Life Fights Entropy
Memes on the fact that life is increasing organization in a world of increasing chaos.
Folksonomies: life entropy thermodynamics
Memes
24 JAN 2014
Stones are Chaos
The difference between a piece of stone and an atom is that an atom is highly organised, whereas the stone is not. The atom is a pattern, and the molecule is a pattern, and the crystal is a pattem; but the stone, although it is made up of these pattems, is just a mere confusion. It's only when life appears that you begin to get organisation on a larger scale. Life takes the atoms and molecules and crystals; but, instead of making a mess of them like the stone, it combines them into new and mo...
1 
Despite being made up of atoms, molecules, and crystals, which are organization.
23 JAN 2014
Life Emerges from the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Every species of living thing can make a copy of itself by exchanging energy and matter with its surroundings. One feature common to all such examples of spontaneous “self-replication” is their statistical irreversibility: clearly, it is much more likely that one bacterium should turn into two than that two should somehow spontaneously revert back into one. From the standpoint of physics, this observation contains an intriguing hint of how the properties of self-replicators must be constraine...Folksonomies: life thermodynamics
Folksonomies: life thermodynamics
Hypothesis that life is the result of needing to dissipate energy that builds up.
30 DEC 2013
Life is "Enclaves" in a Whirlpool of Chaos
THE FOLLOWING IS QUOTED FROM BERGAN EVANS
ON NORBERT WEINER, NUCLEAR PHYSICIST
The second concept Wiener has to establish is that of entropy. Probability is a mathematical concept, coming from statistics. Entropy comes from physics. It is the assertion-- established logically and experimentally-- that the universe, by its nature, is "running down", moving toward a state of inert uniformity devoid of form, matter, hierarchy or differentiation.
That is, in any given situation, less organizat...
1 Life swirls in the opposite direction of increasing entropy in the Universe.
25 DEC 2012
Life Works Against the Tide of Entropy
The harsh, demystifying light of science has left the modern biologist with one last miracle, a miracle of organization. Somehow, back in the planet's youth, molecules organized themselves into a structure that could reproduce itself. Dust quickened, and into an inanimate world came animation. All the rest has followed, the flight of the pelican, the fragrance of a baby's skin, the songs of wolf and whale. These latter developments are relatively recent and we know in a general way how they c...While everything else in the universe is trending toward disorder, life works against the trend.
22 JUN 2012
Life Feeds on Negative Entropy
[A living organism] ... feeds upon negative entropy ... Thus the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness (= fairly low level of entropy) really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment.It sucks the orderliness from its environment.
12 JUN 2012
Life is Rebellion Against Chaos
Life is order, death is disorder. A fundamental law of Nature states that spontaneous chemical changes in the universe tend toward chaos. But life has, during milliards of years of evolution, seemingly contradicted this law. With the aid of energy derived from the sun it has built up the most complicated systems to be found in the universe—living organisms. Living matter is characterized by a high degree of chemical organisation on all levels, from the organs of large organisms to the smalles...Folksonomies: complexity chaos
Folksonomies: complexity chaos
Death is chaos.
11 JUN 2012
The Chemical Decline in Energy
It is the destiny of wine to be drunk, and it is the destiny of glucose to be oxidized. But it was not oxidized immediately: its drinker kept it in his liver for more than a week, well curled up and tranquil, as a reserve aliment for a sudden effort; an effort that he was forced to make the following Sunday, pursuing a bolting horse. Farewell to the hexagonal structure: in the space of a few instants the skein was unwound and became glucose again, and this was dragged by the bloodstream all t...Levi describes with wonder the chain of events leading to an increase in entropy as energy is used up in the body.
26 APR 2012
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
There is only one law of Nature—the second law of thermodynamics—which recognises a distinction between past and future more profound than the difference of plus and minus. It stands aloof from all the rest. ... It opens up a new province of knowledge, namely, the study of organisation; and it is in connection with organisation that a direction of time-flow and a distinction between doing and undoing appears for the first time. Folksonomies: physics thermodynamics
Folksonomies: physics thermodynamics
A beautiful comment about it.
