The Entropy Of Social Life (1997)

KW: reductionism, physics, morality, law, economics, social, society, hierarchy

In 1989 Mr. Chalidze completed Hierarchical Instinct and Human Evolution , in which he contends that the hierarchical instinct of humans is the primary vehicle of civilized development. In this work he discusses the influence of human biology in general on social life. This line of work continues now in his Entropy Of Social Life (book in progress). In this work Chalidze analyzes how physical laws shape both our instincts and our social behavior.

PREFACE TO FIRST CHAPTERS.

In these chapters I explain the concept of entropy and its use for characterizing order in Nature. I discuss the entropy of inanimate matter, and then I discuss life as an entropy-lowering process to show that — together with the tendency in nature to reach maximum disorder — there are forces that work to achieve order. I introduce the concept of “potential low entropy,” or potential order, which characterizes the ability or inclination of a system to become orderly. Even from these first introductory chapters, the reader can see how the concepts of entropy and potential order can be applied to the study of social life. In later chapters I will discuss the concepts of entropy and potential order, and the influence of physical laws on economics, morality and human law.

Although the concept of entropy has been under discussion for one and a half centuries, its philosophical depth is still not properly explored and its application to social processes are still sporadic in the scholarly literature. During my few years of analyzing this subject, I have read and re-read the works of those who previously mastered concept of entropy, and I refer to the works of those thinkers. On the foundation of their thoughts I hope to walk at least the first steps along the bridge between physics and social science, although the bridge itself is only dimly perceptible at this stage of scientific development. No doubt in the beginning it will be a shaky walk on this presumed bridge, but even a few examples of the dependence of social tendencies on the laws of physics will help the reader to acquire a deeper knowledge of humans and their society.

I cannot name all the authors who directly or indirectly influenced me in undertaking this task. No doubt the works of many people played a role in forming my way of thinking: Boltzman, Maxwell, Schrodinger, Prigogin and many others. Particularly I should mention my discussions with Aron Katsenelinboigen. Although I never completely mastered his concepts of indeterminism and his aesthetic methods in economics, I have no doubt that his concept of a system’s predisposition influenced my thinking on potential order.

CHAPTER 4. Order of living matter

Chemical reactions and potential order (p-order)

In addition to crystallization, chemical reactions provide another example of ordering in inanimate matter. That is, in chemical compounds the bonds holding different kind of atoms together usually are much stronger then in many crystals. The bonds are also selective. Irregularities aside, ions in table salt crystals are waiting for ions of Na or Cl to join them for further growth of a crystallic cube. In chemical reactions each atom can enter into compounds with a variety of other atoms, but there are certain limits and rules for creating stable compositions of atoms, which are molecules. Those rules are dictated by an atom’s structure. For example, Oxygen can join hydrogen in a stable molecule of water only if there are two atoms of Hydrogen for each atom of Oxygen. Two atoms of Oxygen can also join two atoms of Hydrogen to form a less stable molecule of hydrogen peroxide. This selectivity means that some ideas of molecular order, i.e., some potential order, exists in the structure of an atom’s force-field in the same way it exists for creating crystals, although the variety of implementation of this idea of order is much wider. One should not, by the way, over-estimate the power of this ordering ideas hidden in an atom’s field structure. Obviously, atoms do possess p-order as far as the creation of molecules is concerned, but as a rule this p-order cannot manifest itself too far in space; an atom’s field structure is selective only as far as the closest association is concern. The enormous multiplicity of molecular structures is not written in the structure of the field of each atom. Allowing some simplification, we can say that each atom defines the bonds with atoms which will be next to it, but generally speaking does not control which atoms will join those atoms that join it. One might view it as a hierarchy of ordering control: each preceding level of the complex order has the idea of possibilities for the next one or two levels of ordering. In fact this can be used as a way to illustrate what complexity is. Indeed, if from the first elements of the structure we could probabilistically predict what whole structure will be, there will be no complexity.

As orderly entities molecules, built from certain atoms, are characterized by lower positional entropy than a group of the same atoms without chemical bonds. This is clear from the fact that bonds in general limit the quantity of possible combinations. In practice we usually don’t provide just separate atoms for the creation of molecules; it is done through chemical reaction. Molecules exchange atoms or break down and provide atoms for new molecules. This process is highly dependent on thermodynamic conditions: temperature, pressure, presence of light, and so on. Chemical reaction gives another example of two major tendencies in nature: the tendency of entropy to grow and the tendency of particles to reach minimal potential energy and create orderly structures.

