Sic et Non self deconstructs

[_Res Ipsa]

Dr. W,

I love that story. But what was Sean’s answer to the question?

[_DrW]

Dr. W,

I love that story. But what was Sean’s answer to the question?

Sean's response, such as it was, reflected very well what Physics Guy has been saying on this thread so far. To quote Sean Carroll's final comment on the subject (which removes any doubt one may have had that Carroll is a physicist):

"No surprise, really; whatever the story of life might be, there's no question it's a complicated one. But it all comes down to the elementary building blocks of Nature doing their best to fulfill the Second Law."

Returning to Russell's response to Carroll about the purpose of life: pretty sure Russell is making the point that early single cell life, such as cyanobacteria and archaea, and the organized simple catalytic systems they provided, were absolutely necessary in preparing an environment on the Earth in which higher life forms could evolve.

Cyanobacteria contain chlorophyll and are thus capable of oxygenic photosynthesis (making food from carbon dioxide and water with the release of oxygen). These precursors to plant life were largely responsible for the "great oxygenation event" that changed our atmosphere from a reducing environment to the oxidizing environment that allowed us to evolve.

Hydrogenation (reduction) of carbon dioxide (a reaction step in the photosynthesis of glucose from water and carbon dioxide, as well as in anaerobic decomposition of biomass) is just one example of the importance of simple, specialized bacterial metabolism in creating and maintaining the biosphere we all depend on.

[_Res Ipsa]

Thanks!

[_Physics Guy]

It's hard enough to put this stuff into a soundbite, so I can't really blame Carroll. He surely didn't literally mean that any particles were "doing their best". Putting it that way, however, unfortunately obscures the essential point of thermodynamics rather than making things clear. Elementary particles cannot try to do anything; they always do what they must. And the Second Law is not a principle that anything has to try to fulfill, but a consequence of the microscopic laws of nature. So as long as the elementary particles do what they must, they will automatically fulfill the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

At least that is how it's supposed to be. We currently cannot really prove that the Second Law is a consequence of the microscopic laws. It may possibly also depend upon the specific choice of initial conditions of the universe. The main focus of my own current research is one particular approach to trying to deduce thermodynamics from mechanics.

What might make my point clear, though, is this. Suppose you try to violate the Second Law by building a perpetual motion machine 'of the Second Kind'. We know it won't work because the Second Law says so. And indeed it will not work. But what precisely will go wrong?

It could be many things, but one thing it definitely won't be is the Angel of Entropy materializing to strike you down for daring to violate the Second Law. Instead the fatal flaw in your invention will be some particular mundane little detail. Some wheel will slow down or some part will overheat. Once you see what in particular is going wrong, you won't need to mention entropy to explain it. It will be perfectly explainable in terms of the friction right here being a little too great, or having more fast-moving molecules accumulating in this tank than there are in that tank, or something like that.

The Law of entropy increase is not the thing that prevents your machine from working. It's the statement that there will always be something that prevents your machine from working.

[_Res Ipsa]

This is why I love hanging out here.

[_DrW]

The Law of entropy increase is not the thing that prevents your machine from working. It's the statement that there will always be something that prevents your machine from working.

Too long to be stitched on a pillow or printed on a T-shirt, but a way of thinking about entropy that is definitely worth noting and remembering.

Thanks, Physics Guy.

[_Philo Sofee]

Physics Guy
It's hard enough to put this stuff into a soundbite, so I can't really blame Carroll. He surely didn't literally mean that any particles were "doing their best". Putting it that way, however, unfortunately obscures the essential point of thermodynamics rather than making things clear. Elementary particles cannot try to do anything; they always do what they must. And the Second Law is not a principle that anything has to try to fulfill, but a consequence of the microscopic laws of nature. So as long as the elementary particles do what they must, they will automatically fulfill the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Well, unless, as Walter Kauffman has demonstrated they are fulfilling the law of self-generation into something more complex.... particles are not always only automatically breaking down. They can, on the edge of chaos be self-generating into such great complexity that life can even come from them when there are enough of them in aggregate. Kauffman has some very interesting examples. "At Home in the Universe" is his text I have been reading recently.

