Otto says: January 22, 2014 at 2:24 pm Nice theory Occulus. Way to go!

Now its
time to test this and gather data to support it.

Jim D says: January 22, 2014 at 2:37 pm

If I understand your conclusions

correctly, inanimate matter exposed to light under the right circumstances causes or
makes it possible for systems to evolve to a point at which they can absorb and
dissipate energy efficiently enough to evolve into ever increasingly complex systems.
Would this process be one of necessity or probability, one following a physical law?

Win says: January 22, 2014 at 3:20 pm I believe Occulus has discovered a door and is
just beginning to step inside the room. Imagine trying to isolate the energy dissipation
driver within a lab experiment when this dissipation driver takes a direction of its own
choosing without any clues as to why. ps.are we talking the probabilities of the dead
/live cat again.

Karo M says: January 22, 2014 at 3:52 pm The theory for the origin and evolution of
life as presented above and accredited to Occulus is not new. It was published by
myself in 2009, K. Michaelian, arXiv:0907.0042 [physics.gen-ph]
http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.0042 and again in 2011, K. Michaelian Earth Syst. Dynam.,
2, 37-51, 2011 http://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/2/37/2011/doi:10.5194/esd-2-372011 The observation that under general conditions material can self-organize into
systems which augment the dissipation of energy from that system should be
accredited to Ilya Prigogine, Introduction to Thermodynamics of Irreversible
Processes, John Wiley Sons Inc., 1968. That said, I welcome Jeremys contribution to
the effort to understand life from a thermodynamic perspective.

Jim says: January 22, 2014 at 5:22 pm

What am I missing? Isnt this the same as

a good deal of chaos theory?

Diego says: January 22, 2014 at 5:30 pm

Occulus says, You start with a random

clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so
surprising that you get a plant, Seriously??? This reminds me of Stanley Miller back in
1953, this sounds nice but its far away from being true. The great mathematician
Harold Morowitz after a long and exhaustive statistical study computed that merely to

create a bacterium would require more time than the universe might ever see if
chance combinations of its molecules were the driving force. The spontaneous
emergence of single cell organism from random coupling of chemical is as Sir Freud
Hoyle said such an occurrence is about as likely as the assemblage of a 747 by a
tornado whirling through a junkyard. Thermodynamics tells us that all nonmanaged,
or random, systems ALWAYS pass to a state of greater disorder. Disorder is the
statistical trend of nature simply because for any given collection of atoms the number
of disorderly combinations is vastly greater than the number of orderly combinations.

Giorgio T says: January 22, 2014 at 5:41 pm

I read the paper based on the press

release, and then the paper, and to be honest I found this argument really
unconvincing as it depends on a fallacy. Essentially, the author claims that the most
efficient way to increase entropy in a large system is to populate it with selfreplicating long-lived subsystems. Each subsystem is a low entropy state, but is very
efficient at creating entropy in the rest of the system. I might believe these
statements for bacteria, as large organisms such as ourselves, elephants or whales are
clearly irrelevant for the total entropy production of the earth. However, this is
irrelevant, for there is no principle that says entropy should be created as efficiently
as possible. Entropy should increase on average, that is a corollary of the principle
that all macrostates increase. Statistical mechanics itself, with no further
assumptions, has nothing to say as to how entropy increases. That varies from system
to system, and needs to be calculated from microscopic theory. For some systems
(semiclassical ones), this works, but for most systems it doesnt, and certainly a
system with many entropy maxima and fluctuations between them (the protein folding

problem, for example), this should not be the case. Occuluss equations such as (6)-(8)
in the paper look very much like those of the Metropolis algorithm, widely used in
Montecarlos. This algorithm is guaranteed to get at the right minimum, but (and this is
something stressed to all students doing computational physics) one should be careful
not to confuse montecarlo time and real time: Running the montecarlo gives you
the finish, but not how the system gets there.
Bolus interjects: To help clarify the concepts and ideas that were expressed above in
other parts of this discussion, I will interject at times with some additional
background information. In statistics and in statistical physics, the Metropolis
Hastings algorithm is a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for obtaining a
sequence of random samples from a probability distribution for which direct sampling
is difficult. This sequence can be used to approximate the distribution (i.e., to
generate a histogram), or to compute an integral (such as an expected value).
MetropolisHastings and other MCMC algorithms are generally used for sampling from
multi-dimensional distributions, especially when the number of dimensions is high. For
single-dimensional distributions, other methods are usually available (e.g. adaptive
rejection sampling) that can directly return independent samples from the
distribution, and are free from the problem of auto-correlated samples that is
inherent in MCMC methods. Hope that helps the reader understand the discussion.

interguru says: January 22, 2014 at 5:58 pm

Could this be the force behind

emergent behavior, such as a disorganized warm ocean-atmosphere system producing

a highly organized hurricane?

Ted P says: January 22, 2014 at 6:28 pm

I agree with some other commentators that

this research direction is far from new. We have been working on similar directions in
our group, with the cosmologist and astrobiologist Paul Davies. This is a very active
area, and its pretty silly to focus on this one latecomer.

Ted P says: January 22, 2014 at 6:55 pm

I should also point out that these kind

of arguments are not really qualitatively different than what ecologist Ramon Margalef
used to talk about in the 90s. Im generally upset about the pedestal this piece of
press puts this relatively average article.

Behzad M says: January 22, 2014 at 7:29 pm

I enjoyed reading the cogent

comment of Mr. Giorgio T. It is indeed true that entropy tends to increase in a closed
system as per the second law of thermodynamics. However, by trapping energy in the
form of information, complex adaptive systems such as life, indeed if anything, retard
the flow of energy into its ultimate destination of maximal entropy in our closed
system, the universe. Although living matter dispenses a large part of the energy
captured in its organized matter as heat, a good portion of energy is trapped in its
information networks as part of its structure. Ultimately, in due time this energy also
joins the broader entropic ocean, the universe, but later. All this is succinctly

elucidated in the first chapter of the book, Thermoinfocoplexity: A new theory

(Amazon 2013 ). The math in the first chapter describe a progressive, scale free, micro
state, macro state in the emergence of complex adaptive systems.

Niels says: January 22, 2014 at 7:48 pm Nice article! But theres one little mistake:
Ilya Prigogine won the Nobel Prize for chemistry not physics ;)

Bolus says: January 22, 2014 at 8:16 pm Niels: Thank you. The error has been
fixed. Best.

Beatrice says: January 22, 2014 at 10:09 pm

I like this theory something I can

work on. Darwin theory of evolution always felt incomplete like something hidden or
missed. My thoughts are that both theories will compliment each other once proven.
Love science.

Daniel G says: January 23, 2014 at 12:20 am

If the hypothesis can be verified,

then Darwinism would have a major problem. For Darwinism presupposes that all of
life has a single origin. The hypothesis, however, allows for, indeed makes plausible,

multiple origins. But if life has multiple origins, then what explains the same
molecular structure across all of life? What explains the fine-tuning of the universe for
life?

Travis says: January 23, 2014 at 12:28 am

1. Isnt it counterintuitive to say that

the most ordered physical structures we know of come about because of a law saying
disorder always increases? 2. Isnt saying that structures that absorb and dissipate heat
in a highly efficient way will arise because they have a survival advantage a little like
saying that if there is enough demand for the process, a way of spinning gold out of
straw will surely be found?

sv says: January 23, 2014 at 2:58 am

If life is the thermodynamically preferred

state, then why death? Doesnt the transience of life and universal, permanency of
death directly contradict this model? Barring death, wouldnt have people thought of
something like this before?

Vincent L says: January 23, 2014 at 8:26 am

dont forget to add the

development of sentience as another contributor to increase in order, possibly even as

important as life itself.

Gus says: January 23, 2014 at 8:43 am

Where does the Fibonacci sequence tie

into this?

Frank N says: January 23, 2014 at 8:51 am

This looks like a lot of hand-waving to

me. Cell membranes, enzymes, DNA, ribosomes, ATP, etc. etc. do not just pop
together because energy gets added. People like Occulus are begging the question.

Harrison C says: January 23, 2014 at 9:09 am

I agree that this appears to be yet

another stab at a new law of thermodynamics to explain self-organization. Perhaps

this is different and will be proven correct. As recognized by Prigogine, however, any
proposed law will run into conflict with physics until physics and irreversibility can be
reconciled. For anyone interested, I offer this reconciliation at
http://www.evolvingcomplexity.com

Vincenzo says: January 23, 2014 at 9:17 am

Arent those some ideas from

Fearful Symmetry: Is God a Geometer?, a book by Stewart Ian and Golubitsky Martin?

Josh says: January 23, 2014 at 9:52 am

Usually the comment section is full of

idiots arguing back and forth. I was expecting the usual Creationism vs.
Darwin/Science/Physics/Chemistry, but these are great. Looks like chemists and
scientists debating and what not Actual sources being cited. What if the whole
internet was like this?

leila says: January 23, 2014 at 10:16 am

with all due respect to the previous

commenters who point out similar theories that have come out prior to this one,
these early theories are all basically musings written in prose that lack the kind of
mathematical rigor this scientist is applying to formulate and tackle the stated
question. i dont think anyone is surprised that people have generally pondered
repeated patterns in nature and their connections to the laws of thermodynamics, etc.
im sure darwin wasnt the first to notice that monkeys defecate in the same manner
as humans. that didnt make these early observers of the natural world trailblazers in
biology.

peti says: January 23, 2014 at 10:17 am

Giorgio T: I might believe these

statements for bacteria, as large organisms such as ourselves, elephants or whales are
clearly irrelevant for the total entropy production of the earth. Except, humans excel

at dispersing energy. We even go as far as to dig up clustered energy sources (carbon,

oil) and burn them in large scale across the planet. We even cause global warming to
further increase entropy

Id say we are masters of energy dispersion.

Granite S says: January 23, 2014 at 10:19 am

But if the principle can apply to lots of

systems, including non-living ones (Occulus argues that under certain conditions,
matter will spontaneously self-organize. This tendency could account for the internal
order of living things and of many inanimate structures as well. Occulus is quotes as
saying: Snowflakes, sand dunes and turbulent vortices all have in common that they
are strikingly patterned structures that emerge in many-particle systems driven by
some dissipative process.), its pretty plain this fact may be true, but its not a
distinguishing characteristic of life. In other words, theres much more to reality than
we can capture in an equation, a formula or a sentence. Physicists are always
forgetting this simple fact that every poet knows.

Tomp says: January 23, 2014 at 10:27 am

so if the sun and ocean were essential

for creating life (in the example mentioned by the scientist) then how did the sun and
ocean get created?

Frontelly says: January 23, 2014 at 10:44 am

leila is correct. Its one thing to

10

make a claim. Its another to support it with equations that allow for empirical
scrutiny.

tiapa says: January 23, 2014 at 11:25 am

He is making me think that the

distinction between living and nonliving matter is not sharp. Brings to mind the oft
debated quote in Luke 19:40 I tell you, he replied, if they keep quiet, the stones
will cry out. I am looking outside my office window now with a possible answer to a
question I always ask: How do the trees know how to space their branches for optimal
sun exposure for leaves yet to come. Benoit Mandelbrot said So the goal of science is
starting with a mess, and explaining it with a simple formula, a kind of dream of
science.

Connor R says: January 23, 2014 at 11:35 am

As usual: anthropology punts the ball

back to physics. (Franz Boas, the Father of American Anthropology, who was a
physicist himself.)

Mark P says: January 23, 2014 at 11:49 am

@Josh, my thoughts exactly. Could

Bolus do a piece on how they receive such a high level of commentary? It is like being
able to attend the conference at which the research is presented, but without the
travel arrangements and lost wages.

Thanks also to the commentators who provided

11

references. I just added a half dozen quality articles on this topic to my reading list.
Back to topic, does this theory depend on high energy gradients? If so, I wonder, given
that we have still have regions of earth immersed in extreme energy gradients, then as
Daniel G says: But if life has multiple origins, then what explains the same molecular
structure across all of life? I also wonder what is the connection or reliance if any
between these dissipative systems theories and the availability of negentropy.

sidonie s, journalist says: January 23, 2014 at 12:34 pm

Behzad M says: January 23, 2014 at 2:53 pm

Bravo Mr. Occulus!

Leila please read the books Into

the Cool by Schneider et al, Information theory of evolution by John Avery, 2003,
and my own book A Comprehensive theory of evolution 2013 before making a not
true statement that the previous authors had not have mathematical treatment or
rigor of Mr. Occulus. Both you and Mr. Occulus would benefit by reading the writing of
these eminent scholars (present author excepted) which are mathematically truly
rigorous. When and if this necessary reading is done it will become clear that the
encounter of photons and matter in converting energy to information inbedded in the
structure of molecules or more complex matter, life, John Avery shows with rigorous
math that at 298.15 kelvin (room temperature) 1 jule will produce 56.157 bits of
information (entropy change). In my book,( a comprehensive theory of evolution) on
page 45, chapter one, the concept of retardation of flow of entropy thru living matter
in the form of captured Gibbs free energy is rigorously and mathematically presented.

12

Therein the confusion regarding whether life increases or decreases entropy flow has
been clarified with the conclusion that life retards the flow of energy into entropy
universe. This issue has been confusing to many scientists including Mr. Occulus but
was resolved after detail personal communication with John Avery and its math and
assumptions are clearly discussed in the comprehensive theory of evolution,
(Thermoinfocomplexity) book, chapter one. The debate is not about priority of credit
(who cares, we will all join the ocean of universal entropy soon). The debate is about
the truth of physical evolution.
Bolus interjects: The book Thermoinfocomplexity, is a self published tome by the
author. Apparently it has been read by one person other than the author, a man who
admits he did not understand it, but gave it four stars (out of five) for density. This
does not mean that Bolus is weighing in on Thermoinfocomplexcity, as we have not rad
it and probably wont. But please take this as evidence that our discussion here at
Bolus is an equal opportunity between the published, the self-published and the
unpublished. We dont discriminate.