Indeed chemical reaction often produces highly organized molecules with lower entropy than the initial molecules. In fact some molecules can be very long, where many groups of atoms are joined together in a chain by chemical bonds creating highly orderly structures (molecules of polymers, like polyethylene or nylon for example).

What is not yet life.

The growth of crystal and polymer molecules, with its considerable reduction of local entropy, is the closest analogy of life we can find in the inanimate world. The orderly system of an atom’s force fields on the ends of long molecules, are waiting for appropriate atoms to fall into the potential wells and reproduce a similar order in the next organized element of the molecule. This is a high level of ordering, but there is a consequence of the Second Law Of Thermodynamics: if there is a highly organizing chemical reaction going in our isolated laboratory tube, the entropy inside of that tube will not decrease. This means that highly organized molecules in that tube are surrounded with entropic waste: disorganized matter and energy. In the following paragraphs we will discuss a possible definition of life. Before doing that, however, we need to state with certainty what is not life.

To establish what is not life, we proceed from an obvious assumption that as a minimum life is an orderly state of matter. We followed the natural ordering processes up to the point where a high level of organization can be achieved but entropic waste is left around. This form of organization is not life. Only then, though, did life become possible — when methods of separating order from disorder were invented by nature (or perhaps it is better to say “found” by nature. To achieve such separation, energy had to be directed in such a way as to extract disorderly matter from the area in which order had been achieved. It had to be energy that knew what to do, namely, get rid of entropic waste. In other words, it had to be informed energy. Once this was achieved, it was the beginning of the will of life.

At the same time it was the birth of “goal”: the separation of order from entropic waste. Inanimate matter does not have a goal. Despite many available possibilities to achieve order, and despite the actual achievement of order, inanimate matter does not have the goal to achieve that order.

Where there is goal, there is value. Goal, value and will — these characteristics of life had to exist even in the simplest forms of life. As we see, these characteristics got highly developed in social life.

The turning point of matter in become living matter — the moment when will of life is born — is still a mystery to science. Over the last century genetics and molecular biology penetrated very deep in understanding the molecular basis of life; yet we are still ignorant as to what is the exact border between life and non-life.1 There are still some expectations that a still-undiscovered physical law will account for the origin of life. In a way, waiting for the discovery of such a new law is a continuation of the traditional approach that there must be something special about the creation of life. First there was belief in divine interference, then the vitalistic hypothesis, then hope for a special law of nature to open the door from the kingdom of dead matter to that of the living. From my point of view which I am elaborating here, the crucial point of matter becoming alive is not the ability to order itself, as potential order exists in a field of atoms and molecules, but rather the ability to separate order from entropic waste. The task for science is to uncover and identify those conditions that are necessary for an inanimate organized system to become self-cleaning; to separate itself from entropic waste.

Definition of life

Many definition of life are known that are rather descriptive of life as we know it, with its characteristics of chemistry, behavior et cetera.. My goal is to suggest a definition of life from the point of view of the entropic behavior of matter, definition that would deal only with ability to sustain and develop order, and would be indifferent to such factors as type of chemicals involved or even type of matter.

I want to be able to establish some unavoidable behavioral properties of living creatures that are essential to life itself, and not necessarily life as we know it.

We may start defining primary properties of life with this first requirement:

1. A life unit is a group of matter particles that is in a low entropy state in comparison with surrounding matter — the “low entropy rule”.

An obvious comment on this first part of the definition is that groups of matter particles should be large enough to become a complex system. Yet I am not inclined to include this in the definition, as the complexity of particles’ fields theoretically may provide for the complexity of living entities regardless of how large the actual number of particles is.

Crystals and polymer molecules, as well as bacteria and multi-cell organisms, meet this first requirement of the definition of life, so we need to narrow it. Indeed, we are accustomed to think about life as a process and not merely as an object. For a proper definition of life it is judicious to expect a requirement of something more than the passive waiting, as a crystal does, for the proper particle to fall into the potential well and assure the process of growth. In other words, life’s property is the ability to lower entropy actively. Activity, of course, calls for energy, so the second part of our definition must be that:

2. A life unit is a group of matter particles able to direct energy into an entropy-lowering process — the “informed energy requirement”. In other words, life must have the will to live, because at the moment when the ability to have an entropy-lowering activity will stop, forces of the surrounding chaos will take over and life will be no more.

