Nature Abhors a Gradient

From Patterns

The following material was originally posted by Martha on March 6th to Discussion on Conducive to Life - Target: Elementary Student Learning About Ecosystems

New Thermodynamics

--Martha I was remembering something I read in Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan. (Their ideas may be a bit controversial since they argue that evolution has been too much defined by zoologists with the result that current notions of evolution leave out some processes in the microbial world.) But anyway...in one section, the authors discuss the apparent conflict between the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the emergence of life. They suggest that it can be resolved by something called "the new thermodynamics". Simply, Nature Abhors a Gradient. They allude to the work of Erwin Schrodinger who wrote What is Life? (published in 1944) and also to the work of Schneider and Kay. I Googled "new thermodynamics" and "Schneider" and found some helpful information which I'll try to apply to the questions under discussion here but you can see this article yourself at http://www.redfish.com/research/SchneiderKay1995_OrderFromDisorder.htm It seems to me that the ideas of these scientist suggest a really big-picture way of looking at our questions, though the "fit" may not look as good once the theory is tested by operationalizing it, as John discussed in response to Maibritt's search for principles (http://sinet.ca/patterns/index.php?title=Talk:List_of_Patterns). And perhaps some of you already know more about this theory and have reasons to dismiss it. I admit I haven't yet taken the time to search in depth for critiques. Feel free to enlighten me.

So, looking at questions raised by Denise and comments posted by Norbert in terms of this "new thermodynamics" which may also be called nonequilibrium thermodynamics (NET), I'm adding the following based on the sources I mentioned above...

• Life dissipates gradients. (Is this a possible "pattern" or a "principle"? Anyway, it's a possible definition of "life".)
  • The continual inflow of solar radiation (system is "open" in terms of energy) creates a large energy gradient on the planet.
  • Life emerged "in order to" dissipate energy gradients, so living systems are dissipative systems." (Of course, other conditions must be present for life to get started or else we would expect to see life on every planet.)
  • Using the energy of the gradient, life creates order from disorder. (So as far as the "enhance the biosphere" issue, I think "order from disorder" is more on target than "encouraging growth at all costs".)

• Systems are competing.
  • Systems that survive will have the most high quality energy flowing in and will use it best (i.e. do the best job dissipating the energy) to ensure their (personifying "systems" here) survival. At this level above the usual species competition where we are used to thinking in terms of life/death cycle and looking at generations, I find myself wondering WHAT is doing the selecting of the larger system outside of a life/death cycle. And I guess it requires making an axiom out of the basic tenet of this NET idea, which would be perhaps: Nature abhors a gradient. Inferior systems leave too much of a gradient in place. Another article, "A general theory of evolution based on energy efficiency: its implications for disease" by A.J. Yun et al. in Medical Hypotheses (2006) 66, 664-670 is very thought-provoking in this regard. I don't have permission to distribute this article and I'm pretty sure accessing it on the web would require you to have a subscription (Mine has expired). I guess I could at least scan the hard copy and put in the protected part of the Wiki -- is that legal?. But suffice it to say that the authors suggest viewing complex systems as an emergent property of energy.

• The role of natural selection and other forms of microevolution that lead to emergence of new species (macroevolution):
  • Genes operate as the "encoded memories" (http://www.redfish.com/research/SchneiderKay1995_OrderFromDisorder.htm) that serve to continue the dissipative process (life).
  • Diverse ecosystems must have been better a dissipating energy than say, ecosystems overrun by just a few species, and thus were selected for. (Note: Schneider and Kay say that species richness is correlated with energy availability and suggest a causal link between biodiversity and dissipative processes. I don't know how well this fits with the discussion of biodiversity and stability, as was discussed previously (http://sinet.ca/patterns/index.php?title=Talk:List_of_Patterns).
  • Define "success" of a species in terms of how well it serves the dissipation goal of the ecosystem, i.e. a "successful" species will look selfish on one hand in that it takes some of the energy for it's own reproduction but, stepping up in the hierarchy, while doing this it is serving the ecosystem in its goal for "best" dissipation of energy gradient. I guess at some point, the evolved negative feedback loops (that serve the ecosystem) will operate to keep one species from being "too selfish" at the expense of the ecosystem. Also, related to this, ecosystems have evolved to have roles for different species (for example, weeds have one role and oak trees have a completely different role.

What is to be our role? (In terms of this paradigm, I hope Biomimicry is a meme that will end up helping the larger system of which it is a part be the "best" energy dissipator. The problem is the success of the system is measured long-term, so it takes some rational faith, to use Erich Fromm's term.