CrazedLeper says: January 23, 2014 at 3:29 pm

Ok, perhaps Occulus was being glib

but if shining light on a rock were enough to make a plant, Mercury and Venus
should be teeming with life. Methinks that Mars has been there long enough to have at
least grown some mossaccording to the theory. Its more likely that he wants to
believe something and this theory will simply serve as his very own cosmological
constant.

13

S. Sun says: January 23, 2014 at 4:52 pm

This is a very amazing discovery if

proven true. I am a Ph.D. student in physics. I just wanted to say that what he
proposes does not run into any conflict with the existing law of thermodynamics. The
existing law of thermodynamics only applies to systems in equilibrium that many
people are familiar with (increases in disorder (entropy) etc). They all have one
fundamental assumption: that the system is already in equilibrium. Non-equilibrium
systems are not very understood at all. Non-equilibrium statistical mechanics is a huge
open question in physics. Its why we dont understand every day things such as
underwater bubble formation. Because such phenomenon can only happen under nonequilibrium conditions. The Earth is certainly not an equilibrium system, we take in
energy from the sun the day and emit our entropy at night to the emptiness of space.
If this proves to be correct it will be a huge in the step of understanding nonequilibrium systems.

James Cross says: January 23, 2014 at 5:14 pm

This made me think of Into the

Cool as some others have noted but there are probably a number of others. However,
I think there is a missing piece in these theories- information. Living systems
accumulate and preserve information. Information allows reproduction, evolution, and
even metabolism.

14

Charles Hall says: January 23, 2014 at 5:41 pm

I agree with the many responders

that these ideas are not new at all (such as I can tell), including to this systems
ecologist. Indeed Ecologist(s) Ramon Margalef discussed this and so did Howard Odum
in a way that is far more satisfying to me (although perhaps not as elegantly written as
some). Life does not dissipate energy just to do that; it is a necessary requirement for
building structure, capturing more energy than that required for maintaining that
energy and for energy acquisition, and propelling ones genes into the future.
(Evolution is an existential game, the object of which is to keep playing: Ecologist L
B Slobodkin). Hurricanes too feed on the free energy of warm water to maintain
structure which can capture more energy in a positive feedback. These are very old
ideas. There continues to be confusion between mathematical and scientific rigor.
They are (generally) different issues. Newton and Maxwell were lucky: The rest of us
have to struggle with the more mathematically recalcitrant leftovers.

Mihai N says: January 23, 2014 at 6:04 pm

Read: Walter M. Elsasser, Reflections

on a Theory of Organisms. After reading it, you will reconsider your premises. The
echo-chamber of science produces many formal proofs, but not yet the theory of life.

Graniteman says: January 23, 2014 at 7:41 pm

For those of you who doubt that

Dr. Occulus has produced something new, please read his recent publication in J.
Chem. Physics:

15

http://www.Occuluslab.com/uploads/7/8/0/3/7803054/2013jcpsrep.pdf If you bother

to read this publication in a well regarded journal, you will see that he has offered a
valuable framework for conducting future research about thermodynamic constraints
on biological processes. This doesnt mean, of course, that other authors havent
offered similar thoughts in a less formal way.

James Cross says: January 23, 2014 at 8:35 pm

I think this needs to be looked at

as a sort of companion piece to Tegmarks Consciousness as a state of

matter http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.1219 So these are in some ways very different but I
think there is a connection. Tegmark tries to derive consciousness from physics as this
tries to derive life from physics. Tegmark, however, skips life in his states of matter
going pretty much from solid, liquid, gas to computation. In fact, I think there is very
much a direct connection. Consciousness arises from life as an advanced form of
information processing that first arose in life an evolutionary development from more
primitive life processes. The missing factor in both is information. But there seems to
be some relationship between information and energy in that as more advanced
organisms are more intelligent can process more information, have more throughput,
and hold more information they also dissipate more energy.

D Sagan says: January 23, 2014 at 10:17 pm

On the face of it this would seem to

be a simplistic mathematization without ecological phenomenological grounding. You

start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it

16

should not be so surprising that you get a plant. Well not quite but living systems do
produce more entropy, as do complex thermodynamic systems in general. I discuss
naturalistic teleology in the Introduction to this book, in the section Turing Gaia:
http://www.amazon.com/Foray-into-Worlds-AnimalsHumans/dp/0816659001/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390529955&sr=11&keywords=von+uexkull
There are some mistakes in the article, e.g., the conflation of closed and isolated
systems. Eric Schnedier and I even discussed life as primarily a metabolic and
thermodynamic system, stabilized by genetics, at the Joseph Keenan conference
organized by Hatsopoulos at MIT. There are three stages of a scientific theory. 1) You
are dead wrong, 2) You are right but its trivial, 3) You are right and its important and
we knew it all along. Welcome to stage three haha. If you are really interested in this
subject, please read Into the Cool. Eric D. Schneider collects great data about how
more complex ecosystems (e.g., rainforests are better energy dissipators than old
growth fir forests which are in turn better dissipators of energy than newly planted
forests, grasslands better than cities and so on); we also have a chapter on the origins
of life. Global warming can be looked at as literal biospheric dysfunction as heat
remains closer to the complex systems surface, impairing its function. And if you are
interested in naturalistic teleology, I discuss it in detail in several places in
http://www.amazon.com/dp/081668135X . Notice also this paper, Life as a
Manifestation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which precedes Occuluss
would-be pride of place in this area by some years:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0895717794901880. What is
different about Schneiders work is the careful application of nonequilibrium
thermodynamics to living systems.

17

Lee Foreman says: January 23, 2014 at 11:40 pm

These mathematical rules for

all or any potential life are great but they only seem to apply to one tiny planet in one
tiny galaxy. However, if the laws of physics are truly universal as most of us believe to
be the case, why then are there no other life forms as of yet discovered except on
earth? Wouldnt this spontaneity theory create life in abundance around the universe,
the mathematical probabilities would have to be all aligned somewhere just like they
have been here on earth. How can this theory hold true if it does not apply outside of
our great little planet?

Kittylit says: January 23, 2014 at 11:43 pm

All I know is that the 2nd law of

Thermodynamics is really #3.

Karl says: January 24, 2014 at 1:52 am

Occulus says, We can show very simply

from the formula that the more likely evolutionary outcomes are going to be the ones
that absorbed and dissipated more energy from the environments external drives on
the way to getting there. This, IMO, is the core of why all this is a completely
theoretical exercise and not (as it has been reported elsewhere) proof that life is
inevitable or even as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill. In a non-evolutionary
system, there is no selective pressure for the best dissipation outcome that they

18

have calculated. The system can simply continue to heat up, like Venus, until it
reaches its own equilibrium without life. Even if simple self-replicating molecules
form, they may develop into life merely by the fact that they reproduce and start to
evolve, but the fact that they disperse energy from the planet better does not help
them outcompete other molecules on the planet.

Uthup says: January 24, 2014 at 3:45 am

Like Mr. Mahin states it might be ages

till they find The reason for the origin of life and the complexity of DNAs, but what I
love about this article is that it opens up the thought that origin of life is not just a
random and lucky lighting strike in the primordial soup. Whether this theory proves
itself accurate (wholly or partly) remains to be seen, at least it has opened up a line
of thought which is scientifically valid rather than depending on sheer chance.

Robert G. J says: January 24, 2014 at 8:17 am

I am interested in the ability of

archaic life and its ability to use calcite to redistribute energy. The cases of
extremophiles in both caves and deep ocean environments as well as in the fossil
record show that calcite has been used for numerous uses by early life forms. The
tendency of many calcite salts to be easily mutable into more or less energy
conservative forms is unique due to the ability of calcite to be able to take over 500
crystal forms. The helical forms are very interesting too because they could perhaps
have a role in the formation of our helical genetic bases. This is not my area of study

19

but it has become very interesting in light of this research and I would like to hear any
ideas on this from any who may have related information.

KOJohnson says: January 24, 2014 at 8:43 am

I may be missing something here

Im sure that Im missing a lot of things herebut this sounds like good old-fashioned
spontaneous generation. And if this happens, then why isnt it happening now? Or is it?
Why isnt this the normal way for new life-forms to appear here? Still, interesting.

Dan K says: January 24, 2014 at 9:54 am

Im surprised that in all this discussion

there was not one instance of the common, everyday process that for centuries has
demonstrated these very principles: crystallization. The formation of a crystal involves
gaining local order at the expense of surrounding disorder. The secret with life is not
this process, because without the producer of the gain benefiting from the imbalance,
there can be no selection for improvements, and reversibility is unavoidable. The
critical step in establishing life was the formation of a shell between inside and
outside, so the inside could capture the benefits of the process while expelling the
waste, and could accumulate the raw materials without the risk of losing them to the
disorder. Everything prior to that step was chemistry; everything after that step was
biology.

20

Rod R says: January 24, 2014 at 10:59 am

If this theory is true that life evolves

to disperse energy more efficiently, then a glass of pond water or sea water should
dissipate energy and reach thermodynamic equilibrium more efficiently and quickly
than a glass of distilled water, because the former contains life. Does that make
sense? I wonder if that is a measurable test that would constitute proof of Occuluss
theory.

JEFinch says: January 24, 2014 at 12:08 pm

One comment that comes back is:

If life has several origins, what explains the common molecular foundation of all
currently known life? One answer could be extinctions. Those species alive today
represent a miniscule fraction of those that have lived. Why isnt it happening today?
Ill leave that one to better brains.

MF says: January 24, 2014 at 1:10 pm

Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense to

me. A simple example comes to mind- the formation of ice crystals with the
consequential release of energy.

Nalliah T says: January 24, 2014 at 2:08 pm

If life can be formed by continually

putting energy into a system then Mercury & Venus should have more life on it than
the earth.

21

Cody B says: January 25, 2014 at 2:32 am

Hats off to the author; this was one of

the most interesting things Ive read online in a long time including the complete
thread of comments, which on the whole pays fine respect to constructive debate and
the scientific method. I wish I had something smart to contribute, but all I can give is
my gratitude.

mlvlvr says: January 25, 2014 at 4:15 pm

I met Prigogine at a physics conference

in 1977. I dont think hed have minded if someone said he worked on physics
problems. That said, Im not convinced that Harold Morowitzs calculation about
spontaneous emergence of a bacterium (if he actually did such a calculation) has much
bearing on the paper discussed here, and BTW, Harold was a biophysicist who as I
recallbut cannot confirmreceived the first biophysics PhD. He would probably not
agree with the characterization of himself as a great mathematician. Im guessing
whats new in Occuluss work is that he differs with previous authors about reaction
rates. He probably does not claim that the idea that energy flowing through a system
tends to organize it, a phrase I heard from Morowitz and Prigogine independently, is
original to him.

Glen says: January 25, 2014 at 6:31 pm

This is a nice job of quantifying the

22

direction and flow rates of entropy generation in far-from-equilibrium systems. Thats

what much of physics is about- quantizing physical behavior so that we can use our
best mathematical tools to predict the behavior of those systems in time. Interesting
(to me) is that the principal that systems evolve to maximize the rate of entropy
production was also foreshadowed in a recent book published by a Duke engineering
professor: Adrian Bejan; Design in Nature; Anchorbooks (2012). He terms this
principle the constructal law, and generalizes to any system in which flow is
presentheat flow, mass flow, information flow and also, presumably, the flow of
entropy.

Adrian T says: January 25, 2014 at 8:12 pm

The observed scale invariance in

atmosphere and ocean can be linked to entropy production, via the thermodynamic
formalism of statistical multifractality. Appealing to the molecular dynamical
emergence of organized fluid flow from a randomized molecular population (Alder &
Wainwright, Phys Rev A, 1, 18-21 [1970]) leads to the idea that natural selection is a
property inherent in molecular populations, and therefore operates on all scales
(Griffith et al., Accounts of Chemical Research, 45, 2106-2113 [2012]). The most
energetic molecules have negative entropy and produce organization, while the larger
number closer to average are responsible for dissipation and allow the maintenance of
an operational temperature in non-equilibrium systems. For a definitive account of
atmospheric scale invariance, see The Weather and Climate: Emergent Laws and
Multifractal Cascades, Lovejoy & Schertzer, 2013, CUP, ISBN-13: 9781107018983.
Weather and climate are, and must have been in the Archaean, prime agents of
natural selection.

23

Jonathan S says: January 26, 2014 at 12:45 pm

Much of this reminds me of some

of the implications of Stephen Wolframs reproducing pattern theory expounded in A

New Kind of Science. Do you see any connection?

Jim d says: January 26, 2014 at 1:58 pm

Im a philosopher and not a physicist or

chemist, so most of Occuluss theorizing is beyond me. However, I get the gist of his
theory and, as others have noted, it stimulates thinking. In our philosophy discussion
group (an Ayn Rand group), weve been debating whether consciousness is material or
non-material. I say that nothing exists but matter, which includes electro-magnetic
fields, light waves, etc. Consciousness is not something which emanates from the
electro-chemical activity of the brain, but rather, consciousness IS this electrochemical activity. Matter, after billions of years of evolution, becoming aware of itself
in the complexity of the human brain is as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill. To
those concerned about free will, I say this: in the complex electro-chemical activity of
the human brain, matter reaches such a degree of complexity that it escapes being
determined or predictable. The essence of freedom is its unpredictabilitythe
unknowability of its future state. (For a fine discussion of the brains activity and free
will, see E.O. Wilson, On Human Nature, Chp. 4, Emergence, where Wilson
discusses the brains schemata and feed-back loops.)