Edit 20 minutes later:
I am also reading Steven Strogatz's book "Sync" which is more or less the same kind of information as self organization. Here is a link to Strogatz to show he is the real deal. Entropy is not the end goal or even end act of the universe, it is occurring simultaneously with organized behavior of large groups of things, both alive or simply as things! Strogatz is as fascinating as Kauffman and Prigogine! Carroll is looking at only one process where there are several simultaneous ones that have true verity and demonstration through experimentation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Strogatz

[_Arc]

Physics Guy
It's hard enough to put this stuff into a soundbite, so I can't really blame Carroll. He surely didn't literally mean that any particles were "doing their best". Putting it that way, however, unfortunately obscures the essential point of thermodynamics rather than making things clear. Elementary particles cannot try to do anything; they always do what they must. And the Second Law is not a principle that anything has to try to fulfill, but a consequence of the microscopic laws of nature. So as long as the elementary particles do what they must, they will automatically fulfill the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Well, unless, as Walter Kaufman has demonstrated they are fulfilling the law of self-generation into something more complex.... particles are not always only automatically breaking down. They can, on the edge of chaos be self-generating into such great complexity that life can even come from them when there are enough of them in aggregate. Kauffman has some very interesting examples. "At Home in the Universe" is his text I have been reading recently.

The author of "At Home in the Universe The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity" is Stuart Kauffman. Walter Kaufman (with one 'f') was a philosopher at Princeton who died in 1980.

[_Res Ipsa]

Physics Guy
It's hard enough to put this stuff into a soundbite, so I can't really blame Carroll. He surely didn't literally mean that any particles were "doing their best". Putting it that way, however, unfortunately obscures the essential point of thermodynamics rather than making things clear. Elementary particles cannot try to do anything; they always do what they must. And the Second Law is not a principle that anything has to try to fulfill, but a consequence of the microscopic laws of nature. So as long as the elementary particles do what they must, they will automatically fulfill the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Well, unless, as Walter Kauffman has demonstrated they are fulfilling the law of self-generation into something more complex.... particles are not always only automatically breaking down. They can, on the edge of chaos be self-generating into such great complexity that life can even come from them when there are enough of them in aggregate. Kauffman has some very interesting examples. "At Home in the Universe" is his text I have been reading recently.

Edit 20 minutes later:
I am also reading Steven Strogatz's book "Sync" which is more or less the same kind of information as self organization. Here is a link to Strogatz to show he is the real deal. Entropy is not the end goal or even end act of the universe, it is occurring simultaneously with organized behavior of large groups of things, both alive or simply as things! Strogatz is as fascinating as Kauffman and Prigogine! Carroll is looking at only one process where there are several simultaneous ones that have true verity and demonstration through experimentation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Strogatz

Does he argue that entropy can decrease in a closed system?

[_Arc]

Does he argue that entropy can decrease in a closed system?

I have not seen this claim by Kauffman. That doesn't mean that he has not made it. In his writings, however, Stuart Kauffman does make several unexpected, yet defensible claims. The first is that reason only goes so far in understanding and predicting reality.

He claims that reason and the laws of physics alone are insufficient and says that there exists the absolutely unpredictable, or as he often puts it "unprestateble", developments in natural evolution.

He claims that there are such things as emergence and then "extreme emergence". He gives examples in this short video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVL2Y5z2jLU

See here for another example of extreme emergence. This time in artificial life neural networks (A.I.). The following quote is from this source.

“the miraculous fact on which the rest of A.I. stands is that when you have a circuit and you impose constraints on your circuits using data, you can find a way to satisfy these constraints by iteratively making small changes to the base of your neural network until its predictions satisfy the data” — Ilya Sutskever