31 JAN 2012
Life is Anti-Entropy
Life, this anti-entropy, ceaselessly reloaded with energy, is a climbing force, toward order amidst chaos, toward light, among the darkness of the indefinite, toward the mystic dream of Love, between the fire which devours itself and the silence of the Cold. Climbing up and dreaming.
11 APR 2011
Life as the Reduction of Entropy
During the present century a few physicists have tried to define life. Bernal, Schroedinger, and Wigner all came to the same general conclusion, that life is a member of the class of phenomena which are open or continuous systems able to decrease their internal entropy at the expense of substances or free energy taken in from the environment and subsequently rejected in a degraded form. This definition is not only difficult to grasp but is far too general to apply to the specific detection of...Definition of life as something that generates syntropy within itself while exporting entropy, and the problem with this definition as it would include fire and hurricanes as being living.
01 JAN 2010
Evolution as Entropy Versus Organization
'Evolution doesn't view earth's history as a conflict between good and evil. It does essentially view it as a conflict between life and death, between increased organization and more efficient energy use on the part of life, and an opposing tendency of nonliving matter to become disorganized and lose energy--entropy. But evolution doesn't see life as good and death as evil. Life cannot triumph over death in evolution. They don't fight to win. As with some of the older myths, wherein the natur...Evolution as a conflict between entropy (death) and increased organization (life).
References
24 JAN 2014
Time Must Have a Stop
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Huxley, Aldous (1944), Time Must Have a Stop, Dalkey Archive Press, Retrieved on 2014-01-24Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: fiction
Folksonomies: fiction
1 
23 JAN 2014
Statistical physics of self-replication
Periodicals>Journal Article: England, Jeremy L. (21 August 2013), Statistical physics of self-replication, Journal of Chemical Physics, Retrieved on 2014-01-23Source Material [www.englandlab.com]
1
30 DEC 2013
Principia Discordia, Or, How I Found Goddess and what I D...
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Malaclypse, (1980-01-01), Principia Discordia, Or, How I Found Goddess and what I Did to Her when I Found Her, Loompanics Unltd, Retrieved on 2013-12-30Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: american wit and humor.
Folksonomies: american wit and humor.
1
25 DEC 2012
Miracle Earth
Periodicals>Magazine Article: Brower, Kenneth and Brower, David (10/01/1978), Miracle Earth, Omni Magazine, October 1978, Retrieved on 2012-12-25Source Material [archive.org]
1
22 JUN 2012
What is Life?
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Schrödinger , Erwin (1992-01-31), What is Life?, Cambridge Univ Pr, Retrieved on 2012-06-22Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: science
Folksonomies: science
2
12 JUN 2012
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry: Introductory Address
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Malmstrom, Bo C. (1999), The Nobel Prize for Chemistry: Introductory Address, World Scientific Publishing Company Incorporated, Retrieved on 2012-06-12Source Material [books.google.com]
1
11 JUN 2012
The Periodic Table
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Levi , Primo (2010-06-28), The Periodic Table, Retrieved on 2012-06-11Source Material [books.google.com]
1
26 APR 2012
The Nature of the Physical World
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Eddington , A. S. (2005-05), The Nature of the Physical World, Kessinger Publishing, Retrieved on 2012-04-26Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: science
Folksonomies: science
2
31 JAN 2012
The Coming Age of the Cell
Proceedings of Meetings and Symposia>Speech: Claude, Albert (12 Dec 1974), The Coming Age of the Cell, Nobel Lecture, Retrieved on 2012-01-31
Folksonomies: biology
Folksonomies: biology
2
11 APR 2011
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Lovelock, James (2000-11-23), Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, Oxford University Press, USA, Retrieved on 2011-04-11
10
06 APR 2011
The Klamath Knot: Explorations of Myth and Evolution
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Wallace, David Rains (April 24, 2003), The Klamath Knot: Explorations of Myth and Evolution, University of California Press, Retrieved on 2009-11-30
1