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WiSz says: January 26, 2014 at 2:31 pm

I find simple thermodynamic theories of

life rather disappointing. They appear like a naive explanation of living things by
saying that they are not really living, just being similar to tornados, monsunes, the
Great Spot on Jupiter, or computers keeping low entropy and dissipating heat. But the
fact that some systems conform well to certain laws can hardly explain the existence
of such systems or their nature. This is a kind of manipulation, because we had been
surprised by seeing those things and could not have predicted their existence. The
problem with such theories may be that the most likely random transformation of an
ordered system is usually its destruction. As regards stones rolling downhill, they are
soon stopped, or just remain there finding no path down, or their path is
uninteresting. Some theories say that life must exist because carbon atoms tend to
form complex molecules. We may speculate that rational and intelligent systems must
spontaneously appear throughout the Universe just because the best use of the laws of
logic gives the best chance of persistence. Is it true, or are we still missing some very
deep key points?

Yenny says: January 26, 2014 at 8:17 pm

Does this indeed liberate biologists

from seeking a Darwinian explanation for every adaptation or is it rather a new way
to think of fitness? And it is interesting to think of it in terms of the ubiquity of
convergent evolution to similar pressures, as well as possible ramifications for
xenobiology.

25

Howard A. L says: January 27, 2014 at 2:03 am

Ive been looking at Occuluss

theory. I havent quite figured out whether its completely trivial or actually saying
something useful. The equation appears to be correct though. One way of interpreting
it is just that the entropy generated by creating molecule(s) B from molecule(s) A,
minus the entropy removed by the reverse reaction B to A, must be greater than or
equal to the entropy from releasing the appropriate amount of free energy into the
heat bath at the current temperature. Thats pretty much a no-brainer, since no
reaction can be greater than 100% efficient. (Note, however, that the forward and
reverse reaction rates are in general not the same except at equilibrium. The equation
is true even very far from equilibrium.) Now, whether you can go from that equation
to his broader claims that more efficient reactions out-compete less efficient
reactions in the Darwinian sense, is I think less clear. It appears to require additional
assumptions, which he doesnt really make explicit. It may be true, but its not as
obvious. I would thank previous commenters for their many excellent references. The
Michaelian paper seems to be mainly a historical survey of previous work, and doesnt
contain any equations. I havent had time to read most of the others yet. John Averys
Information Theory and Evolution (2nd ed. 2012) is a good solid introduction to this
area of inquiry. One nice nugget of wisdom from it is that the natural unit of
temperature is energy per bit of entropy. This means that the unit of Occuluss
$\beta=1/T$ is bits of entropy per unit of energy. The equation is easier to
understand dimensionally that way.

Torbjrn L, OM says: January 27, 2014 at 6:48 am

Thanks for this! With all due

respect to some of the forerunners I have had time to check and some comments here

26

of what is new, this is quantitative work derived directly from earlier work on nonequilibrium thermodynamics (NET). And it ties nicely in with Russell et al work on
alkaline hydrothermal systems and how such disequilibrium system as life arises out of
them due to NET. However, they argue convincingly (to me) that the metabolic
bottleneck isnt disequilibrium and dissipation as such, but the increased dissipation
that comes from positive feedback in Atwood engines of dissipating free energy
(disequilibrium) flows (free energy conversion, FEC, engines). More precisely, the
simplest such FEC engine of electron bifurcating metal atoms that we still see in the
core enzymes of the metabolic UCA. [Turnstiles and bifurcators: The disequilibrium
converting engines that put metabolism on the road, Branscomb and Russell,
Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) Bioenergetics, Volume 1827, Issue 6, June 2013,
Page 806.] The thermodynamics of replicators may or may not supplement the
metabolic achievement, but the result favoring RNA primacy is suggestive so far. And
here I always claimed that entropy has nothing to do with life as such, since the
entropy produced by evolution during selection at each generation is miniscule
compared to the entropy produced during organism growth. And if snow flakes can
grow, so can cells. But Occulus turns that around to face me. =D

Jason F says: January 27, 2014 at 10:15 am

The author writes: Eventually, the

system arrives at a state of maximum entropy called thermodynamic equilibrium, in

which energy is uniformly distributed. One of the most pervasive and difficult to
displace misconceptions about Entropy is that the distribution of energy in a system at
thermodynamic equilibrium is a uniform distribution. It is not: the distribution is the
Boltzmann distribution, and follows exp(-kE). It is a very easy trap to fall into, because

27

it seems obvious, simple, and easy to understand: but its not what happens in
reality.
Bolus interjects: In statistical mechanics and mathematics, a Boltzmann distribution
(also called Gibbs distribution[1]) is a probability distribution, probability measure, or
frequency distribution of particles in a system over various possible states. The
distribution is expressed in the form

where

is state energy (which varies from state to state), and

(a constant of

the distribution) is the product of Boltzmann's constant and thermodynamic

temperature.
The ratio of a Boltzmann distribution computed for two states is known as the
Boltzmann factor and characteristically only depends on the states' energy difference.

The Boltzmann distribution is named after Ludwig Boltzmann who first formulated it in
1868 during his studies of the statistical mechanics of gases in thermal equilibrium.
The distribution was later investigated extensively, in its modern generic form, by
Josiah Willard Gibbs in 1902.

William S says: January 27, 2014 at 10:41 am

While Occuluss research may point

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the way to specific mechanisms for increasing order in disordered systems and may
thus play some upstream role in the reproduction of macro-molecules, it doesnt
address the critical role of functional information in both the origin of life and its
continued enrichment through evolution. By functional information I mean something
more than just repeated patterns of inorganic or organic molecules, but rather
patterned information in one component of a living system that is homologous to
patterns in one or more other components in the system. This type of information is
the basis for message transmission and feedback loops between components of a living
system and thus the synchronization of all of the subsystems that comprise it. The
classic (oversimplified) example is Transcription factors>DNA>RNA Polymerase
>Spliceosomes>mRNA>Nucleotide triplets>RibosomestRNAAmino Acids
>Polypeptides>Folded Proteins/Enzymes>Transcription factors That all of these
subsystems somehow evolved in tandem and have highly coordinated functions in the
metabolism and reproduction of living organisms is truly astounding. IMHO this type of
information system depends on much more than the principles of thermodynamics and
is the great unexplained mystery of Biology. While Occuluss work may be relevant to
this at some level, I dont believe that it begins to explain this central problem.

William S says: January 27, 2014 at 1:32 pm

The term RibosomestRNAAmino

Acids in my previous post should read Ribosomes>tRNA>Amino Acids

Nezih O says: January 28, 2014 at 8:12 am

Occuluss notion puts Darwinian

29

takeover, chaos theory, Jarzynski and Crooks formulation, Nobel Laurate Ilya
Prigogines behavior of open systems, and Boltzmann probability all together. We have
to test and gather data and to run experiments on living systems to support to
understand life from a thermodynamic perspective.

Pluri B says: January 28, 2014 at 10:37 am

Interesting stuff, but not

biology. Biology, life, is not just replicating matter. Rather it is replicating coded
information. As long as information is not included, this is merely physics devoid of
any biology, and irrelevant to solving the origin of biological systems. This is in no
respect whatsoever a precursor of a living system. Science, in the first place biology,
has to deal with the information content of biosystems. Denying or ignoring that life is
based on information, is denying or ignoring science facts.

Ron H says: January 28, 2014 at 8:45 pm

RE Occuluss comment: ..it [group of

atoms] will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more
energy. Could the above read: Groups of atoms when steadily absorbing energy from
an external source at a more rapid rate than their environment (e.g. an immersing
fluid) will be restructured or reorganized by that energy in a manner that will
dissipate the energy as heat to their immersing fluid (or intimately contacting
substance) at a higher rate than their original structure allowed. RE: Scientists have
already observed self-replication in nonliving systems. Given that many now question
the meaning of self in humans, let alone animals or inanimate things, would it not

30

be prudent to delete self- from self-replication?

Doc the Dog says: January 29, 2014 at 12:19 pm

In weak criticism of Granite S,

you state . . . theres much more to reality than we can capture in an equation, a
formula or a sentence. Physicists are always forgetting this simple fact that every poet
knows. I demur, to the extent that unexplained does not mean unexplainable. You
seem to be saying that knowledge and its interpretation cannot advance past what we
now know and accept. I suggest that Dr. Occuluss scientific progeny will, perhaps only
a few tens of years from now, smile indulgently at your statement.

Lex says: January 30, 2014 at 1:22 pm

It would seem that the same logic

supporting the assertion that life occurs spontaneously as a result of the

thermodynamic imperative of entropy would mean that at least some living things
should be immortal. Or, put another way, what is the thermodynamic causation for
death of the living things that successfully contribute to entropy?

Karo M says: January 30, 2014 at 8:18 pm

In defense of my work, and that of

many others, and particularly of my paper entitled Thermodynamic Dissipation

Theory for the Origin of Life (arXiv:0907.0042[physics.gen-ph]2009; Earth Syst.
Dynam., 2, 37-51, 2011), as other contributors to these comments have pointed out,

31

there is a long list of workers to whom credit should be given with respect to the
association of life with dissipation and thermodynamics. Some of the most important
works that come to mind (Im sure I am forgetting others) are Boltzmann, Onsager,
Prigogine, Nicolis, Babloyanz, Wicken, Zotin, Ulanowicz, Lloyd, Pagels, Swenson,
Morel, Fleck, Kay, Schneider, Dewar. The references to these works can be found in
our articles or by doing a Google search. The journalistic report in Bolus on the paper
of Occulus has given public exposure to these ideas and that is a good thing. Papers of
this kind are usually rejected by the traditional origin of life journals, principally
because of a general lack of appreciation for non-equilibrium thermodynamics. That is
now starting to change and we must be grateful for the publicity, but, at the same
time, it is important to be fair in attributing credit where credit is due. It represents,
after all, many years of hard work performed by many generations of scientists
throughout the world on this subject.

William S says: January 30, 2014 at 9:09 pm

Doc: While I agree that just because

a phenomenon is currently unexplainable doesnt mean it that it always will be, I

would hope that Dr. Occuluss scientific progeny will hold their indulgent smiles until
the solution is actually in the bag. We can never know in advance whether hard
problems will ultimately be explainable. This is example of what Alan Turing called
the halting problem. It is not unreasonable therefore to consider the possibility that
a given problem cannot be solved, or can only be solved after paradigm shifts of the
sorts that we saw with the advent of relativity and quantum mechanics. My sense of
Dr. Occuluss discovery is that it is well within the comfort zone of the current
biological paradigm for lifes origin, as resulting from a long series of physio-chemical

32

reactions slowly occurring over billions of years (hence all the encomium in response
to his finding). This has been the consensus of many of the greatest scientific minds
since the emergence of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis in the first half of the
20th century, and which was apparently confirmed in 1953 with the discovery of the
structure of DNA. However the discoveries of molecular biology over the succeeding 60
years have not been kind to this synthesis, and in the consensus of many others it is in
a shambles (this statement may strike some as outlandish, but Im afraid Ill have to
leave it to our readers curiosities to validate or disprove it for themselves). Suffice it
to say IMHO that a paradigm shift in this area will probably require the death of the
current generation of evolutionary biologists (see Thomas Kuhns The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions) and the rise of their scientific progeny, who will not likely
remember Dr. Occulus as the next Charles Darwin, if they remember him at all.
Bolus interjects: In computability theory, the halting problem is the problem of
determining, from a description of an arbitrary computer program and an input,
whether the program will finish running or continue to run forever.
Alan Turing proved in 1936 that a general algorithm to solve the halting problem for
all possible program-input pairs cannot exist. A key part of the proof was a
mathematical definition of a computer and program, which became known as a Turing
machine; the halting problem is undecidable over Turing machines. It is one of the
first examples of a decision problem.

I Fodor says: January 31, 2014 at 9:39 am

It would interest me, how does the

work of Occulus tie up with the following: Carl Woese published in 2004 in the journal

33

Microbiology and Molecular Review an article A new biology for a new century.
There he described 3 phases of the evolution: predarwinian, Darwinian and
postdarwinian era. We have here the so-called Woesian revolution (changed
perspectives of the origin of the eukaryotes) and the discovery of Dimitar Sasselov,
professor for astronomy at Harvard Univ. who is the director of the multidisciplinary
Harvard Origins of Life Initiative.

Doc the Dog says: February 1, 2014 at 7:07 pm

Mr Seeley: I am a curious reader

and follower of science, but not a scientist. My training is in social science, namely in
the formulation and assessments of urban policies, and I stay away from disciplines Im
not qualified to comment on. What I can do, however, is see and evaluate macro
positions assumed by recent knowledge, as such positions are subsumed by all phases
of inquiry. Your paragraphs are well received and enjoyed, but I submit that the long
history of the pursuit of knowledge is, a bit like the stock market, upward, and builds
(as Isaac Newton offered) upon the shoulders of giants. It is immense fun for me to
read the proponents of one position or another in fields I havent studied since
sophomore biochemistry, and that was, indeed, a long time ago. Judging, however,
from the great advances in virtually every field (my own notwithstanding), Its pretty
difficult to admit of very many insoluble problems. Additionally, I hardly think Dr.
Occulus would describe himself as earth-shaking as Darwin. Who is? As for me, I side
with Edward O. Wilsons famous ant, encased in lucite with a banner protruding,
which says, Onward and Upward!

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Wayne F says: February 1, 2014 at 7:38 pm

I did not see gravity mentioned in

the above comments, so Ill ask this. What is gravitys effect upon the systems
described by Occulus? Is the life-spawning heat bath that Occulus describes most
often created in a gravity well? Is there evidence that any other attractive forces
encourage self-organization? Some physicists might be able to quickly tell me whether
organized atomic and sub-atomic structures dissipate energy more readily than would
a sea of their smallest components?