I am talking here only about the ability to direct energy and not about the active directing of energy. As we see from many examples of dormant life entities, the mere ability to use energy for lowering entropy is quite enough to meet the definition, although the manifestation of life (actual living) is possible only through the actual use of energy. This looks tricky because in one definition I am trying to cover both life and the messengers of life. Indeed, seeds, spores or viruses are not living creatures when dormant, but they definitely don’t belong to inanimate matter. Frozen organisms, with their metabolism put completely on hold, can be put in the same category: the manifestation of life is not there, but life is. So in my definition I emphasize the order and the p-order of life as primary characteristics. The processes of realization of that p-order are left outside the definition, and constitute consequences of the existence of a life entity and depend on thermodynamic and other environmental conditions. This definition is sufficient in separating living entities of any kind from inanimate matter.

The origin of life is still a mystery, although plenty of hypotheses have been suggested. Scientists are searching to find physical entities which may be recognized as transitional between animate and inanimate matter.2 All we know is that there are inanimate physical entities with low entropy and some potential order as we discused: crystals, polymer molecules and so on. In fact, polymer molecules of very high complexity are created, but complexity itself is not enough for being alive without satisfying the informed energy rule.

On the other side of the fence (if there really is a fence between life and inanimate matter) there is virus, which is a cleverly packed polymer molecule of RNA or DNA. Although it lacks the ability to transform energy by itself in an entropy lowering process, it contains information that forces appropriate living cells to do that work for the virus. In the classification of earthly living creatures viruses are often not considered organisms. According to the above definition, this viral ability is enough to be counted as a unit of life (both, order and the p-order of life is there), despite the fact that a virus completely depends on certain surroundings — an appropriate living cell — for manifestation of its informed energy.

The above definition does not depend on the chemical characteristics of known forms of life. One day we may discover — be it in outer space, the laboratory, or somewhere on Earth — that the chemistry of life in different thermal, pressure or gravitational environments may be based on elements other than carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, yet may still be “life” as long as it able to reduce the entropy within itself by means of energy transformation.

Consequences of life definition

The following is a list of what follows from the above definition of life in accordance whith physical laws. Separate points on this list will be discussed in detail later.

* There is a spectrum of thermodynamic conditions for the existence of life built from usual matter.

A temperature of absolute zero puts any manifestation of life on halt due to the Nerst theorem (entropy can not be lowered if it equals zero). With life forms known to us, the same effect take place in temperatures which are considerably higher than absolute zero due to the property of chemical reactions involved in life processes.

High temperature leads to the destruction of life due to the threshold law: for any bond between particles there is a certain level of kinetic energy above which that bond will be destroyed together with their order, as there is no order without bonds.

*An acting life unit must consume energy due to the First Law Of Thermodynamics: energy is spent by a life unit to lower entropy, so it must come from somewhere.

*The consumption of matter, when matter is needed to sustain life processes, is due to the law of matter conservation.

*The manifestation of will follows from the Second Law Of Thermodynamics3 as energy expenditure is a must for the local lowering of entropy.

*Any local entropy-lowering activity must provide for isolation from a high entropy environment — following from the Second Law also.

*Will augmentation. This property of life is a secondary consequence of physical laws. Theoretically one can imagine will without a desire to expand; a will of life satisfied with sustaining. As it happened, will in the world of living creatures expanded in both directions:

1. individual will expands to assure success of life manifestation;

2. the living world expands to produce more and more sophisticated creatures able to manifest more will. As a result the will for life on Earth was growing.

*Reproduction. Although we don’t know any life form without the ability to reproduce, reproduction is not included in the definition of life and is not a consequence of the above definition. Theoretically a life entity can exist without the ability to reproduce. How long it will manage to exist in a given environment is another matter. We do have examples of such life in cells of multi-cell organisms that do not reproduce.

*The complexity of even the simplest life form is also not included in the definition. We know that any life form is very complex. Researching close to border between life and non-life from both sides of that border may actually throw light on the question: what is the minimum level of complexity of life?

Spectrum of thermodynamic conditions

The above definition of life does not goes into detail about the conditions in which living creatures can exist. In reality all known living organisms depend on a rather narrow spectrum of thermodynamic conditions due to the fact that the chemical reactions involved in life processes are sensitive to temperature variations.

One thing seems clear about the environment that is appropriate for any manifestation of life: limitations on the spectrum of kinetic energy of surrounding matter is a must. Indeed, two rules of the definition of life deal with both: order in the first rule, and p-order in the second. This calls for environmental limits for life of any kind, be it carbon based or any other.

