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[from a permaculure thread]
> In its physical dimensions the economy is an open subsystem of the earth ecosystem, which is finite, nongrowing, and materially closed.
yes, the second part of this statement is false.
The earth is actually an open system - sunlight charges it up every day!
www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/u/jjkay...big.html
_____________________________________________________
see also: Non-equilibrium thermodynamics or "order from disorder" in an open system (charged by the sun)
www.redfish.com/research/S...isorder.htm
[exerpt]
However, Schrödinger's equally important but less understood observation was his order from disorder premise. This was an effort to link biology with the fundamental theorems of thermodynamics (Schneider, 1987). He noted that living systems seem to defy the second law of thermodynamics which insists that, within closed systems, the entropy of a system should be maximized. Living systems, however, are the antithesis of such disorder. They display marvelous levels of order created from disorder. For instance, plants are highly ordered structures, which are synthesized from disordered atoms and molecules found in atmospheric gases and soils.
Schrödinger solved this dilemma by turning to nonequilibrium thermodynamics. He recognized that living systems exist in a world of energy and material fluxes. An organism stays alive in its highly organized state by taking high quality energy from outside itself and processing it to produce, within itself, a more organized state. Life is a far from equilibrium system that maintains its local level of organization at the expense of the larger global entropy budget. He proposed that the study of living systems from a nonequilibrium perspective would reconcile biological self-organization and thermodynamics. Furthermore he expected that such a study would yield new principles of physics.
This paper examines the order from disorder research program proposed by Schrödinger and expand on his thermodynamic view of life. We explain that the second law of thermodynamics is not an impediment to the understanding of life but rather is necessary for a complete description of living processes. We expand thermodynamics into the causality of the living process and show that the second law underlies processes of self-organization and determines the direction of many of the processes observed in the development of living systems.
> In its physical dimensions the economy is an open subsystem of the earth ecosystem, which is finite, nongrowing, and materially closed.
yes, the second part of this statement is false.
The earth is actually an open system - sunlight charges it up every day!
www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/u/jjkay...big.html
_____________________________________________________
see also: Non-equilibrium thermodynamics or "order from disorder" in an open system (charged by the sun)
www.redfish.com/research/S...isorder.htm
[exerpt]
However, Schrödinger's equally important but less understood observation was his order from disorder premise. This was an effort to link biology with the fundamental theorems of thermodynamics (Schneider, 1987). He noted that living systems seem to defy the second law of thermodynamics which insists that, within closed systems, the entropy of a system should be maximized. Living systems, however, are the antithesis of such disorder. They display marvelous levels of order created from disorder. For instance, plants are highly ordered structures, which are synthesized from disordered atoms and molecules found in atmospheric gases and soils.
Schrödinger solved this dilemma by turning to nonequilibrium thermodynamics. He recognized that living systems exist in a world of energy and material fluxes. An organism stays alive in its highly organized state by taking high quality energy from outside itself and processing it to produce, within itself, a more organized state. Life is a far from equilibrium system that maintains its local level of organization at the expense of the larger global entropy budget. He proposed that the study of living systems from a nonequilibrium perspective would reconcile biological self-organization and thermodynamics. Furthermore he expected that such a study would yield new principles of physics.
This paper examines the order from disorder research program proposed by Schrödinger and expand on his thermodynamic view of life. We explain that the second law of thermodynamics is not an impediment to the understanding of life but rather is necessary for a complete description of living processes. We expand thermodynamics into the causality of the living process and show that the second law underlies processes of self-organization and determines the direction of many of the processes observed in the development of living systems.
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Ilya Prigogine's "Order Out of Chaos" and "Being and Becoming"
Wed, June 22, 2005 - 1:53 PMwww.thymos.com/tat/biology.html
equilibrium is death > non-equilibrium is life
[exerpt]
And here is the solution of the riddle. Equilibrium is the state of maximum entropy: uniform temperature and maximum disorder. A system that is not in equilibrium exhibits a variation of entropy which is the sum of the variations of entropy due to the internal source of entropy plus the variation of entropy due to the interaction with the external world. The former is positive, but the latter can equally be negative. Therefore total entropy can decrease.
An organism "lives" because it absorbs energy from the external world and processes it to generate an internal state of lower entropy. An organism "lives" as long as it can avoid falling in the equilibrium state.
www.merc.ac.ir/eftekhari/AB11-129.pdf
Another interesting read is Ilya Prigogine's
"Order Out of Chaos" and "Being and Becoming"
www.mystae.com/streams/sc...nning2.html
[exerpt]
As a result, we have to reconsider associating the arrow of time with uniform degeneration into randomness - at least on a local level. At the 'end' of time - at equilibrium - randomness may have the last laugh. But over shorter timescales, we can witness the emergence of exquisitely ordered structures which exist as long as the flow of matter and energy is maintained - as illustrated by ourselves, for example. . . .
How a non-equilibrium system evolves over time can depend very sensitively on the system's microscopic properties ... A myriad of bifurcations can carry the system in a random way into new stable states. These non-uniform states of structural organization, varying in time or space (or both), were dubbed 'dissipative structures' by Prigogine; the spontaneous development of such structures is known as 'self-organization'. . . .