Daniel S says: February 4, 2014 at 10:36 am

The description of the process and

the mathematics associated with it is a bit too general to provide insight into the
detailed processes of life. Protists like Euglena and Volvox are more prolific and better
at harnessing vast amounts of energy near the oceans surface through photosynthesis,
so why go to all of the trouble to eventually make itself into a something like a tree? I
rather think that the process is driven by other forces more compelling than simply to
dissipate energy, or even competition with other individuals for energy from the
same or even a different source. Is there an expression for the maximum efficiency of
such a system, or does the environment impose its own or other limitations? Why
would efficiency (such as in the thermodynamic sense) be the ultimate goal of life? It
doesnt even explain the reason for the near infinite variety of snowflakes, does it
really? Mathematics is just another symbolic language that human beings have created
to communicate with each other. It is entirely possible to scribble out as many kinds of

35

silly ideas using math as it is in any other human language. Mores the pity, many
people cant tell the difference, in any language. But by all means, keep trying.

Michael S says: February 4, 2014 at 8:36 pm

Daniel G wonders: If the hypothesis

be verified, then Darwinism would have a major problem. For Darwinism presupposes
that all of life has a single origin. The hypothesis, however, allows for, indeed makes
plausible, multiple origins. But if life has multiple origins, then what explains the same
molecular structure across all of life? Well wonder no more, here is an explanation.
Darwin never presupposed that all of life had a single origin, that came later under
what was called neoDarwinism. An explanation for the biological unities is that
horizontal gene transfer is the agency that maintains unity. As is described in papers
1, 9, and 15 at: http://www.vme.net/hgt/ and an attempt to describe this to an
interested lay audience at:
www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/08/the_last_univer.html

Garvin H B says: February 6, 2014 at 10:21 am

What a great article, and a

powerful and important idea. The study of this idea is long overdue. It strikes me that
it is a variant on the ideas of H. T. Odum as described by his former student Charles
Hall (Maximum Power: The Ideas and Applications of H. T. Odum, Charles A. S. Hall,
Ed., University Press of Colorado, 1995). Odum came to believe that all ecosystems
self-organized to use (consume or dissipate) energy at a maximum rate. In Darwinian
terms, the organism that garners the largest share of the available flow of energy will

36

out-compete the others at the same trophic level, so those mutations that enable
higher rates of consumption of energy, in every generation, and at every trophic level,
have competitive advantage. Ultimately, as the ecosystem approaches a stationary
state far from equilibrium (one of Prigognes dissipative structures) it reaches a state
of maximum power. I also see this as closely aligned, intellectually, with the concept
of the Maximum Entropy Production Principle, as discussed by Martyushev
(http://arxiv-web3.library.cornell.edu/abs/1311.2068 ) and many other places on the
web. I, personally, also believe that it can be used to explain why the modern global
economy has evolved over time to be such an exceedingly wasteful engine of
ecological destruction, consuming mass and energy at ever higher rates, until we
reach a maximal rate of consumption. Unfortunately for us, the Earths resources are
limited, and our consumption rate is now largely supported by extraction of immense
quantities of non-renewable energy resources. Charles Halls concept of EROI, and the
rapidly declining value of this indicator for all modern fossil fuel resources, tells us
that the end is coming too soon. This can only end badly for us. I believe it is
absolutely critical that we come to understand this phenomenon much better, and
understand its implications for how we live and organize ourselves.

Mark C says: February 9, 2014 at 12:35 am

Similar ideas have been floating

around for decades, but it is hard to get this stuff published in physics journals. Im
glad to see Rod Swenson mentioned, and Arto Annila at University of Finland has done
much work in this area as well. I am pleased that others such as Karo Michaelian are
familiar with the development of this area and have made their own contributions. I
have used this idea since 2001 for modelling history and economics, using the name

37

Principle of Fast Entropy or e th Law of Thermodynamics since it drives

exponential growth. One way to word the e th law is that an isolated system will tend
to maximize its rate of entropy production. Nevertheless, I prefer alternative
wording: an isolated system will tend to maximize its achievement of thermodynamic
potential. (People hate entropy but love achievement and potential).

Cobes says: February 12, 2014 at 5:32 pm

The theory indicates that life is more

likely to form? In this case would life which exists on earth now have been enriched by
multiple starting points? I guess life being depleted by competing starting points is as
likely as life being enriched. Is there a way to determine life starting points? Is there
any indication that there have been multiple starting points. I am guessing that no one
ever checked because we all believed that life is a unique occurrence.

Mike says: February 13, 2014 at 3:46 pm

Interesting and wonderful article. Fun

thought: Are stars living things? They are an assortment of atoms that have assembled
themselves (low entropy) by the force of gravity and use that force to
disperse/convert nuclear energy into its surroundings (higher entropy) with light and
heat. They reproduce themselves- ejection of planetary nebula seeds and induces
further star formation.

38

Henry H says: February 18, 2014 at 1:19 pm

I see Rod Swenson has been

mentioned, I would like to point out that there is a group at the University of
Connecticut following up on his work, closely related to Occuluss. They call their
project Physical Intelligence and for a short time were funded by DARPA before
DARPA became convinced the goals of PI were too lofty. In 2012 they published their
perspective over a couple of special issues in the journal Ecological Psychology. In any
case, I am excited to see the same insights happening elsewhere, and I hope to see
more collaboration in the future between these various groups. Disclaimer: I am a
Ph.D. student in Ecological Psychology at UConn, however I dont work on the Physical
Intelligence project myself.

Wayne l says: March 2, 2014 at 5:21 pm

In my opinion, life was brought to our

planet. Meteor or other method. At this point its a guess.

Shivam S says: March 6, 2014 at 8:09 am

It is a big step towards the micro

understanding of universe.

jay c says: March 7, 2014 at 8:11 pm

I dont think we have, as yet, evolved the

intellectual brainpower to understand the origin of life. Its like trying to explain
differential equations to a frog. There is something that, as humans, we cannot yet

39

see.

Pentti S.V. says: March 8, 2014 at 10:46 am

http://www.helsinki.fi/~aannila/arto/ Professor of biophysics Arto Annila (Univ. of
Helsinki) has developed a partly similar evolution theory as Dr Occulus. Both are based
on Prigogine and second law of thermodynamics. Annila has however discovered an
universal formula which contains the principle of least action (de Maupertuis) too
(Proc.R.Soc. A (2008) 464, 3055-3070).

Tomasz H, M.D. says: March 13, 2014 at 12:00 am

Since all living things are

physical, the fact that they follow laws of thermodynamics is not surprising. All
physical things should, whether they are alive or not. This does not explain the
evolution of life, which is not even defined here. I am a neurosurgeon having
studied biology and living things for decades, yet have never found a satisfactory
definition of life. One of the questions raised above asks if stars are alive. By
biological criteria, no, because they are not made of cells and all living things are
typically defined to be made of cells. By that definition, viruses are not alive also,
because they are not made of cells. They just cause changes in living things. Before
we talk about the evolution or origin of life scientifically, it would be best to define
what we mean by life.

40

Steven S says: March 19, 2014 at 12:01 pm

Wonderful discussion! @Jim Douthit:

in the complex electro-chemical activity of the human brain, matter reaches such a
degree of complexity that it escapes being determined or predictable. Itd be great if
the transition to self-consciousness could be more quantifiably related to the 2ed
Law. This inter-disciplinary forum would be a perfect ideation factory to
accomplish this.

Antony U says: April 2, 2014 at 4:57 pm

Im so glad the connections got made

between Mr. Occuluss work and Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics (NET). Ive read
Into the Cool: Energy flow, thermodynamics, and life by Schneider and Sagan which
was a wonderful introduction to the subject. These others papers are also good Kay, J.
J., & Schneider, E. D. (1994). Embracing complexity: The challenge of the ecosystem
approach. Alternatives, 20(3), 32-39. Schneider, E. D., & Kay, J. J. (1994). Life as a
manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics. Mathematical and Computer
Modelling, 19(6-8), 25-48. doi:10.1016/0895-7177(94)90188-0 But personally I found
Supply Side Sustainability by Allen, Tainter and Hoekstra far more compelling since it
worked through NET not only in the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology,
ecology) but into the social sciences too (history, sociology, economics) and then into
management. I have short summary of this book (and the key paper) some may be
interested in here: http://www.slideshare.net/AntonyUpward/supply-sidesustainability-summaryupward-av102 Allen, T. F. H. (2003). In Hoekstra T. W., Tainter

41

J. A. (Eds.), Supply-side sustainability. New York City, New York, U.S.A.: Columbia
University Press. Allen, T. F. H., Tainter, J. A., & Hoekstra, T. W. (1999). Supply-side
sustainability. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 16(5), 403.

Antony U says: April 2, 2014 at 4:59 pm

But I have a question for the

community: who is continuing the work on Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics (NET)?

Who are the current leaders in the this field? For example Dr. Brian Cox appears to
align with in Mr. Occulus in his excellent recent BBC Series the Wonders of Live, but is
all this work now dotting the is and crossing the ts of NET or is their still yet
fundamental work to confirm of falsify? Who is doing this important work?

Neal S says: April 18, 2014 at 11:10 pm

This is great, I feel like I have been

thinking this for quite some time, but hadnt the scientific education enough to make
anything of it. Everything is all apart of an intelligent design, whether you believe that
design was created or naturally occurring. Physics, Chemistry, Biology, all of these
branches of science are still just our definitions used to communicate what we have
learned about reality, but the reality never changes. If we already had the answers, it
would be like a palm thump to the forehead like that is so simple! (not that I am
saying it is easy). Everything is the same, maybe expressed differently at times, but
the more we zoom out the easier it is to see this. Id suspect that the grand cosmos
and even beyond our universe there are similar systems at work to the ones we have
already uncovered. Evolution was good, but if this theory can be used to more

42

accurately predict reality, it wouldnt surprise me. There could be scales of reality
below even the smallest quantum mechanics we know of, that have been building up
to create this reality, which in turn is apart of something even much greater.
Everything is relative. It is our responsibility as living beings to keep expanding our
existence and knowledge and dissipate it across the universe until we can truly
understand.

Michael Y says: April 30, 2014 at 2:20 pm

I am not a physicist, but I have

enjoyed the discussion. The most interesting questions for me are: Is life required to
produce consciousness, or can a machine or supercomputer that can pass a Turing test
achieve consciousness? Is consciousness an all-or nothing phenomenon, or are there
gradations? From all I have read, consciousness seems to require both access to
(sensory) inputs from the external environment as well as models of that environment
coded in a form of memory. Additionally, the conscious portion must have an
underlying subconscious support that filters and determines what aspects of the world
reach consciousness. Life as I understand it involves both the replication of coded
information, as stated above, but also an ability to maintain an energy gradient such
that energy flows through the system and never reaches an equilibrium state. It would
also seem to me that the evolution of consciousness is more likely determined by its
Darwinian advantages than energy dissipation constraints. Overall, Id say that based
on what Ive read, the evolution of matter and life can be best described as the sum
of interaction between both the Darwinian and the energy dissipation hypotheses, as
applied to the raw materials (i.e. environment) under consideration. Thus, radically
different forms of life or organizations might occur depending on the environmental

43

constraints. Our Earth has a particularly favorable environment for what has evolved
here, not unexpectedly.

Jacques de G says: May 7, 2014 at 6:58 pm

This new theory is indeed mainly

the theory of maximal entropy production already proposed in 1922 by Alfred Lotka
and more particularly developed by Rod Swenson in the nineties on the basis of
Prigogines work before its demonstration by Roderick Dewar in 2003, even if the
demonstration is not perfect. It was also developed by many others including Kleidon
and others mentionned in the comments. The is also a very intersting book (in French)
by the astrophysician Franois Roddier called Thermodynamique de lvolution
which is largely based on the MEP law and goes quite far in its biological and
ecological implications, including in the evolution of human culture Often useful to
make some literature review before claiming to have made a great discovery

Jacques de G says: May 7, 2014 at 7:18 pm

Here the link to a short animation

movie explaining the maximum entropy production principle ,available since about 3
years : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WLYOYE8a5o and its complement
explaining how difficult are paradigm shifts Enjoy !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdvkOXN2KvA

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Kevin M says: May 22, 2014 at 9:33 pm

Such civil and intelligent discourse!? Is

this truly still the Internet? As a lay person with an insatiable information addiction,
especially when physics are involved, I find this article very intriguing. Perhaps it even
offers a solution to Fermis paradox in that a self inflicted nuclear war of extinction
would dissipate a significant amount of energy. Judging from humanitys own
propensities for war and my predictions on mans demise, this may be the natural
endstate for sentient life thus in the same breath demonstrating that life is common
and also why the sky is so quiet. -KPM

Tim B says: May 31, 2014 at 1:43 am

Great article about a potentially wonderful

idea. Only one question: where is the formula? I didnt see in the article (maybe I
overlooked it). HELP!!!

Andrei L says: June 7, 2014 at 1:16 am

Hi..I am at the end of the line, but I have

a few things to say.I agree with most people, that at least as this work is presented,
it is an expansion of the ideas of Prigogine, which is fine. (And other theories).
However, there is a utter confusion between ensemble properties and the nature of
the components of that ensemble. The principles mentioned here concern the
optimization of thermodynamic stability far from equilibrium; but where to the
molecules come from ? the amino acids, the nucleotides, lipids, sugars, etc ? the
notion that rna is a cheap building material totally misses the point.RNA is thought
to have evolved because it has the chemical property to cut and edit itself. It is

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difficult to reverse engineer the origin of lifewe only have what worked. It seems to
have happened slowly..the earth is thought to be 4.6 billion years old, with the
evidence of earliest life forms 3.8-3.48 billion years ago. The rest of the time we went
from bacteria to menhow the building blocks and the self replicating systems arose is
still a mystery. But say that the earlies lifeforms has the right thermodynamic
properties.it still took ~ 1.5 million years to evolve simple prokarotes, 1 billion for
primitive eukaryotes, and 1.55 billion years to get primates.the evolution of
biological systems is very slow

William W says: July 16, 2014 at 12:40 am

The late theoretical physicist my

father Dr James Paul Wesley wrote a book called ECOPHYSICS that was published in
the 70s which provided an ecophysical definition of life based on the laws of
thermodynamics. this book was very detailed and contained a great deal of
mathematics to support the same ideas seen here, but further it applied those ideas to
the evolution of technology as well as biological life.