Because life is order, there is an upper limit of surrounding kinetic energy, as any order can be ruined with kinetic energy that is too high. On the other hand, that energy cannot be too low, as processes will freeze and manifestation of life will become impossible. In extreme cases, if the temperature is practically absolute zero, entropy practically equals zero according to the Third Law of Thermodynamics, and in this case there is no room for the entropy-lowering activity stated in rule two.

What is said here about the high end of the kinetic energy spectrum needed for the existence of life is appropriate for any possible life form, even if it is built from particles other than atoms. As to the low end of that spectrum, freezing at absolute zero temperature characterizes only matter known to us — matter built from atoms — and does not put limitations on the energy of particles inside an atom, or on the internal energy of any particle. Thus, a conclusion about the low end of the spectrum under discussion is valid only for life forms built from matter familiar to us.

For life forms known to us, the possible spectrum of thermodynamic conditions is much narrower. Life units contain water, and living cells are often destroyed when the temperature falls, due to expansion during ice crystallization. What is more, the chemical reactions responsible for life have their own range of temperature to proceed with success. The ingenious evolutionary solution is to become dormant for the cool or very hot season. This may be a physiological dormancy, in which a creature comes back to active life in the spring; or genetic dormancy, when the next generation takes over at the next friendly season.

As we see, evolution provided for passive resistance to inapropriate temperature of the environment. But there is more: some thermodynamic limitations have been overcome by warm-blooded animals able to sustain their own range of temperature by producing the heat needed for the chemical reaction responsible for life manifestation.

It is easier for a biological structure to produce heat, than to lower its temperature. The physiological technology of cooling the body has not gone beyond evaporation of water, so the upper limit of sustainable environmental temperature has not moved too much since beginning of life on Earth, except in cases of dormant life.

Consuming energy and matter

A direct consequence from the above definition is the consumption of energy, but not matter. Indeed, if there is an ability to direct energy toward entropy-lowering processes, that energy must come from somewhere according to the First Law of Thermodynamics. Of course, energy can be stored in a life unit and then released in entropy-lowering processes, as we see in the case of seeds. But before it was stored the energy had to be consumed; and for the manifestation of life, energy has to be consumed as the manifestation progresses.

There are living organisms — some bacteria and plants — which consume energy directly in forms of quants of light. These organisms would have no need for consumption of matter at all if not for reproduction of cells and occasional repairs of their internal structure. So consumption of matter once a life unit is built is not a necessary consequence of the above life definition.

As it happened, many living creatures consume energy by consuming highly organized matter that bring stored energy. For this type of living entities consumption of matter is necessary, even without the need for reproduction.

Will of life

The second point of the above definition lends a physical meaning to the old concept of will. In the case of minimal manifestation of life, i.e., sustaining low entropy despite the entropic attacks of the outside chaos, will would be directed at the preservation of order within the living entity, and this includes consuming energy and matter.

The more usual existence of life units is to be involved in a process of building another unit. Be it bacteria or part of a multi-cell organism, cells consume energy and use this energy to find and digest more food and to organize chemicals from food into new living cell in reproduction process. They also use energy to get rid of waste — particles of disorganized matter, not needed for reproduction or further energy extraction.

The crucial distinction between the manifestation of will and any inanimate manifestation of energy is that will has a goal: the lowering of entropy at least within the life unit. The goal exists only where life is. If there is the goal, there is value, and a hierarchy of values depending on what is more useful or important for achieving the goal. The will of a living cell is informed energy, and this creates a problem for the anatomy of life that is unknown to inanimate matter: energy and matter comes and goes, but the information responsible for directing informed energy stays with the life unit and there must be a place for it to be stored safely and to be defended from the outside chaos. This stored information manifests itself in directing the production of certain chemical agents that perform certain chemical reactions. This is a manifestation of will, in the form of a chain of commands on how to achieve certain life sustaining goals; and it is natural to call the group of commands that achieve a certain goal “automatism of will” for this or that goal (automatism simply because it automatic or programmed, and generally does not depend on chance or on making a decision each time).

Will as the ability to direct energy should not be confused with conscious will, which we humans possess and can direct according to our own decision and which, for that reason, we consider to be free will. The will of a living cell most likely lacks freedom, as there are many immediate goals merely to sustain life. This is why it is reasonable to assume that ways for directing will are programmed in the genetic material of a cell, and the manifestation of will is regulated by automatisms.

