Replying to LO29069 --
Dear Organlearners,
Don Dwiggins <dond@advancedmp.com> writes
>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. ......
> 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. ..(snip)...In particular, it has been
> shown that the progressive attraction of matter away from
> equilibrium is governed by a law of maximum entropy production.
(snip)
Greetings dear Dwig,
Well, you proved me wrong with this quote from Swenson. He seems also to
think that LEP operates both in nature and culture.
>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.
Dwig, I tried to have a look at the site, but this morning Internet here
in South Africa is at a snail's pace. The reason is probably the WSSD
(World Summit on Sustainable Development) in Johannesburg, close to
Pretoria. Too many laptops of delegates are plugged into the internet
locally. The international gateway is plugging up. So i will have to write
from memory of a previous study of Swenson's site.
The way in which Swenson sees "maximum entropy production" can
be illustrated tentatively as follows with increasing numbers
1 2 4 7 11 16 22 29 37 46 56
The difference between succesive numbers is also increasing by
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
The Fibonacci series is another example series of increasing numbers
2 3 5 8 13 21 34
in which the increasing differences are
1 2 3 8 13 21
in, other words, the Fibonacci numbers themselves again!
Now, this is not how LEP (Law of Entropy Production) works.
Illustrated tentatively by increasing numbers it works as follows:
10 20 29 37 44 50 55 59 62 64 65
It is these increasing numbers which is reflected by the "production"
in the concept "entropy production" (two words, one concept). The
differences between them
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
are actually decreasing! So if we want to reflect this also in the name,
we should speak of "minimum entropy production". Now this is
exactly the opposite to Swenson's "maximum entropy production"!
It seems to be an issue of who is right and who is wrong, but it is not.
It is rather a question of who sees the complexer picture in terms of the
7Es (more liveness, sureness, wholeness, fruitfulness, spareness,
otherness and openness). I will guide you through this complexer picture.
LEP is a universal law. It is not a law for an individual system, but a
law for all systems taken together. So individual systems have to give and
take within what LEP dictates. Thereby they each get freedom as well as
responsibility!
This symmetry-breaking events which Swenson speaks of, happens at
bifurcations. (By the way, Herman Weyl was the first to discover that the
many laws of physics are the result of symmetry-breaking. It was Prigogine
who connected first the symmetry-breaking to a bifurcation event.) Now,
bifurcations in any system will never happen with "minimum entropy
production". They need "maximum entropy production". It more picturesque
speach, the system has to rush to the edge of chaos. (I prefer ridge
rather than edge because on that ridge is an inevitable gulley which may
widen and deepen into an abyss, thus causing an edge.) In this sense
Swenson is right on target.
But let us not forget that the system is part of the universe on which
Swenson has nothing to say . So, to reach a bifurcation, the entropy
of the system has to increase in the manner
1 2 4 7 11 16 22 29 37 46 56
But the entropy of the universe still has to increase in the manner
10 20 29 37 44 50 55 59 62 64
Should we subtract the top series from the bottom series we get
9 18 25 30 33 28 26 22 16 8
which represents the change of entropy outside the system in the
rest of the universe. What does this series tell us?
There is an increase up to 33 after which there is only an decrease.
The first part
9 18 25 30 33
is not a "maximum entropy production" so that the rest of the universe
cannot have bifurcations any more. The second part
33 28 26 22 16 8
tells a far worse story. Since entropy is a measure of the organisation
of any system, the rest of the universe as a system is decreasing in
organisation. In other words, the rest of universe becomes poorer
in entropy while the system is living at the edge of chaos!
It is clear that the system cannot indefinitely strive for "maximum
entropy production". Sooner or later the very rest of the universe which
has to sustain it, will die off. The system will fall over the edge of
chaos in the deepest abyss possible, bringing death to itself. Since my
research (1968-71) on the entropy production in soils leading to soil
fertility or soil poverty, i had been struggling with this mother of
problems. Either i had worked myself into the worsest contradiction
possible, or there was something else to observe which i was oblivious to.
For more than a dozen years i saw no light.
Then one day, as i was overseeing a practical class for analytical
chemistry 2 in the laboratory, the solution to the problem struck me like
a hammer before the eyes. Students had to precipitate barium sulphate and
then filtrate it to determine the amount of sulphate. The precipitate is
so finely divided that it runs with the solution through the filter paper.