Richard L says: July 19, 2014 at 6:44 am

Does life equal dynamical equilibrium

systems that can sense net perturbations from their equilibrium states? Life also
senses and recruits molecules/energy from the environment into its coupled dynamical
systems. Therefore what is missed? -Well the thermodynamics of these systems
explains the change of state, but not how they got there (by what path), nor how they
might be maintained (by oscillating reactions?). Differential equations describe the

46

rate of change in these systems, but not the net change into new dynamical
equilibrium states. Therefore there exists an in between area that requires a better
understanding. A physical example of this is a simple, two-pan balance. A balance in
perfectly horizontal equilibrium with masses on each side can be shifted or perturbed
by the addition of an asymmetric force in the form of an additional mass or an
external force on one side of the balance. These perturbations can shift the
equilibrium position of the balance either temporarily via an oscillation around its
original equilibrium or permanently to a new position of equilibrium whereby the
balance is shifted. The thermodynamics or differential equations describing such a
system as a simple balance misses an essential physical property of this system its
net change. This is fundamentally how living systems sense and respond to changes in
their environments (see: Webers Law Modeled by the Mathematical Description of a
Beam Balance, Mathematical Biosciences 122: 89-94 (1994) (http://www.biobalance.com/Weber's_Law.pdf )). The net changes within their coupled dynamical
systems are embedded within the framework of their organized states, which may
propagate these net changes to other parts of these networks, thereby prompting
these networks to change. As a simple example, two or more coupled chemical
equilibria could be shifted by a net change (Le Chateliers principle) that could be
propagated from one to the other (i.e. as occurs in cellular receptors, such as the G
protein-coupled receptors -see: Molecular dynamics of a biophysical model for beta-2adrenergic and G protein-coupled receptor activation Journal of Molecular Graphics
and Modelling 25: 396-409 (2006) (http://www.bio-balance.com/JMGM_article.pdf )).
Several good points were made previously in this comments section (which is one of
the best discussions that Ive seen anywhere). The fact that other planets in our solar
system are bombarded by energy and have similar chemical constituents suggests that

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life on earth is unique or at least at a more advanced stage of life than the other
planets. What might account for this? Could it be that there is a certain resonance
within and among these coupled equilibrium systems that enhance their expression?
One possible guess is that there are certain cycle-resonances among these coupled
systems that best match the cyclical changes of the surrounding physical systems.
Once these physical and chemical systems are aligned, they may evolve into more
complex systems through periods of repeated iterations. (This suggests that one should
study the synergies between and among coupled chemical/physical systems to observe
how they might evolve.) After all, we have reached the point where we can
breakdown living systems into their basic chemical/molecular components and
reassemble them as new living systems (Dr. Venters work on artificial life). This
suggests that were beginning to understand the fundamental chemical/molecular
foundations for life. This is truly an exciting time.

S.K. M says: July 31, 2014 at 4:36 pm

I am an old timer not computer savvy who

stumbled upon this wonderful discussion. Dr. Occulus seems to have missed out on the
work at Santa Fe institution, especially that of Stuart Kauffman. Somewhat
surprising.

Caroline H says: August 5, 2014 at 11:28 am

The picture Im getting these days is

that, at all scales, matter organizes to channel flows of energy. While I agree with
many others that this is not a new line of thinking, since Ilya Prigogine had already set

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this ball in motion some time ago, if Occulus has come up with an equation that can
map this and, therefore, get the concept into the good graces of the establishment
well, bless his soul!

Caroline C says: August 12, 2014 at 8:17 am

This is an area that interests me but

I confess my level of understanding does not reach that of some of the other posts but
I think that it is important to clarify some things. There is the requirement of the state
or situation in which the early progenitor to the protocell arose. This is where the
concepts of Occulus and others regarding entropy must be invoked, if not later to
describe ecological systems. The original state was a physical state and not a
biological one until life prevailed and as such must obey all known physics rules.
However the possibility exists that early organisms may have initially overcome some
of the constraints of the physical universe, or at least to minimise them. I have been
greatly perturbed by the constant use of equilibrium for ecosystems etc. and it is
very difficult going from the molecular (such as Jason Fordham above describing
Boltzmann), to the macro level of organisation of microbial communities or forests.
Thanks for all the links by the way although no one mentioned Hartes or Ichuru Aokis
books, but Kauffman was mentioned who described the possibility that dynamical nonequilibrium systems could be stable, which seems to me a better description for
forests. Whatever consensus is eventually reached the molecular to the ecosystem
level should be consistent in the final thesis. Except that we all know that
Einstein/gravity and the quantum world arent that consistent! So do we have to await
the outcome of those investigations before we assign Boltzmann to the wider world of
soil bacterial communities? It seems to me that until physics resolves that dilemma it

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will be quite plausible to differentiate macro and micro systems as Mikoman suggested
above, especially in the biological world which attempts to control the physical (albeit
with various success levels). The new theories of life based on entropy could be
maligned, but then that is what was done to the chemical theory of life 50 years ago I
heard. Some of the posts above note that there is a chemical and physical state or
condition which occurred when life first arose. This is very important and Richard L
made good points about coupled physical and chemical systems. Biology is a third
system that interacts with the physicochemical surroundings, and very often
overcomes or utilizes them or improves conditions for its own purposes. Of course it
must ultimately be accountable to physics processes such as entropy and this may
indeed be a driving factor in the organisation of some or most ecosystems and
communities, but perhaps not in ways proposed. There is still the problem of the
original and yes I heard the word sentient, organism. Much investigation has been done
on chemical factors involved such as the ATP system and H systems, and also on heavy
metals, so that early organisms could have arisen primarily in response to chemical
factors. The fundamental nutrient requirements of nascent life really needs to be
clarified before we can make any estimates regarding chemical equations etc. and
thus energy and entropy. The truth is we dont have THE equation or cycle involved
really, although everyone acknowledges that RNA was involved very early in the
piece. Personally I think the entropy outcomes of the ADP/ATP system which is shared
by all lifeforms is important. Back when life began I dont know if youd be able to call
the first precursor of the protocell an ecosystem, so we are definitely not very much
at the macro level there. My view is that it probably arose as a chemical system under
a membrane, say strung between two rocks, which became so coordinated that it
eventually acted as one. Water readily forms a filmy membrane between surfaces.

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However one is a lonely number, so that if a number of such chemical bubbles

existed and they began to trade scarce nutrients with each other, perhaps you do
have a nascent ecosystem, perhaps some kind of efficiency is involved, and did
someone mention necessity?? So what nutrient was missing on the rockfaces of
volcanic vents that starving semi-alive bubbles would need that may instigate
trading? The other thing I found interesting I owe to good old Lehninger I think who
describes in his biochem books the HUGE AMOUNT OF energy that plants have to deal
with. And strangely enough not only photosynthesis, but the entire mitochondrial and
ATP system is set up to deal with exactly what the article described, dissipating
energy, but not in the sense proposed. The problem is too much energy. If our cells
dealt with all the energy we give them in one hit they would die. Plants cannot deal
with the amount of solar energy provided daily, so deal with it in a stepped process, as
animal cells do in mitochondria. Do two of the most major biology energy production
systems ultimately produce a net entropy or not? One thing I do agree on is that after
the nascent filmy bubble of chemicals coalesced and later formed a protocell
complete with RNA, they were no longer, Im sorry, physical in the true sense of the
word. That is why I do not worship crystals, even if you do. Because they are just solid
objects. I really have trouble with the split in science where entire systems are
studied by either physical scientists or biologists and never the twain shall meet. This
is most noticeable in carbon chemistry where in spite of the urgency of the matter,
some see the problem as a purely physical/chemical study, and others are only
interested in microbial or plant production systems. Any theory that proposes to
describe life cannot be a purely physical theory, because then it is about a
rock. Lifeforms are not purely physical objects, they are indeed sentient. Even the
most primitive bacteria has sophisticated responses, and one of these is to move away

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from the pipette to survive. What rock does that? It is as though life is a response
system, a response to the physical environment, a way of overcoming it. Which by the
way is why it is so dangerous to degrade the biosphere, because the physical
environment will take its planet back with no by your leave for any of us. Only by
maintaining biosphere resilience can we avoid its worst excesses, and even then not
always, such as in the case of earthquakes etc. So if life is seen as a response system,
perhaps its function is to diminish entropy, not increase it, but as I do not know the
results of the entropy production in the ATP or photosynthesis systems which would
give a clue, I cant be sure. Thus self-organisation in a community or ecosystem would
be in order to decrease entropy found in the physicochemical surroundings, and this
could be seen as a form of efficiency. In that type of scenario, organism death would
be when the (body) system can no longer provide a response (literally) and when in
fact entropy does increase. However this is simplistic because apostasis (cell death)
appears to be some sort of necessary component of bodily systems so that cell growth
(cancer) can actually cause illness and death. My final thought is that Einsteins E=mc2
leaves out entropy, and that there is a second term giving a different equation which
probably includes the circular/squared term but also an exponential one representing
demise. That would give you energy and matter as well as decline and destruction, all
of which are represented in the Universe and on this planet. That is, especially when
watching the lion killing the buffalo, I cant see how other than with trophic energy
explanations (which was an important addition above) anyone can see too much order
in that.

Matthew K says: September 4, 2014 at 5:00 pm

If it is true that chemical systems

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will as claimed here, progress towards more energetically dissipative states, that
would be a real finding, let alone one thats relevant to the origin of life. There are
really two responses I can think of, one chemical or experimentally based, the other
is more theoretical. If the papers theory holds, then I would expect to see some new
chemistry presented, at a very basic level. Chemical systems that tend to dissipate
heat are known as chemical systems, that is what molecules do when they combine.
Exothermic or endothermic etc. If a system will become complex because it tends
toward a dissipative one, then my question would be, OK are the molecules of DNA
and proteins in an organism at the most dissipative level? Because, intuitively Id say
theyre not. And thats because they are not at their lowest energy state possible,
meaning no more energy can be absorbed, and thus maximum energy would be
dissipated. The second point, is theoretical. In short, the paper begins with the
premise that reversing entropy is like unscrambling eggs, and we all have an
intuitive sense of entropy. And yet, we are to imagine that given enough time, or with
long enough energy input, the egg will unscramble itself? I wanted clarification on that
point, but unfortunately the paper itself, which Ive read, is unclear on this
conclusion. So Im frankly not really sold on the notion that if you shine light long
enough on atoms, it forms a plant, which I assume means a thousand million years or
so.

Caroline H says: September 6, 2014 at 2:16 am

Caroline C, If I properly

understood your last comment, there is actually plenty of order in a lion killing
(eating) a buffalo; i.e., the uptake of essential nutrients by the lion and the
continuation of its organization. The buffalo, too, has its own energy sources. In fact,

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how could there be any ecology if there wasnt such an auto-catalytic cycle occurring
amongst all the parts? Just the same, it does seem so very cruel to me, as perhaps it
may to you. However, as raw as the whole thing is, I think that the cruelty view is
mistaken; that is, there really isnt a separate lion and buffalo, just the cycle of an
evolving universe in the process of becoming aware of itself. Of course, that includes
humans feeling repugnance over such apparent barbarity, but humans judge it as such
only on account of their increased sentience. The proposal (of the universe becoming
aware of itself) might seem too new-agey for most on this forum, but then what
theoretical argument can make a good case against it? I realize that its not the topic
under discussion, but it might help serve to clarify the role of all processes,
thermodynamics included.

Occulus says: September 15, 2014 at 9:50 am

In case readers are interested in

more details, here is a link to a video-recorded lecture that I gave in Stockholm in

September 2014 on the research referred to in this
article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91D5UAz-f4 Occulus

Phil Greenfield says: September 19, 2014 at 3:58 am

So humans are charged by

2LoT to destroy every world that they populate? And as efficiently as possible whilst
maintaining their own integrity? We are the most efficient agents of entropy that have
yet emerged. The best thermal soup chefs in town. Nothing more. I like that.

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Caroline H says: September 27, 2014 at 4:55 am

Regarding the Karolinska talk,

what a wonderful exposition! We can see in action the very resonance that Mr. Occulus
is describing in his subjective consciousness of it; that is, knowledge itself is a highly
efficient entropy producer. Consider all the historical work that has gone into finally
bringing us to this point in our understanding, which of course is driven by our need to
understandunderstanding being such a great dissipater. And what is so groundbreaking
is that Occuluss theory will not only describe life, but all its processes. I cant wait
for these insights to percolate through government, economics, education, social
culture, etc. The morass of incongruent, anachronistic belief systems and concepts
that mostly serve, at this point, in obstructing energy flow will be seen for what they
are. Also, must comment that the guy has heart!

Caroline H says: September 28, 2014 at 3:25 pm

Nature always selects the

connections that dissipate the most energy (for any given set of conditions within
space and time.) To me that explains the entire building process of existence, which
could be said to have started with the thermodynamic processes of the subatomic
particles as they congealed into atoms. This thermodynamic mechanism has shown us
to be infinitely creative; i.e., from an initial environment of hydrogen/helium atoms,
gravitational effects create stars and galaxies which create planets which create
proteins which create life which creates mind, etc. All of it works to extraordinary
perfection in a phase-based manner, although we know that any actual results are

55

statistical, rather than predetermined. My question here is the larger one of, what is
It? Of course we need to understand the parts, but the Whole presents itself as
requiring an explanation as well. Of course we can imagine that the answer will be a
thermodynamic mother lode!

