sign or even benchmark of a living system, it becomes possible to recognize that the so-called "Boltzmann regime" is just the wrong model to describe how the second law affects living systems. People who want to understand "What is life?" realize that stochastic thermodynamic models are inadequate to the task of explanation. FWIW.

Indeed! Maxwell-Boltzmann-Gibbs entropy applied to biological life is incomplete and worse, counter-indicative if one fails to also consider information (successful communications, Shannon) in biological systems!

Thank you so much for the ping to your reply!

1,710 posted on 02/04/2005 7:02:47 AM PST by Alamo-Girl
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