Universality of life mechanisms.

The informed energy that a living creature uses to lower entropy within itself, or even around itself, is similar to what Schopenhauer called the will of life. This author did not go into scientific detail, but his observation of human behavior turned out to be valid for any form of life due to the universality of life mechanisms.

This is one of the most amazing things in observing the development of life: certain attributes of life are the same for simplest and for the most sophisticated life forms. The apparent reason is the similarity of goals and tasks for living entities of any size or evolutionary level: the struggle with entropic attacks from the outside world and from within. Will and many automatisms of will — which can be observed on the level of separate living cells — also characterize the behavior of animals and human beings and human society. To name a few examples: finding and processing food, extracting entropic waste, competing for more favorable environments, &c.;

This similarity in the will automatisms of living creatures of different levels of complexity can be viewed as nature’s preference to economize, not to invent new mechanisms if existing mechanisms can be used. Or it can be interpreted as evidence that once found, mechanisms of sustaining and developing life are perfect — or at least serving the purpose sufficiently — so there is no reason to try other mechanisms. At the same time, this similarity of automatisms on different evolutionary levels is the direct result of the physical requirements that living creatures have to follow in order to exist, and the Second Law is one of those requirements.

The following is example of how one automatism of will, developed in the beginning of life existence, still characterizes behavior not only of separate cells, but of organisms including humans — and even human society. It is probably strange for the reader to find out that the basis for our desire to take a shower as well as for the existence of our country’s border patrol and immigration agency is the same, that is, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but let’s follow the reasoning.

Insulatory automatism

Chemical reactions in inanimate matter produce components whose entropy is lower than that of the initial reagents, but they are mixed with other products having higher entropy and therefore do have no chance to become a cluster of matter that satisfies the above two rules in the definition of life. Those conditions can be satisfied only if living matter has ways to isolate itself from the outside chaos and clean itself from the internal production of disorganized matter. In fact this is a restriction directly imposed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics: a life entity is not an isolated system in the thermodynamic sense, as it consumes matter and energy from the outside world, and it ejecting material and entropic waste into outside world. In order to exist as a lower-entropy entity, however, it must be separated by some barrier so it can keep low entropy inside of that barrier as a trade for increasing the entropy of the outside world. In this way the Second Law is not being violated, and local reduction of entropy of the living creature is possible.

This need for insulation eventually created mechanisms that affected the behavior of any living structure. In a way this is similar to what Ilya Prigogine noted about dissipative systems in general, which are physical systems in a state of instability: “The possibility of a dissipative structure depends on boundary conditions, but they themselves are modified by the occurrence of dissipative structures” 4.

This is one of the main attributes of living creatures: to be isolated from the orgy of the growing entropy of the outside world. Life can grow, multiply and change its appearance in future generations, but it cannot mix with disorderly matter as it would lose its most distinctive characteristics: lower entropy. If there is an unavoidable necessity to be insulated, there must be genetic programs of how to achieve that, which I call insulatory automatisms of will.

Acquiring insulatory automatisms of will is one of the first necessities of life and also one of the first results of will augmentation in action. Indeed the insulatory automatism is actually a struggle for territory, for the space occupied by the life-unit itself. This struggle is usually quite selfish: an object that has p-order advancing in space not just against high entropy but against everything which is not its own order, except for cases of cooperation with some other organisms. Lowering entropy in the world as whole is not the goal of living creatures. The state of the world, or the state of life in general, or the survival of one’s own species, as a rule is not the concern of a living creature. Its narrow but powerful goal is to lower entropy within its own individual world, be that space surrounded by a cell’s membrane, or its own skin, or a wider space that includes part of the outside world somehow consumed by a given living organism or used by that organism alone or cooperatively with others.5

This necessity for isolation is universal for any life form existing, and whatever we can imagine to find in future. In life on Earth now known to us, the insulatory goal is achieved by the following mechanisms:

1. certain material screen around a life unit, such as the membrane of a cell or an animal’s skin or the thick cover of seeds.

2. a field screen around stored genetic material that preserves information about life processes. The viruses are example of that: although they are bare, they are so cleverly packed that a force field prevents many other particles from damaging intervention.6

As this material barrier of a cell is never perfect, and skin is also penetrable by some chemical agents or other living creatures, living creatures also have:

3. an informed energy barrier, a will mechanism, to protect one’s living space from invaders and to repel foreign bodies from within. This is the insulatory automatism of will.

