Talk:Entropy and life

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Contents 1 Some Clarification 2 Entropy and life 3 Note 4 Related search results 5 Consolidation possibilities 6 Comments from Talk:Entropy moved here 7 Comment 8 Useful article 9 Prigogine

[edit] Some Clarification

Would it be possible to add some sort of note to this page, similar to that found on the Life page to say that the theory only distinguishes living systems from closed non-living systems and doesn't provide a way to distinguish between open non-living systems and living ones? This is explained on the Life page but this one leaves the reader with the impression that the Entropy and Life theory could be (and is) used as a definitive definition of life, which is not the case. Danikat (talk) 12:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Entropy and life

Hi. The many arguments that insist that the orderliness of life presents no great mystery ignore the astronomic improbabilty of life's structure. The common view that life's great order occurs with increasing disorder of the environment says nothing of what actually directs the motion of atoms and molecules to assemble as a cell or an organism. This is what so perplexed Erwin Schrodinger. How do we account for life's chronological organization of molecular events? As he noted, this "certainty" of molecuar interactions is only found in living things. If you're interested in this approach, look at my book, "The Vital Dimension, A Quest for Mind, Memory and God in the Thickness of Time" or www.nonphysical.org Thanks for the indepth overview of the subject! Carl Gunther —Preceding unsigned comment added by Carl Gunther (talk • contribs) 04:57, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for starting the stub at entropy, I built it up and moved it to Entropy and life; maybe you can add some more to it? Later:--Sadi Carnot 03:26, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I don't think I can add much to this topic, you seem to know much more than me. I don't even have an education in a related field, I'm just a computer engineer who happened to have read "What is Life?" and liked it! :-) Anyway, thank you for expanding on the subject. 14:12, 7 November 2006 --User:Cmbreuel

No problem, thanks again for starting it. --Sadi Carnot 14:30, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Note

This page was moved here from entropy because that page is pushing 44 kilobytes, and "entropy and life" is a big topic. --Sadi Carnot 03:17, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Related search results

Here is a list of related search results:

1. entropy energy time – 6,490,000 results
2. entropy energy order – 5,310,000 results
3. entropy energy information – 5,070,000 results
4. entropy energy life - 1,670,000
5. entropy energy chaos – 1,050,000 results
6. entropy energy disorder – 694,000 results
7. entropy energy dispersion – 639,000 results
8. entropy energy dissipation – 503,000 results
9. entropy energy irreversibility – 164,000 results
10. entropy energy dispersal – 63,000 results
11. entropy energy disgregation – 88 results

If anyone knows of other related search terms, please add them to the list. Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 03:17, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Consolidation possibilities

Pages with related material are: Evolution and entropy, Self-organization, dissipative structures, and there is probably more somewhere? We should also try to build a good reading list on this page. Later: --Sadi Carnot 03:21, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments from Talk:Entropy moved here

To note, User:Cmbreuel recently started the entropy and life stub on the 4th of Nov; I built it up and moved it to it's own page: entropy and life (because this page is pushing 44 kb). I would suggest we merge most of the entropy stuff on the evolution to entropy and life leaving a short paragraph there with a link to main. In this manner we can move this discussion there: Talk:Entropy and life, where it belongs, and also consolidate all the "information theory and life", "dissipative structures theory and life", "complexity theory and life", etc., to one page; thus keeping things organized. Any thoughts? --Sadi Carnot 03:13, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Size is not really an issue. The 30 meg limit is more of a relic than a true guideline -- memory is very cheap. In any case, I can point to any number of articles well in excess of 30 meg.

Also, I edited entropy and life for a number of reasons. The "over the last century" part needs to be sourced, the creationist misuse of entropy because of 150 year old misonceptions needed to be addressed and the overall writing needed to be smoother. •Jim62sch• 22:15, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Jim62, I put in the basic origin source, i.e. Rudolf Clausius (1863); others who have wrote about entropy and life are:

• William Thomson (1865)
• Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke (1874)
• Richard Sears McCulloch (1876)
• Herbert Spencer (1880)
• Hermann von Helmholtz (1882)
• Sigmund Freud (after 1880s?)
• Ludwig Boltzmann (1886)
• Wilhelm Ostwald (1907)
• Carl Jung (1907?)
• James Johnstone (1921)
• Alfred Lotka (1922)
• Vladimir Vernadsky (1926)
• Arthur Eddington (1928)
• Erwin Schrodinger (1944)
• Claude Shannon (1948)
• Norbert Wiener (1948)
• Howard Blum (1950)
• Alfred Lotka (1956)
• James Lovelock (1964)
• Jack Kirkaldy (1965)
• Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1969)
• Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1971)
• Albert Lehninger (1971)
• Howard Odum (1976)
• Georgi Gladyshev (1978)
• Jeremy Campbell (1982)
• Ilya Prigogine (1984)
• Peter Atkins (1984)
• Robert Ulanowicz (1986)
• Daniel Brooks (1986)
• James Gleick (1987)
• Tom DeMarco (1987)
• Kenneth Bailey (1990)
• Stuart Kauffman (1995)
• Daniel Dennett (1995)
• Lynn Margulis (1995)
• Fritjof Capra (1997)
• Philip Parker (2000)
• Johnjoe McFadden (2000)
• Valery Chalidize (2000)
• Eric Chaisson (2001)
• Christian de Duve (2002)
• Peter Corning (2003)
• Paul Lurquin (2003)
• John Scales Avery (2003)
• Philip Ball (2004)
• Sven Jorgensen (2004)
• Donald Haynie (2004)
• Hans Christian von Baeyer (2004)
• Jing Chen (2005)
• John Sanford (2005)
• Eric Schneider (2005)
• Hubert Yockey (2005)
• Robert Hazen (2005)

Most of these people have books (which I have) that can be order at Amazon.com; I'm sure there are plent more; probably some new 2006 books that I haven't seen yet. Later: --Sadi Carnot 01:40, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. Not really convinced. IMHO the discussion culminated with Schrödinger, had some heavyweights still interested in the 1960s and is now mostly out of biological journals. If I got the latter point wrong, can you give some numbers from reliable citation service instead of Google numbers.

I'd guess by now its highest relevance is by amateur efforts in disproving Intelligent Design.

Pjacobi 16:02, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Pjacobi, I don't know what you mean? Here, I'm just typing a nice reference list of noted people in history who have written about entropy and life? I agree, though, that Schrodinger's 1944 book What is Life? is the most well-known, which is basically because he wrote it for the layperson, it is easy to read, only 90 pages, and that he wrote it after he had became popular for winning the Nobel prize in 1933. The similar case holds for Prigogine, with his most popular 1984 book Order out of Chaos, which he wrote after winning the Nobel prize in 1977. --Sadi Carnot 16:06, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't dispute much writing (apart from the fact, that it is rather broad term) but much research. Perhaps I'm totally mistaken, but neither name-dropping nor Google will refute this.

I'm looking for

• Citation counts
• Research project homepages at university sites
• Curricula

Can you provide some of these?

Pjacobi 19:35, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

As for current research, you might want to check out the latest issue of the Journal of Entropy. As for earlier "research" on entropy most of it was with respect to calculations and constructions of early steam tables (I think?), which date pretty far back. James Joule's "ice rubbing" experiments (research) and paddle-wheel heat-generation in water experiments (research) from the 1840s, for example, we're early precursory entropy-related experiments (research). Kelvin later used this type of research as a basis for postulating the “heat death of the universe” (as based on entropy tendencies). FYI, I'll be running low on time over the next two months, so I probably won't be able to debate very much. Later: --Sadi Carnot 06:16, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Pjacobi, I agree wth you on the criteria you set forth -- those are important questions that need to be answered. •Jim62sch• 08:55, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

@Sadi: As User:Linas put it rather bluntly at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Physics:

Heh. Entropy? Do chemists actually do anything any more with entropy, other than teach it? How about physicists? I humbly suggest that the only people around who still perform actual, current research on entropy are the mathematicians :-) [1]

Indeed. One may have to look at differential geometry, probability theory, ergodic theory for current research.

--Pjacobi 09:54, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment

I came across a statement about Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz that his A Treatise on the Causes of the Movements of the Planets posits that the universe by nature is negentropic, meaning self-developing. __meco 20:32, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Leibniz died in 1716, the concept of entropy was developed in 1854, the term negentropy, i.e. negative entropy, was stated first in 1944. Your comment, subsequently, is an anachronism and thus incorrect. --Sadi Carnot 05:21, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Useful article

• Energy Driven Networks of Small Molecules as the initiators of life (Robert Shipiro), Scientific American, June

Discusses life as a self-perpetuating chemical processes that locally reduces entropy, and what forms such a process may take. JulesH 12:16, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I downloaded the issue (cost = $7.95), it's a decent read, but about the same as Stuart Kauffman's 1995 book At Home in the Universe. --Sadi Carnot 18:18, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Prigogine

Why is Prigogine not discussed in this article?--Filll (talk) 15:42, 18 February 2008 (UTC)