Caroline H says: September 28, 2014 at 5:04 pm

In answer to Phil Greenfields

pessimism, dumping entropy is not the same as destroying the Earth. Entropy is not
useless energy but a gradient of concentration/dissipationits all relative. So, yes,
were increasingly efficient at creating it, but what were actually creating is the
potential in space for other forms to avail themselves of our degraded energy. All
free energy emanating from the sun is in various degrees of degradation as it channels
through the Earth. So, given that thats the case, what is so absolutely amazing is that
there doesnt seem to be any limitation to natures ability to achieve resonance and
thus siphon some of this energy off at various (infinite?) points along this channel.
What can possibly be the terminus of this creative niche/ecosystem building process?

Caroline C says: October 16, 2014 at 7:24 am

Thanks Caroline H for your

comments, and I take your point that from the Lions point of view, order has
increased. However my point, perhaps badly put, was that in order to create such
order, a great deal of disorder occurs, i.e. to the Buffalo. Whether it is cruel or not is
not relevant to the way the world actually works, and is a value judgement that

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although I might feel it, I know it has no place whatsoever in how Nature works, so is
non-scientific, and actually non-realistic. Natures brutality enables natural selection
to work, that is reality whether it offends our sensibilities or not, and without natural
selection wed all still be protocells! Similarly without decomposition there are few
nutrients, so the dissipation of energy occurs in the breakdown of matter which is
required for any creation of order in the future. The biosphere is complex precisely
because it contains a huge amount of disorder as well as order, involving not only
building a trophic order, but breakdown of physical and biotic entities also. Therefore
I was responding to the comments from others that this discussion does not involve
death, and not only that, but inherent in complexity in the natural world is an
immense amount of disorder that occurs well before death e.g. cell apostasis, disease
etc.! You also speak as you indicated a little esoterically about the universes ability
to self-observe. The fact that the bacterium can observe its surroundings and instigate
a myriad of behaviours to survive is an early indication of this ability, which is
heightened as creatures become more complex. However that cannot be extended to
the physical universe which does not observe itself, and herein lies the difference
between animate and inanimate. The fact that sophisticated organisms now have
telescopes to view the universe does not mean at all that the physical Universe can
view itself. The human race is a recent organism that has no value in terms of how the
Universe operates, and it can operate not only without humans, but any form of life on
this Earth. Are you suggesting that if life disappeared, the Universe could still view
itself? Observance is a property of life that is not inherent elsewhere in the Universe.
The fact that it arose does not suggest that it is an endpoint of development of the
Universe, only that it arose! There is no clear step-by-step trend to this enormous
phenomenon elsewhere in the Universe, it just seems to have arisen from bacteria

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onwards only on this planet. Therefore I suggest it is not an inherent property of the
Universe, rather a restricted property of Life on this planet. But life no doubt
conforms to some extent to how the Universe works, except that life seems to be a
separate phenomenon that has evolved awareness (and/or sentience) from the
bacteria onwards; considerable mobility compared to rocks and the like; the ability to
communicate from bacteria onwards; and a replication mechanism which is somewhat
sophisticated. These properties are not particularly representative of how the universe
works as a whole, and it is the uniqueness of them that makes life a special entity
within the universe, and thus I use the word phenomenon to describe it. Some aspects
of the biosphere may be explained by dissipation of energy, and surely decomposition
would be a good place to start for that! This is largely a process that could be
described as disorder of matter rather than creation of order, but it creates the
platform for the ecosystem to survive, and it certainly would create significant energy
dissipation into the surroundings I would imagine. The dualistic nature of processes
should not be simplified into the idea that the complexity is based on the creation of
order alone in the combined biotic/abiotic system that we call the biosphere. That is
why I wafted on about Einstein, because inherent in that is the creation of matter
from energy, and it is the reverse process, the degradation of matter into energy, that
can be important, and I am not sure if perhaps we need further equations to describe
that. However it may well be that the dissipation of energy describes it very well, and
therefore the process of degradation of matter as in decomposition may fit the mold
better than the creation of order does, dissipating much energy! The organism is a
dualistic system of complexity, and this translates at the macro system into the
ecosystem, where degradation is every bit as important as the assembly of order. One
could perhaps see oxygen/CO2 cycle in phytoplankton as the production of order by

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benefitting life, but I am not sure whether net energy is dissipated there. Perhaps the
development of chloroplasts and yes, trees, did in fact make that process more
efficient. Perhaps the ATP/ADP energy system in bacteria was made more efficient in
terms of energy dissipation by the step-down process of energy production in the
mitochondria, the development of which Nick Lane points out, is so specialised that it
is the reason multicellular life is highly unlikely in the rest of the Universe. Personally
I certainly applaud Dr. Occulus for establishing a theory for non-equilibrium systems
and relating them to life, because if there is one thing that is fairly certain, it is not
equilibrium conditions that are maintained in complex biological systems, it is stable,
dynamical, non-equilibrium systems (described by Kauffman). However there is an
extremely important caveat here, biological systems arent severely non-equilibrium,
because then they become entropic, or subject to random perturbations e.g. in
agricultural crops soil carbon levels swing around (no surprise really) seemingly
without thresholds. Intact ecosystems must be only slightly or just non-equilibrium and
there must be a reason for that. Therefore Dr. Occulus may find levels wherein there
is more efficiency than in the completely non-equilibrium system, or at least I would
dearly love to see someone test that once this theory is refined further. Without
recognising this we are probably not talking about intact systems, but disturbed ones
such as logged forests or diseased organisms subject to random perturbations and
instability, which are truly non-equilibrium. So I hope we dont just have black and
white here, because that definitely wont go all the way to describe life, which as
mentioned above, have several reasons why they DO NOT function like purely physical
systems, although undoubtedly obeying physical laws. Lifeforms/systems are not
precluded therefore from from showing attributes associated with physical systems,
but it is my guess they circumvent them sometimes. The general principles may indeed

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apply, but there may need to be refinements, and it should be recognised at the very
least that only a severely degraded ecosystem is completely non-equilibrium. My
question is though is there an advantage to being slightly non-equilibrium compared to
being completely non-equilibrium, or completely equilibrium? For example if your
temperature never varied would that be good? Obviously if it swung wildly like carbon
in agricultural fields, neither would that. Some things seem tightly controlled like pH
of blood whereas others seem to be subject to great flux such as cytoplasmic
contents. Complete equilibrium in biological systems may however be a myth and
some level of disequilibrium may be lifes great trick, but certainly not complete
disequilibrium.

Caroline C says: October 16, 2014 at 10:17 am

I am expanding on my last post

because I think the article misses a vital part of what life actually does. I will try and
give you paras this time, they dont seem to work well on this site, so it all ran
together last time which is awful for reading. The question of a community being
equilibrium or not is quite different from the question of an organism. It is true that as
a whole the biosphere absorbs solar radiation and dissipates it as IR, thus contributing
to the entropy of the Universe. But what the natural world does is not to move in the
direction that the external forces are pushing them, it is almost the opposite.
Otherwise the natural world would not have oxygenated the planet in order that it
does not have to respond to an external world dominated by CO2. Almost all of the
processes found in ecosystems put that ecosystem in a state where it is certainly not
in equilibrium with its surroundings, with the driving geological or climatic forces, but
rather is somewhat in control of them, so may even reverse the situation where the

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biota control the geology and the climate to some degree e.g. weathering, forestatmosphere dynamics etc. This is not the same as the proposal that they are going in
the direction of the driving forces, they are not, nor is the ecosystem in equilibrium
with its surroundings unless it it is so disturbed that it is virtually finished. So this
presents something of a dilemma, we have a somewhat non-equilibrium ecosystem
that is largely divorced from the prevailing environmental conditions, and largely
running its own show. A disturbed system however becomes increasingly subject to
the tugs of the physical planet. The biosphere is increasingly becoming a more nonequilibrium entity which is subject to the whims of the physical planet, due to
humans. The intact ecosystem has processes and interactions which override those of
the external system and allow it to operate independently. As such it is not strongly
non-equilibrium, even though one aspect of that may hold true to an extent, which is
the solar energy. Even that has been subject to modification by the development of
chloroplasts for photosynthesis, in which energy is controlled in a step-down
process. The situation of an individual organism is that if it is in equilibrium it is dead,
its body temperature and other processes are the same as the background state. So by
definition a living being is non-equilibrium. But again the development of homeostatic
temperature control in mammals is a highly sophisticated mechanism to ensure
external drivers are not in control. It needs to be understood that life has achieved
sophisticated mechanisms to override the external physical controls, and in some
cases to reverse that situation altogether, thus influencing the climate or other
environmental conditions such as nutrient supply, extensively. It is the factor most
forgotten in spite of it being common knowledge, in studies of soil carbon and other
processes that appear to be physical, but in fact have been taken over by the
microbial or other communities. Therefore I would personally say that biota in general

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DO NOT go in the direction of the driver, unless they are a highly fragmented or
disturbed system. Often there is a big rift between the direction of the physical
scientists and that of the biological ones too! That absolutely must be addressed in
these kinds of communications. So when ecologists continually talk about
equilibrium in forests, I think this is probably not terribly good. It is equally not
good when physical scientists describe the biosphere as being physically driven. It
hasnt been for several Billion years. Where does this leave the Occulus findings?
Those billions of years ago, the system WAS physically driven. The early progenitors of
life did not have the sophisticated individual and community mechanisms that enabled
them to divorce themselves from the drivers. As such the Occulus approach is probably
pretty spot on for the early progenitors of the protocells. But increasingly after that
biota became less driven by the physical planet, and more by their own internal
machinations, to the point where the physical drivers in fact became driven in many
cases by the biota. Interestingly though there does seem to have been developments
in both mitochondria and chloroplasts which changed the approach to energy, and this
may involve more sophisticated mechanisms to dissipate energy, even if not more of
it! Therefore one must distinguish the simplicity of the origins from the complexity of
the biota from about one Ga onwards when both community and oxygenation were
well defined. One must also distinguish the disturbed highly non-equilibrium simplistic
ecosystem from the intact resilient, very mildly non-equilibrium one. What applies to
the very simplest protocell does not apply to the sophistication of the mammal. Much
more work will be needed to determine how complex intact ecosystems and organisms
are driven, and their relationship to entropy, in comparison to the simple proto-cell or
the highly degraded ecosystem, although some attempts have been made. One should
not confuse descriptions such as by Occulus for progenitor cells with entropic

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descriptions of more complex lifeforms or communities such as by Harte or Aoki. This

is very important, the controlling processes may not involve the same effects or
outputs at all since life has come a very long way from that first protocell progenitor
to the point where it controls the planet rather than the other way around. Nowhere is
that more obvious than in the negative controlling influence exerted by the human
species on the climate. Therefore what life actually does is cheat, and manipulate,
the system. That is, life on this planet has found a way to operate somewhat
independently of the Universe, and not be driven by it, which no doubt is an unique
phenomena in that Universe. The only thing that seems to want to reverse that
progressive attainment is the human race. The physical processes of the Universe will
readily regain control as we stuff the place up.

Martin A says: October 26, 2014 at 3:53 am

The simple fact that Occulus has

developed contrasting system structure formation theory based on energy dissipation

from Darwins generally accepted theory that creates intense examination is very
remarkable in science. Having gone through what has been done so far and opinions
from other leaders on Occuluss postulation, a number of questions trigger in
mind,notably: 1) How congruent to energy conservation law is Occuluss analysis or is
it in violation? 2) Emphasis is system structure arrangement via energy dissipation,
what about energy infusing systems from natural state formation? Would there be a
contradiction? 3) How wholesome is Occuluss new theory when tested from crossdisciplinary fields like reproductive science, chance of sex of a person at formation
,bioengineering applications, other advanced technologies? Whatever the case, time
and world wide experimentation outcomes across disciplines will serve as solid basis

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for validation of this new theory. We have our hands crossed as we keenly follow
intellectual discourse of Occuluss theory of life formation.

Caroline H says: November 1, 2014 at 6:40 pm

Caroline , I think your difficulty

stems from a couple of premises that arent very helpful to you here. One is the
premise that Life is unique and special. Science no longer supports that view. To be
sure, Nick Lane writes very convincingly about mitochondria but he doesnt get it that
life IS complexity and robustnessthe antithesis of single ways of achieving a goal.
Also, your concept of equilibrium and non-equilibrium seems to be getting you in a
muddle. Very simply put, non-equilibrium processes are those that have a source of
energy and a sink for waste. Its the relatively more energetic form of energy at the
source that allows work to be performed as that energy is consumed to fuel processes
of dissipation. Therefore, non-equilibrium processes always involve energy gradients;
its these that serve to fuel the entire Earth, radiating the left over heat out into
space. The entropy produced by these processes is way more than that produced
through the simple radiation of solar energy from the Earth without them. While this
process is responsible for creating adaptive structures that may look as though theyve
achieved equilibrium, all such structures are merely holding patterns. The reason
these holding patterns look so stable is that they have adapted so well at transducing
energy, but that is what they are always doing, moving energy from source to sink
remove the source and none of it would exist. Regarding the esoteric theory about the
universe becoming aware of itself, I didnt say that it has the ability to observe
itself, per se. The point is not about what humans can see with their telescopes, or
any such partial aspect of human experience. It has to do, foremostly, with the idea

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that, whatever this Universe is, it is one thing. If you follow developments from the
Big bang forward you can see the stages that it goes through, each one opening up
new rules, new possibility spaces, which is what emergence is. The rules that create
stars and galaxies are different than the rules that create RNA, amino acids and
proteins, and different than those that create mind, etc. Its all one thing though, all
possibilities inherent from the beginning. The fact that life can perceive visible light,
sound waves, odors and senses of touch by converting such signals into electrical
patterns in the brain is not the big story. Perception doesnt have to be something
manufactured by the brain. Atoms, molecules, amino acids, proteins, cells; etc., are
aware at the level of their own field of action. This field of action carries the same
significance at all scales. The entire universe is a scaffolding of participating, selfaware, parts (which reveals androcentrism for what it isthe wish to be special.)
Human beings arent special and life isnt special, but I would say that the Universe is
special!

