[MarkBsnr]

MarkBsnr: Perhaps you will agree with this fellow scientist (#3361) that life temporarily and selectively does a bit of reduction of entropy while living, growing and reproducing. But, I agree with you that in totality -- including death and recycling, the final balancet is toward entropy...

Not exactly. Life extrudes that excess entropy so that it can continue living, growing and existing. That entropy is exported to the rest of the universe.

bb: I haven't gone back far enough into the thread to catch the real thrust of your statement, but, from experience, I expect that you are correct, too. Probably what we have is a clash between a statement concerning system totality vs your view that slices the temporal sequence more finely...

Not just temporal - but spacial, as well. I create excess heat now; I get rid of it to the environment now. Or I will die; same for the wastes of digestion and metabolisation.

[TXnMA]

You are not balancing the equation. You persist in ignoring the fraction of input that is organized to form the orderly structures that form the body, organs, cells, organelles, etc. of the creature while it is alive. Instead you act as if the effluent is totality; it is not.

As bb implied, once that active, structured organization ceases at death, entropy approaches totality.