Here are some examples of how the insulatory automatism is functioning and malfunctioning:

Cell’s membrane. This protects the inner sanctum of the life unit from invasion by unwanted outside molecules. It is not perfect. Viruses often know how to cross it, and many substances can be used for medicinal purpose thanks to this imperfection.

Immune system As organisms become more complex, specialization in cell function developed. There are soldiers in multi-cell organisms who literally kill invading living cells and clean the system from unwanted chemicals.

Skin protection: there are receptors in the skin to send signals for the protection of the skin of animals. There are also cleaning instincts, which are part of the insulatory automatism of will. The imperfection of skin protection is well known: insects bite us, bacteria enter through tiny scratches, and so on. This makes more work for the next defense line: the immune system.

Social protection: there are guards in bee hives and ant colonies. Small invaders are killed and thrown out. Mice who get into the bee hive are too large to be thrown out, so bees kill them and cover the corpse with wax, which serves as an insulating barrier. Human society used, uses or want to use walls around cities, radar and fighter planes against air attack, SDI against rockets, immigration restrictions by law, and so on. For the defense of the low entropy in social organization from within there are police and prisons.

This list includes just a few of the countless mechanisms of insulatory activity of life units, and all of them are a direct consequence of the Second Law Of Thermodynamics: if we are to lower entropy in some area of space we have to insulate this area form entropic invasion.

More on isolation: thermo-regulation.

When evolution discovered the ability of living creatures to regulate their own temperature in order to provide the most favorable conditions for life sustaining chemical reactions, the role of the insulatory automatism was enhanced: the challenge now is not only to protect low entropy space from invasion of high entropy matter, but also to protect it from the undesirable invasion of thermal energy or the loss of thermal energy from the body. The result is the ability to shiver and sweat for thermo-protection, the fur coat or fat layer under the skin of some creatures, and certain behavior patterns: the ability to find shelter, to hibernate and, among humans, the development of closed, heated and/or air-conditioned shelters, and so on.

Reproduction

High energy particles, such as cosmic rays, that often destroy elements of the structure of living cells are examples of physical entities from which there is no defense in the natural word. The insulatory automatism is powerless against such invasion. This destructive element alone would be enough to bring to an end any life entity after some time, similar to gradual destruction of messages on computer disks by high energy particles. There are mechanisms thanks to which a cell can repair damage, but their powers are limited. Living creatures will die sooner or later, as there is no defense against stochastic attacks of high energy particles.

So there actually only two ways life could exist on this planet: by constant origination from inanimate matter, or by reproduction. Apparently the first possibility has not been observed recently.

Reproduction is a convenient way for life to survive the damage of entropic noise, whether from cosmic rays or fluctuations in the environment. I want to emphasize that reproduction had to develop as a compensation for the insufficiency of insulatory mechanisms, namely, the inability of life built from matter known to us to protect itself from attacks of high energy particles. In this sense reproduction is also a direct consequence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

End of chapter 4

NOTES

1. Matter in the usual sense: atoms, molecules and their combinations. There is not enough knowledge about sub-atomic particles to be sure that they cannot, in certain thermodynamic conditions, be involved in a life-like state. Indeed, from what we know about their fields, they may be highly organized and definitely carry some p-order. So, if the idea of order is there, in a field of those particles, there may be other ways for the particles to be involved in highly organized states, not just in the form of atoms.
2. Bibliography on origin of life.___
3. Here I take as established the fact that matter, whether inanimate or alive, follows the Second Law. The question is still under discussion as far as living matter is concerned. (List of works____).
4. "Unity of Physical laws and Levels of Description” in Interpretations of Life and Mind, Marjorie Green, ed. 1971, p.12.
5. This observation is actually instrumental in clarifying the old controversy about super-organisms discussed by Anry Bergson in his famous Creative evolution: should a bee hive be viewed as a society of organisms or one super-organism? From the point of view of entropic isolation we can say that it is both, as bees have an automatism to insulate their own body from outside chaos, and also defend the hive from invasion of higher entropy.
6. If this protection of information were perfect, we would not see much of evolution, as evolution is exactly the result of changes in that information; this is one way to view evolution. Another concept is that DNA itself has its own ability to develop and institute changes.

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Source: https://web.archive.org/web/19990202072749/http://homepages.together.net/%7Echalidze/entropy.htm