Caroline C says: November 5, 2014 at 6:46 am

Thanks for your comments

Caroline H. It appears I may have misinterpreted your observer Universe to mean the
one that is commonly described as the anthropogenic universe, where due to the
immense fluke as it were of all these constants and processes eventually leading to
the human race perceiving them, the universe may have arisen because of us. That has
to be the biggest croc ever, proposed by serious astronomers, and I thought perhaps
you might have been arguing that view. Sorry. You are also right about my muddle
about equilibrium to some extent. That is because the ecological literature tends to
talking quite a bit about the equilibrium state of ecosystems, as opposed to ones that

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are disturbed and thus disequilibrium. I thus decided that there must be a gradient,
leading from mildly disequilibrium to strongly disequilibrium to get around what I think
is misplaced terminology in the literature, that of the mature equilibrium
ecosystem. I now realise that I may have not seen this correctly. It is now evident to
me that an ecosystem in equilibrium with its physical environment is probably almost
non-functional, like a dead body, subject to random physical processes, and that a
disequilibrium ecosystem is the more stable, functional one. There may be therefore
be a gradient from equilibrium (effectively dead) to highly disequilibrium in the
evolution of ecosystems. And this also applies to the evolution of the organism. Mind
you in growth one goes from the non-existent to the cells to the complex and then to
death or non-existent again. What is going on here, is it equilibrium to non-equilibrium
and back again? Therefore the problem of order arises. A dead body may be like a
crystal, with low entropy, in that it has a good deal of order, albeit provided almost
entirely by its surroundings. A functioning organism on the other hand, has a high
degree of order and complexity, but also a number of processes going in the opposite
direction such as apostasis or cell death, which degrade ordered structures, yet it is
not controlled entirely by its surroundings and their drivers, but by internal dynamics.
Similarly with ecosystems. And then disorder takes over so that it dies and returns to
an equilibrium with its surroundings i.e. it ceases to regulate temperature and
nutrients and so on. The folks that studied fractals in the early days found that order
was an emergent property of chaotic systems. Therefore order seems to arise both in
highly disequilibrium situations, but also in highly structured, low entropy, equilibrium
ones, such as the crystal, or even death. This seems problematic. You are right that
my interpretations may be a little muddled as I am still feeling my way around the
physics of this, and comparing them with the ecological interpretations so far. I still

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hold that complex ecosystems no longer necessarily go in the same direction of the
drivers as simpler ecosystems, which are closer to the equilibrium situation. Not to say
that if the Sun disappeared we would be in trouble, but other drivers of possible
entropy production/decrease are no longer so much in control of lifeforms e.g.
substrates. Therefore another issue arises which is that the point of origin of life is
closer to the physically-bound situation of a simplistic system, rather than a highly
complex organism or ecosystem. Therefore it is actually closer to the equilibrium,
rather than disequilibrium situation. I therefore must say that I think there could be a
problem with Occuluss proposal in that regard, at least since the origin of life seems
to reflect more the equilibrium rather than disequilibrium system. That is, from the
inanimate, or dead organism in equilibrium with its surroundings, arose the animate,
or living, which eventually blossomed into organisms and later communities with such
complexity on the planet, that life is able to operate well beyond its main drivers, and
thus be in disequilibrium with its environment. It may be possible that Jeremy Occulus
shows us more about how complex systems arise in a disequilibrium condition, than
about the far more simplified entities that arose at the dawn of life, largely in
equilibrium with their environments. How order arises in chaotic systems is of great
interest, so this may be of considerable value. To study the origins of life one needs a
very simple system that is very nearly in complete equilibrium with its
environment. Somehow the same thing happens when ecosystems become disturbed,
they become more and more subject to the pull of the physical environment, so that
they are driven by random physical processes from the abiotic world, rather than
internal processes. This is chaos with the order and complexity removed, for example
the web of life disintegrates, but it seems to lead to the same point, that of
equilibrium with the external world. Therefore both death and ecosystem disturbance

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return living systems to the point where they arose, in equilibrium with external
physical processes. Otherwise they are not, and are ordered and complex, and this
order and complexity seems to arise from chaos and disequilibrium. I have thus revised
my view of gradients of disequilibrium to one of equilibrium (birth and death;
disturbed ecosystems) grading to disequilibrium (order and complexity, organisms and
intact ecosystems). Fortunately this is a simpler explanation than I made earlier (sorry
about that, work in progress) but it completely reverses the general ecology
literature, as well as the outcomes from Occuluss work. Either way the emphasis in
ecological literature on equilibrium and disequilibrium probably needs re-appraisal.
Systems at equilibrium are generally low entropy. I am suggesting this may be nearly
the case for the origin of life, but later on increased levels of entropy or chaos
resulted in higher order and complexity, and allowed distancing from system drivers.
The ability of life to increase chaos may in fact be its greatest feature. This leads me
to the view that the ATP system and photosynthesis probably both have net positive
entropy. Only further investigations and experiments into chaos theory, nonequilibrium systems and processes such as photosynthesis will tell us more. I therefore
predict that Occuluss research will show us more about the evolution of complex
ordered life systems than it will about the simplistic life found at its origins, and that
when photosynthesis is finally nailed completely it will prove to be a net entropic
process. I do understand the input of solar radiation leading to a net entropic output
of heat from the planet. And I agree that a good deal of entropy flux is involved with
the Earth. But my understanding is that the entropy output is largely due to the
temperature difference between shortwave radiation (solar input) and longwave
radiation which is much cooler, thus producing more entropy than solar input does.
Also although lifeforms are involved in entropy flux, the amounts are much lower than

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those involved in primarily diffusion but also reflection from my understanding. The
net entropic release from the planet is thus largely due to the difference between LW
and SW radiation and not due to lifeforms. Sorry I have forgotten the figures and
source, but I think that is right. You can have a look at the abstract by Weiss for
confirmation (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01175750) who gives
material entropy as about 3-4% of the total with radiative entropy comprising the rest,
although there are many other literature sources e.g. Stephens and OBrien
(http://reef.atmos.colostate.edu/publications/Documents_1993/Stephens_OBrien_Qu
artJRoy_1993.pdf). Life is thus a small pea in the entropy pod. More interesting is
what life is doing to produce the entropy it does produce, albeit on a small scale
compared to radiative diffusion etc.

Caroline H says: November 23, 2014 at 5:20 pm

Caroline C., just a brief response

to the doubts you posed concerning MEP as it pertains to atmospheric entropy. While
its true that not all processes are maximal, such as a humid atmosphere vs. a dry one,
averaged over time, everything, abiotic as well as biotic processes, work together to
maximize entropy production. See
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1545/1317 by Tyler Volk and
Olivier Pauluis 2010 for a short discussion regarding it. However, they do say towards
the end of the paper, Obviously MEP theory is not going to be able to postulate a
single holistic calculation that can simply be applied across the boards of physicalchemical and biological systems. I say, why not, if space, time and other wideranging probabilities can be figured in? PS. While Im unable to follow the equations I
can still follow the drift of this wonderful literature!

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Occulus says: December 7, 2014 at 8:43 pm

We recently put our first new

research work in connection to this article online at

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.1875v1.pdf in advance of peer review. This is an exposition
of the theoretical argument. The next paper is going to be based on simulations meant
to test the main prediction.

Jack M says: December 8, 2014 at 5:07 pm

Though particle physicists cant claim

with certainty to have isolated a truly elemental particle, I personally believe I am

more than qualified to speak with profound authority on the subject because I am
one. And so are you. Cogito ergo sum. (Descartes) I think, therefore I am. One must
exist in order to experience, and the fact you experience is convincing proof you
exist. You ostensibly consider yourself to be an existence, else you would call yourself
we instead of I; but what exactly is an existence? Since the time of Democritus of
Abdera (460-370 BC) it has been postulated the Universe is comprised of particles
which though they may be profoundly minute in nature are not infinitely divisible.
It is inherently logical that before the smallest non-empty set can be assembled, there
must exist an individual element with which the set may be populated, a single
existence that is not composed of independent parts, an irreducible physical
manifestation consisting only of itself. I call this elemental identity an entity. So far,
physicists havent been able to find a truly verifiable entity and it is entirely possible
they would not recognize one even if they could isolate it. The material objects with

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which we interact in our environment are composites. A chair, for example, is the
label we use to conveniently describe a set of parts including a seat, legs, back and
arms. If its construction is of wood, then those parts are made of sets labeled cells
which are comprised of sets labeled molecules which are, in turn, formed by sets
labeled atoms, whose protons, neutrons and electrons have been theoretically
superseded as fundamental particles by hadron groups populated by even smaller subsets of quark and lepton particles and anti particles which, themselves, may or may
not be truly irreducible. An irreducible physical entity is an existence. Everything
comprised of those entities, from a proton to a galaxy cluster, is a composite. An
existence is not a composite and a composite is not an existence, they are two
mutually exclusive sets one which, by definition, must be limited to a single element
versus one which must not be limited to a single element. Your body is a composite a
collection of billions of separate elements or fundamental particles, each with its own
individual properties. Each basic particle pre-existed your birth and will ultimately
survive your demise. Each has a unique history, a separate location and physical
domain. Logically this is a conundrum. How can you be an existence if that
manifestation which you consider to be yourself is a composite? Indeed, each
existence has a unique identity and a collection of existences will have as many
separate, individual identities as there are elements in the set. The Pinocchio
Hypothesis To reconcile this disparity, hordes of scholarly pundits with names basking
in beakers of alphabet soup profess that if you toss just the right combination of
terrestrial ingredients into a primordial cauldron and stir it really, really hard for a
very, very long time, you can produce a composite that thinks, propagates and
experiences a single existence with an individual identity. That may sound silly (I call
it the Pinocchio hypothesis), but which lowly layman in his right mind would dare

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contradict an entire horde of scholarly pundits especially when they are basking in
beakers of alphabet soup. So, with an eye of newt and wing of bat, a pinch of this and
a dash of that, these pundits explain away this egregious departure from logic by
embuing a common natural phenomenon called emergent properties (EP) with extra,
more mystical powers, permitting them to cite biochemical evolution as the exclusive
source of all life on Earth. But even the most tenured of scholars arent able to
explain the specific mechanics of EP that transform a body with 810~27 atoms into a
single existence with an individual identity. In fact, there seems to be two distinct
factions in the EP camp. The integration group assures us without hesitation that
some unknown power of unification melds a composite into a single identity and
awareness. This faction would have us believe 810~27 = 1. On the other hand, the
emergence group tries to convince us 810~27 = 810~27+1, claiming any sense of
self is due to the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. They expect us to
believe composites can conjure up a supervening entity, a temporary ego or virtual
being with its own separate awareness and identity. In their practice of this
mathematical sorcery, proponents of EP are idiomatically reduced to casting the
incantations integrated and emergent because abracadabra and hocus pocus
are currently shunned and disfavored by the orthodox scientific community. Hogwarts!
If this is science, then Harry Potter is the next Isaac Newton. If you believe you are the
corporal product of emergent properties then you are claiming that you are an
occurrence and not an existence. Merlin, himself, would have been embarrassed by
such magical thinking. So what is life? To quote Sir Arthur Conan Doyles famous
character Sherlock Holmes in Chapter 6 of The Sign of Four, when you have
eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the
truth. Life is no chemical accident, nor was it conjured into fruition by some

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benevolent and omnipotent deity. Life is simply the product of a spectrum of

undiscovered entities, irreducible elements with the attribute of natural animation
that long ago began to manipulate the resources of this planet or wear the mud so to
speak.

Robert K S says: December 9, 2014 at 10:11 am

Here is the flaw in the second

law *as it is applied today*: There are more ways for energy to be spread out than for
it to be concentrated. Thus, as particles in a system move around and interact, they
will, through sheer chance, tend to adopt configurations in which the energy is spread
out. Occulus, and many other scientists, are confounding two forms or entropy: 1)
Entropy of energy (can work be done?); 2) Entropy of particles (how probable is the
configuration). The maximum entropy of energy alone occurs when all particles have
the same probability of emitting as receiving energy and this in turn occurs when all
particles are equally spaced, a highly unlikely configuration except in a rapidly
expanding environment, which is no the case on earth. The most probable
configuration of particles, corresponding to the highest entropy, is when particles are
randomly distributed and this occurs at a much lower than maximum thermal
entropy. Thus the probability that matter will accumulate is much higher (because
there are more of these configurations) than even distribution (which is where the
maximum thermal entropy occurs). And so the second law is preserved, but the second
law considers thermal entropy or configuration entropy but not both simultaneously.

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Romeo C. B Jr says: December 9, 2014 at 10:57 am

On Occuluss theory that

systems of particles adapt their structures to become better at dissipating energy.:

From my understanding in computational chemistry, molecules and system of particles
become stable only in their ground state, which implies lowest potential, which in turn
implies dissipation of energy as long as they are not yet in their ground state. To
achieve this, they may have to try anywhere from a few to countably infinitely many
conformations taking as little or as much time before they reach the ground state.
When I say try I mean there are environmental or extrinsic factors or even intrinsic
factors affecting what pathways they take to reach their ground state. If the factors
affecting reaching the ground state are intrinsic or while extrinsic is produced as a byproduct of previous changes such as heat, reaching ground states can be spontaneous
and take little time. It can also take as much if the factors are not yet available,
hence the systems is stuck in the intermediate states. In this sense, Occuluss theory is
nothing new but a restatement of the long time observed phenomena in chemistry.