But should students put the mixture on a boiling hot plate for several
hours, some crystals digest all the others and thus become large enough to
be retained by the filter paper.
Most students had not the patience for this digestion to happen at almost
equilbrium conditions. They wanted to live on the edge of chaos once again
after the practical. Needless to say, their analysis would become a
disaster. Perhaps it is this vast contrast between their eagerness for
student life and the delicateness of the digestion process in the flasks
which brought the insight to me. The "maximum entropy production" (for a
bifurcation) had to be followed up by such a low "minimum entropy
production" (by way of digestion) that the system gives the rest of the
universe the opportunity to have "maximum entropy production" too.
Suddenly hundreds of anomalies began to fit into this new picture.
Let me illustrate tentatively with numbers what goes on. The entropy
of the rest of the universe should not decrease after 33 like in
9 18 25 30 33* 28 26 22 16 8
but became once again a "maximum entropy production" like in
9 18 25 30 33* 37 42 48 55 63
to allow the rest of the universe its own bifurcations. But since for the
universe itself we have LEP, i.e. "minimum entropy production"
10 20 29 37 44 50 55 59 62 64
the entropy production for the system has to be
1 2 4 7 11* 13 13 11 7 1
The first part 1 2 4 7 11* is the swing towards bifurcation (going
up the ridge) while the second part 13 13 11 7 1 is swing towards
digestion (going down the ridge to the valley below).
I was out of my mind with joy because I had discovered earlier the
7Es (seven essentialities of creativity). It made me realise how important
it is to have the bifurcation at 1 2 4 7 11* and not later on. Should
one of them be impaired, the "maximum entropy production" in the
system just had to be stepped up to try and force that bifurcation with
even more entropy produced. This is how the pattern
1 2 4 7 11* 16 22 29 37 46 56
developed in the first place. Meanwhile after the 11*, the system is
bound along its path of "maximum entropy production" to have sooner
or later a destructive immergence rather than a constructive emergence.
Dear Dwig, as i am writing this, the biggest summit ever sponsored by the
UN is the WSSD happening in Johannesburg close by. People are pleading,
argueing, debating and demonstrating. Worst of all, many delegates who
attended the previous one in 1992 at Rio de Janeiro, feel that this WSSD
is beginning to undo the promising developments of the previous one. They
think that the G8 countries have become crazy with their selfish agendas.
To counteract this many of the poor countries begin to push their own
crazy agendas for political survival.
It is not the survival of politicans, industrialists, businesses and farmers
which are stake. It is not crazy people who oppose each other. It is a
complete ignorance of how LEP works and what the outcome of LEP
is. The G8 countries are caught up in the course of "maximum entropy
production" like in
1 2 4 7 11* 16 22 29 37 46 56
The 80 poorest countries are caught up in the bifurcationless and
increasing poverty of the series
9 18 25 30 33* 28 26 22 16 8
But Mother Earth is just going on with the course of "minimum entropy
production" like in
10 20 29 37 44 50 55 59 62 64
She does not know of an aterisked number.
Where exactly are we in this series, before the aterisked numbers, at
them, or after them? I myself wake up often at night in cold sweat, a pain
in my groin and a mind flashing vividly images of a great catastrophe in
the making. We are already after the aterisked numbers. We need a grand
bifurcation involving all walks of culture (politics, ecomomics, social
and education) over the whole globe NOW. But such a bifurcation is
prevented because we know too little of the 7Es. We do not know how their
impairing is preventing that bifurcation. What then lies ahead? The
inevitable destructive immergence which will involve the globe itself.
The past billion years Mother Earth experienced 5 such cataclysmic
catastrophes. Each of them had been caused by a natural event like an
asteroid hitting the earth or volcanoes erupting when two continents were
rifted apart. The sixth one is now being made by humankind itself.
Dwig, you are living in a
1 2 4 7 11* 16 22 29 37 46 56
country. I am living in a
9 18 25 30 33* 28 26 22 16 8
country. Do you see the grey horse already in the sky? What are we
going to do to prevent the coming cataclysmic catastrope?
>I really enjoyed this dialogue between the two of you;
>one of the best exchanges in recent months.
Thanks Dwig. Terje is now fast catching up on the 7Es which made our
dialogue easier, but perhaps more nebulous for others. But i think that
you and many other fellow learners will be most horrified by this reply.
It is nothing to enjoy, except perhaps for understanding what is going on.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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