At writes in LO28963, replying to Terje:
> I find it astounding that nature has only one law for increases and that
> is LEP. I find it astounding that in human culture increases play such a
> fundamental role -- investments, learning and spirituality. I find it
> incredible that no one else perceives a common pattern between natural and
> cultural increases.
Well, I did find the following abstract on www.entropylaw.com, from
"Swenson, R. (1989b). Emergent Evolution and the Global Attractor: The
Evolutionary Epistemology of Entropy Production Maximization. Proceedings
of the 33rd Annual Meeting of The International Society for the Systems
Sciences, P. Leddington (ed)., 33(3), 46-53.":
The diagnostic time-dependent behavior of the visible universe of which
biological and cultural evolution are clearly a part is characterized by
the progressive emergence of new irreducible space-time levels of
dynamical behavior from successive symmetry-breaking events. Until this
universal dynamical behavior is explicated by a theory of general
evolution neither biological nor cultural evolution, both products and
special cases of this universal behavior, can ever be
understood. Working by induction from simple physical systems, the
author in previously published work has demonstrated a set of first
principles from which this behavior can be deduced. In particular, it
has been shown that the progressive attraction of matter away from
equilibrium is governed by a law of maximum entropy
production. Nonlinear relations between components puncture the
space-time barriers to entropy production of the incoherent (linear)
regime by extending the dissipative surfaces of the fields from which
they emerge by orders of magnitude. Those attractors prevail that extend
their dissipative surfaces at the fastest possible rate given the
constraints. From the first prokaryotes on the Archean Earth to the
increasingly accelerating cultural systems of today, evolution on planet
Earth can be seen as an epistemic process by which the global system as
a whole learns to degrade the cosmic gradient at the fastest possible
rate given the constraints.
By the way, At, I'd like to hear your take on Swenson's "Law of Maximum
Entropy Production", as described for instance at
http://www.entropylaw.com/thermoevolution10.html (this is Page 10 of a
longer article, which you can page through using the links at the bottom).
It seems related to part of your thoughts, but it misses out (for instance)
on the digestion-bifurcation distinction.
I really enjoyed this dialogue between the two of you; one of the best
exchanges in recent months.
Warm regards,
--Don Dwiggins "In a time of drastic change it is the learners who d.l.dwiggins@computer.org survive; the 'learned' find themselves fully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." -- Eric Hoffer
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