The idea that the second law of thermodynamics or "entropy law" is a law of disorder (or that dynamically ordered states are "infinitely improbable") is due to Boltzmann's view of the second law.
In particular, it was his attempt to reduce it to a stochastic collision function, or law of probability following from the random collisions of mechanical particles. Following Maxwell, Boltzmann modeled gas molecules as colliding billiard balls in a box, noting that with each collision nonequilibrium velocity distributions (groups of molecules moving at the same speed and in the same direction) would become increasingly disordered leading to a final state of macroscopic uniformity and maximum microscopic disorder or the state of maximum entropy (where the macroscopic uniformity corresponds to the obliteration of all field potentials or gradients)
The second law, he argued, was thus simply the result of the fact that in a world of mechanically colliding particles disordered states are the most probable.
Because there are so many more possible disordered states than ordered ones, a system will almost always be found either in the state of maximum disorder – the macrostate with the greatest number of accessible microstates such as a gas in a box at equilibrium – or moving towards it.
A dynamically ordered state, one with molecules moving "at the same speed and in the same direction", Boltzmann concluded, is thus "the most improbable case conceivable... an infinitely improbable configuration of energy."
'Ludwig Boltzmann'
“It’s still too early to tell how the debate over ‘increased interdependence’ will turn out,” concluded the Wall Street Journal. “But the concept plainly has far more minuses [disorders] than it seemed to have in the 1960s—and that may require more thought.” As it turns out, the Second Law of Thermodynamics gives us an insight into the situation.
Imagine a cube made of a transparent material whose volume is 250 cubic feet, with 250 compartments filled with liquids of different colors. What happens if we make a pinhole on each side of the compartments? The individual molecules, finding additional degrees of freedom, will start to move around within a larger volume. The entropy of the system will increase. When the entropy of a system increases, so does our ignorance about the system. Before, we knew that a green molecule was in the green compartment. Now it can be in any compartment.
With the passage of time, our ignorance about the system increases as the mixing process goes on. And if the size of the pinhole opening within the compartments should widen, the molecules will find more degrees of freedom to roam around, further increasing our ignorance—uncertainty—about the system.
The same principle applies to world affairs. Suppose those compartments were national boundaries. As barriers between nations begin to fall, each constituent (molecule) finds more degrees of freedom to move around in a larger volume. In our case, the molecules can be anything: people, ideologies, knowledge, religions, raw materials, goods, diseases, chemicals, information (or misinformation), cults, factories, jobs, terrorism, technology, money, food, drugs, or weapons. It is crucial to realize that once physical barriers fall, it becomes a practical impossibility to “control” the types of things that cross national boundaries.
[Jack Hokikian]
'Entropy and Growing Global Interdependence'
Roughly speaking, you could think about ‘being’ as what is currently, and ‘becoming’ as how that’s going to transform - but its more than how its going to transform, because its also how it should transform.
It seems to me that when you’re wrestling with the fundamental questions of your life, you have to wrestle with both of those propositions: you have to figure out, what it is that’s here and now, and where you are, and what you are; and then you have to figure out what you’re going to do about that. And hypothetically […] it seems that people are generally motivated to attempt to make it better. And so then you have to figure out what constitutes ‘better.’ And that means you’re into the domain of values.
Not only is there an impetus to make it better, there’s also the fact that while you’re trying to make things better, you’re also fighting against entropy itself - the tendency of complex things to fall apart - and so it requires energy to make things better; it even requires energy just to keep things the way they are. So in some sense, life is an uphill battle, because you’re pushing against great forces that act in opposition to your existence.
In some sense, that’s the fundamental basis of existential thinking. The existentialists make the claim that existence itself is a problem, and so that means that in some sense psychopathology is built right in to the nature of human existence, and its partly because we’re limited - and we suffer because of that - [...] and we’re working against forces that are in many ways greater than we are and that are pushing in the opposite direction.
Life is being and becoming, and its also the problem of being and becoming. And that’s what you’re stuck with. It’s useful to know what you’re stuck with, because it stops you from being isolated - because everybody’s also stuck with that - and it also makes you understand that if you have a problem, that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s something wrong with you, it’s just that you’re alive - and that’s a problem!
People are inclined to think that life was operating optimally you’d be happy. I think that’s an unreasonable hope in some ways, because life itself is so complicated - because of its fundamental essence - that the idea that you can exist in some optimised state on a constant basis is … well, that’s just not how it is.
When you mature, and become wiser, you have to take into account what the actual limitations are, and then you have to figure out a way that you can exist […] while taking that into account.
[Jordan Peterson]
‘Jordan Peterson: 22. Psychology & Belief (Conclusion) Personality & Its Transformations’
And so the impasse continued between the second law’s claim that everything is winding down, and evidence to the contrary presented by the increasing complexification in both cosmological and biological evolution […] For the thermodynamicists […] things fall more and more apart. Darwin’s ideas, on the other hand, appeared to account for the increasing order and organization in evidence in biological development and evolution.
The increasing complexity of living systems, both onto- and phylogenetically, seemed to violate the second law of thermodynamics. But there it is. Open systems far from equilibrium show a reduction in local or internal entropy; they are able in other words, to create form and order.
Human beings are more complex than amoebas, meaning, according to at least one denotation of "complexity," that the former can access a greater variety of states than the latter. The cosmos, too, is much more complex today than just after the big bang: different types of states are available to it now than then.
[Alicia Juarrero]
Dynamics in Action, p.108
Local sinks of order are bought at the price of increased total disorder.
The self-organization of a new level of complexity renews the system's overall entropy production even as it uses some of the energy to create and maintain a local eddy of order and lowered internal entropy production. Per gram of biomass, an adult consumes less energy than does the blastula. The brain metabolizes almost as much glucose while in a deep sleep as it does while working on a difficult calculus equation.
Although total entropy production increases with the irreversible creation of order, the streamlining achieved through self-organisation reduces the rate of internal entropy production as some of that energy is diverted to maintain its own structure. You and I (as well as tornadoes and slime moulds) are just such local eddies of order.
[Alicia Juarrero]
Dynamics in Action, p.145
As the evolutionary process continues, and a system is evolving and making copies of itself, and there’s this natural selection filter weeding out the dysfunctional designs, the organism is becoming more statistically correlated with its environment.
So there’s an increase in mutual information. This process is basically making a more predictive world model in the organism and it’s reducing its uncertainty about the world around it.
Terrence Deacon has described this as reducing Shannon entropy […] organisms are keeping internal entropy low by extracting energy. And they’re increasing environmental entropy by producing heat waste.
[Bobby Azarian]
‘EP 159 Bobby Azarian on the Romance of Reality’, Jim Rutt Show, YouTube
Related posts:-
Order and Chaos
Lines, Circles, and Spirals
Exclusion
As the evolutionary process continues, and a system is evolving and making copies of itself, and there’s this natural selection filter weeding out the dysfunctional designs, the organism is becoming more statistically correlated with its environment.
So there’s an increase in mutual information. This process is basically making a more predictive world model in the organism and it’s reducing its uncertainty about the world around it.
Terrence Deacon has described this as reducing Shannon entropy […] organisms are keeping internal entropy low by extracting energy. And they’re increasing environmental entropy by producing heat waste.
[Bobby Azarian]
‘EP 159 Bobby Azarian on the Romance of Reality’, Jim Rutt Show, YouTube
Related posts:-
Order and Chaos
Lines, Circles, and Spirals
Exclusion
