dad may have been right: Musings.

dad may have been right

a horrible sinking feeling as you drift to sleep

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Musings.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that "in all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state." This is also commonly referred to as entropy. A watchspring-driven watch will run until the potential energy in the spring is converted, and not again until energy is reapplied to the spring to rewind it. A car that has run out of gas will not run again until you walk 10 miles to a gas station and refuel the car. Once the potential energy locked in carbohydrates is converted into kinetic energy (energy in use or motion), the organism will get no more until energy is input again. In the process of energy transfer, some energy will dissipate as heat. Entropy is a measure of disorder: cells are NOT disordered and so have low entropy. The flow of energy maintains order and life. Entropy wins when organisms cease to take in energy and die.

This is a nice, brief explination of the 2nd law of thermodynamics I found online.

I bring it up becuase I wonder exactly how it applies when looked at through the lens of vacuum-genesis creation. That particular theory of the creation of the universe states that the universe is, at the moment of the Planck epoch, a spontaneous quantum particle of incredible density. That is to say, the universe at the moment of it's expansions start was essentially a highly ordered, supersymmetrical particle that sprang into existance, as many particles do, out of a vacuum, due to quantum probability (if this seems unlikely, bear in mind that it is that very quantum effect that allows the sun to bypass Coulombs Law and permit hydrogen fusion to occur and actually burn its fuel at a rate that keeps it from imploding) So, we have the universe as a spontaneous vacuum flucuation, springing from nothing to existance(This is also a theory, but one I am fond of) and then, that protoparticle bursts apart ABT and thermodynamics and everything else takes hold.

Hooray for setting the stage.

Now, we know that entropy will prevail, eventually, despite anyones best efforts. So the energy of the universe can never go up, only down. Which means we are in a winding down clock. Or at least, really in a world of hurt. Cosmologically speaking.

Lets go to Earth now. Here we are, as human beings, having babies. We convert food into poop, and occaionally, should we be knocked up, into other humans. Food into poop, I understand thermodynamically, it is a clear application, and even covered in the bloody definition I posted. My issue comes with human reproduction. And it isn't exactly with reproduction, but the result of reproduction.

Once a human being is gestating, it is in the process of being created. Energy from the mother is siphoned off, and instead of being utilized immedately and excreted, is stored and applied towards creating order, not disorder, and constructing, painstakingly, a new creature, a new function in the great balancing equation of the universe.

Of course, after birth, and after a certain point, the human body begins to break down again, and eventually gives over to entopy, so of course, it is never truly overcome. Yet for a period of time, it appears that we violate entropy, creating a new life out of energy taken in, and at the moment of birth, all the arguing semantics cannot deny the spark of life has been fired, and for a brief moment, a new energy, regardless of violating the second law, has been wrought, that is to say, a new conciousness.

The question that I wrestle with is this: do we, and by extension, any sentient life, violate thermodynamics, by virtue of our mind, thoughts and conciousness? We do not with our bodies, as any visit to a nursing home can show. Are we though, with our minds? And, more disturbingly, are we with our soul? Or is our ability to seemingly violate this (by my perception) a function of the mind/soul, and a development of the universe itself, a form of Macro-evolution?

Are ideas and thoughts and conceptions created by humans, or any other sentient life new energy and form given to a swirl of entopic matter that we have the ability to process, or, as a held and established Law that governs the universe states, are we only somehow accessing something that is already there, since things cannot simply arise new, whole cloth in a universe that is winding down?

Thats what I am working on now.

spouted by Johnny @ 3:33 PM

2 Comments:

At 6:26 PM, Alex said…

I'm not too worried about entropy, for exactly the reason you bring up -- it doesn't work on life. And anyway, when the universe starts contracting again, doesn't all that shit bumping into each other mean energy?

Also, you've keyed in on the only reason I still allow myself to entertain notions of the soul. There's a difference between living matter and non-living matter. What is it? No clue, but it does exist.
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