Daniel B says: December 9, 2014 at 8:11 pm

Not new at all. Dukes Bejan has

been stating this Constructal Law since 1996 http://www.mems.duke.edu/bejanconstructal-theory Two books one for laymen http://www.amazon.com/DesignNature-Constructal-Technology-Organization/dp/0385534612 , one textbook.
http://constructal.org/

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Bushy V E says: December 10, 2014 at 9:32 am

Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vents can

serve as a perfect example of the theory this scientist is proposing for the origins of
life. At last someone makes use of the unlimited potential of his own mind which is
long overdue.

Huckleberg says: December 10, 2014 at 3:20 pm

Darwin is to Biology what

Newton is to Physics he explained the mechanics of whats going on, but not the
interesting bits. Biology is still waiting for its Einstein

Art says: December 10, 2014 at 7:09 pm

Oh how cute, another physicist that

thinks the line from organic molecules to life is straight and simple. Sure would make
complex life a bit more common. What a shame it probably isnt. After reading the
paper, I noticed he doesnt make much of a case for the commonality of this process
occurring on any other planet than ours.

Charles says: December 10, 2014 at 8:42 pm

I want to reverse the question and

ask if true, wouldnt a carbon computer architecture be possible to solve intractable

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problems? Of course weve been here before. Remember protein folding and the
prospect of building computational devises out of proteins. But it turned out proteins
dont automatically fold to a minimum, they evolve. And the evolutionary algorithm
doesnt actually find an actual minimum fold, just an approximate. And only for ONE
VARIABLE, not a consortium of hundreds of thousands of interdependent systems found
in higher life forms. And while those approximate minimum folds could conceivably be
found by natural selection in a time frame of a billion years or less, building higher life
forms like living cells with the same algorithm doesnt presently seem to be a
reasonable prospect. Am I wrong? Anyway, math books exist that are full of
theoretically sound formulas that require quantum computers to actually solve. Could
a carbon computer do what a quantum-computational devise might do if one could be
built. Stop and think, with so much carbon and so much sunlight going on all around
us, big things must be happening right before our eyes, our minds aware. Show me a
pair of scissors, and Ill show you proof man exists. Show me a man, and Ill show you
proof God has hands.

Aniekan says: December 11, 2014 at 2:43 am

Is it really necessary to undertake

this sort of tough exercise, which yields non-unique result, just to prove the obvious?
Isnt this another classic case of a physicist trying to solve a non-existent problem, in a
way that is difficult to understand?

Nic says: December 11, 2014 at 12:47 pm

If Occuluss approach stands up to

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more testing, it could further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation
for every adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of dissipationdriven organization. They might find, for example, that the reason that an organism
shows characteristic X rather than Y may not be because X is more fit than Y, but
because physical constraints make it easier for X to evolve than for Y to evolve, Louis
said. Biologists already consider physical/functional constraints, within a Darwinian
framework. Natural selection acts upon the available (standing or de novo) variation
within a population, which does not include adaptations that are physically impossible
or evolutionarily inaccessible from the current starting point, and selects against traits
where physical/energetic constraints result in a fitness cost outweighing any adaptive
benefit. But this work could add A new type of constraint to the list for
consideration. Im also interested to see how the biophysicists will separate out the
effects of energy dissipation from a general correlation between respiratory/metabolic
rate and reproductive output; the energy dissipation taking place as a necessary
consequence of growth and reproduction from energy dissipation as a selective driver
in itself.

Casimir P says: December 12, 2014 at 5:40 am

Historical science: come up with a

hypothesis, and then experiment in nature to prove it. Contemporary science: come
up with a hypothesis, and then write a simulation it to prove it. Problem?

Beckwith says: December 13, 2014 at 2:28 pm

This makes sense to me! So

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evolutionary history began with sunlight falling on the earth, and then plants evolved
to more effectively dissipate the sunlight. But eventually the plant matter itself
became a new energy reservoir, and animals evolved to consume and dissipate plant
matter/energy. Eventually there were enough animals that their bodies became a new
energy reservoir, and predators evolved to consume animals and dissipate their
energy. Now, after millions of years, a huge reservoir of crude oil has built up inside of
the earth. Dissipating this reservoir requires something far more intelligent than a
predator. It requires human like intelligence to dig up and process the oil. This
explains why dinosaurs had limited intelligence: because in their time there were no
crude oil reservoirs to exploit. So increased intelligence would have made them less
effective at dissipating the energy sources available at that time. This also proves that
once all of the oil has been burned up, a zombie apocalypse will be necessary to
dissipate human populations from urban centers to the countryside. After that some
species will have the responsibility of consuming our bodies to dissipate the energy,
which probably explains why we keep dogs and cats as pets.

Caroline H says: December 13, 2014 at 3:43 pm

To the naysayers, I think its safe

to say that we have billions of examples of life at all scales bending in the direction of
available sources of free energy, and, also, that this is a totally open-ended, everevolving process. That, through infinite rounds of reproduction, extraordinarily
complex structures can develop out of this process, which makes each new starting
point one of reduced uncertainty, is fantastic, to be sure, but nonetheless will be
proved to be explained by the physics of energy dissipation from a source to a sink.
That part, for me, is the given of what we can assume at this point. However, my

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question concerns the what of existence, itself, rather than the how; and contained
within the what, the why. With our current knowledge we can make some large scale
conjectures about the process as its been transpiring on Earth over the eons. For one,
we can say that the Earth is self-organizingthat not one thing is exempt from the
over-all energy transductions occurring; or, rather, everything is a product of them.
And, furthermore, that these processes lay down layers, like floors in a building, each
one a configuration that serves a particular stable adaptation. The human mind is like
this with the way it recapitulates the reptilian, the mammalian and sapien
developments. Everything from atoms to molecules, proteins, cells, etc., etc., are
layers, in this regardand, not incidentally, conscious at the level of their specific
range of motion, since consciousness is a function of this very range of motion. So,
what is the range of motion of the organizational power of the human neo-cortex,
embedded in an environmental sea of energy relationships? Would this understanding,
perhaps, help us understand the what of it all? But what if we started from the other
end with a hypothesis that the Universe is a flower, in the process of becoming aware
of its beauty? That would help us sort out the chaff of confusion and wasted heat of
dead-end mental constructs from the wheat of truthtruth, here, meaning ideas that
actually serve to connect, conduct and transduce flows of energy rather than
obfuscate them. So, how does the hypothesis I just mentioned (which can be taken
only as an analogy, obviously), provide clarity in this regard?

Amy S says: December 13, 2014 at 9:14 pm

There isnt enough information on

conditions of environment(s) necessary for life to be wrought from which to then bring
a verifiable set of experiments to test the hypothesis. I will suggest people such as

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Occulus start from the beginning and slowly think forward. Start from the state of the
universe, t < 1, with an expanding volume of space and time, and the initial plasma of
force/energy. With these three entities realized as the only constituents of the early
basketball-sized universe, the question is, what? How did life begin on earth 12-13
billion some-odd years later? Excuse me for letting go of your hand, and leaving you
now. I have to go do something .

David B says: December 14, 2014 at 3:40 am

Interesting stuff. Minimizing

entropy requires intelligent work. Why organized, living systems require a Creator.
This does not mandate the mechanism, progression (evolution, Darwin or otherwise).
Just means that without the input of intelligent work, systems randomize and decay
into chaos.

C. Doane says: December 16, 2014 at 9:54 am

Not at all a scientist, just an

ocean-sailing journalist who spends too much time looking at the sea and sky and
therefore thinks about stuff like this too much. What a fantastic article and discussion
here. I wish I understood more of it, but I am learning a lot, which is the important
thing.

Caroline H says: December 16, 2014 at 4:31 pm

I think that Beckwith is being

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purposely sillytheres obviously much more going on thermodynamically than the

exploitation of more sophisticated fuel sources. I would say, in particular, the
development of mind itself. Mind is the largest generator of entropy yet. Its the
organizer, par excellence, and MEP describes its growth and development. The mind
is a consuming fire, that keeps getting brighter and brighter. I dont suspect that
anything will fall outside of its understanding given sufficient time. Understanding *is*
its range of motion.

Caroline H says: December 16, 2014 at 6:22 pm

I mean, isnt the mind in the

numbers-crunching business, similar to the atom crunching that takes place inside of
stars? Both emit light as a result of their condensing processes

Michael says: December 17, 2014 at 9:28 am

You start with a random clump of

atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that
you get a plant, Occulus said. Many people are having trouble with this statement,
going so far as to ask then why is there no life on Mars or Pluto? The statement gives
three variables. 1) Matter (A random clump of atoms) 2) Energy (Light) 3) Time (For
long enough) I suspect that the answer to your question is the third variable for long
enough. What Mars and Pluto need is time. Give them a few more billion years. I
would point out that the Mars Curiosity Rover recently discovered organic precursors
on the red planet. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4413

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C. Doane says: December 18, 2014 at 2:10 pm

@Caroline Hitch: Yes, Beckwith is

obviously being silly. But its my kind of silly. @Michael: Unless Im missing something,
the reason theres no life on Mars or Pluto is theres no heat bath like an ocean or
atmosphere in those places to help things along. As I read the article, that is also a
key ingredient. Questions in my mind: On this planet, what about the ocean and
atmosphere themselves, which self-organize into complex weather and ocean-current
systems to dissipate heat more evenly around the globe? Is this part of the same
process described by Occuluss formula? Or is it something else entirely? (Remember,
this is an ignorant layperson asking this question.) Also, what I find most fascinating
about all this is that I had always thought of life as being anti-entropic. For example, I
seem to remember reading something somewhere about James Lovelocks work at
NASA, when they were trying to figure out what sensors a Mars probe needed to detect
life there, and Lovelocks answer to the questionwhat do we look for?was immediate
and instinctive: entropy reduction. You can tell just by looking at our planet that it is
not nearly as entropic as Mars or any other planet in the system. It looks alive! My
laypersons take on Occuluss theory (or whoever really first proposed this) is that selforganization (life and similar systems) is a necessary step on the road to perfect
disorganization (entropy) in certain environments (this vaguely described heat
bath). Does that seem reasonable? If so, then its all about the bath, isnt it? What is
it about the environment that requires life, etc., to help dissipate energy? Is it the
atmosphere, which works to hold energy in?

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HermeticJay says: December 18, 2014 at 4:51 pm

Its quite interesting to think

that modern science is only beginning to verify an ancient hermetic principle called
The Principle of Gender. This has been around for thousands of years and even the
ancients understood that life was created through the interplay of different forms of
energy. To use Occuluss quote:- You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you
shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant,
Occulus said. The part of the Masculine principle (light) seems to be that of directing
a certain inherent energy towards the Feminine principle (atoms), and thus starting
into activity the creative process. The Kybalion (1908) Come one science keep up!
lol

Peter N says: December 20, 2014 at 11:47 am

As a mathematician, I was

immediately struck by the failure to distinguish between necessary and sufficient

conditions. Perhaps the fact that self-replication increases efficiency of a
thermodynamic sort is a necessary condition for life to originate and evolve to produce
within the time constraints imposed by the life span of a G-star like our sun, but it
would be ridiculous to claim that it is sufficient. For sufficient conditions we must turn
to biochemistry [which is still in its infancy as far as coming up with realistic scenarios
for how life on earth may have originated, given this time constraint] and the laws of
chemistry and physics relevant to mutation rates. And that is just the beginning.
Astrophysics is important for understanding the special conditions in our solar system

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that made earth hospitable for almost 4 billion years of evolution. The gas giants,
especially Jupiter, had to evolve stable near-circular orbits to protect earth from
being ejected out of the solar system, and from bombardment by asteroids and
comets, like the comet which split into almost twenty large chunks, all of which
crashed into Jupiter. In the past year there was a National Geographic feature on the
Late Heavy Bombardment apparently being due to a major disruption in the orbits of
the gas giants, causing Uranus and Neptune to switch places. Life on earth is generally
credited to have started only after that bombardment was over.

Caroline H says: December 22, 2014 at 2:23 pm

In response to Peter N: thats

why we have to go back to the potentials inherent in the initial conditions, i., e., Big
Bang or whatnot. As you suggest, the Earth, per se, is highly improbable; however, the
ingredients that led the way to it are not, such as the condensation of hydrogen out of
the original plasma radiation, the gravitational implosion of hydrogen, the explosion of
stars and the generational development of solar systems. These potentials for
matter/energy to build a universe; i.e., layers upon layers of functional structure
that all work together as one whole, is awesome, to say the least. Occulus, et. al., are
not going to be able to answer that question, which must refer back to the initial
conditions and the question of why. The focus here, as I understand it, is restricted to
understanding non-equilibrium thermodynamics at the level of life. However, the
levels of development (or phases) of the Universe cannot be deniedeverything rests
on something else. This includes the development of mind. Mind makes the Universe
transparent (as the condensation of atoms made the plasma transparent to light.)
Obviously, humans didnt invent thisthere is no such thing as humans, only

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processesthermodynamic processes, at that. I do think that thermodynamics will

eventually be able to describe the how of all action, but its at a loss to explain the
why. At least, as a science, it has the potential to consolidate our thinking about
things, enabling us to increasingly discard the many useless fictions that currently pass
as reality for humans todayeven tho those fictions did arise thermodynamically!
Thats why, one *has* to ask, whats the direction this human/planet/universe going
in?

Karl Y says: December 22, 2014 at 2:59 pm

I cant wait for the emotional scene

where I give heartfelt thanks to my son for helping me to dissipate energy !

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