Request for an exorcism
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I am requesting a group intervention to exorcise the demon of "maximum
entropy production driving organization" from my belief structure. :-) First, thank you to all that showed up at my talk at Jose's "SFI working group on Cities and Organization" yesterday. It was a pleasant surprise to see so many FRIAM faces. Those that attended probably noticed a bumbling in the first portion of my talk where I stumbled on the role of entropy production in organization. Roger Critchlow, as a good friend, gave me the following feedback (which I beg his pardon for sharing with the group without checking with him first): > Stephen -- > > I must confess that your thermodynamic muddle embarrassed me > yesterday, If you send me a copy of the first part of the > presentation, I can respond point by point. The rest of the talk went > quite well, your taste in visual materials is excellent. > > -- rec -- Yep, the first section of the talk was somewhat painful for me. I prepared the presentation thinking I was going to be preaching to the choir and thought the first section would be a quick breeze through. There were so many blank faces that it somewhat threw me and I was ill-prepared to elaborate on the statements. For those that know me, I tend to speak on topics that I am deeply struggling with and don't yet quite have a grasp on. Thank you for your patience with me. Having said that, I believe in the content. The idea (not invented by me) of far from equilibrium boundary conditions as Aristotilian final cause for the creation and maintenance of organization I believe is foundational. I think this is an idea that maps across social, biological, physical and agent systems that are self-organizing. As you requested, I've posted the presentation at http://www.redfish.com/research/LivingCity_Roger.htm. I deleted the unshown 3rd ABM section to cut down 4Mb in size. I can show you that at the office if you're interested. I left in the unshown 4th section, "design heuristics for self-organizing systems:, which may further irritate you. I'm grasping at the application of self-organization to ABM. I'm posting this to the group because I would like to open debate to whether the idea is bunk and needs to be discarded or it is indeed foundational and has important implications for systems design and interaction. I am too distracted by it to let it sit in the corner. It keeps winking at me and won't let me do my work ;-) Related/referenced readings: Shrodinger: http://dieoff.org/page150.htm Swenson (on Maximum Entropy Production) - it's either right on or completely flakey: http://www.entropylaw.com/entropyproduction.html Parunak (on application to ABM): http://www.redfish.com/research/p124-van_dyke_parunak.pdf http://www.redfish.com/research/gotoant.pdf Heylighen (general vocabulary for SOS): http://www.redfish.com/research/EOLSS-Self-Organiz.pdf Thanks, -Steve ____________________________________________________ http://www.redfish.com [hidden email] 624 Agua Fria Street office: (505)995-0206 Santa Fe, NM 87501 mobile: (505)577-5828 |
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Stephen,
I enjoyed your talk yesterday. With regard to the entropy discussion, I think one of the difficulties is the wide use of this term, different people may have different perspectives on what entropy mean. On top of that, people may have failed to make the connection between entropy and cities and organization. You and I had many discussions on this subject before so I knew where you were heading. Cheers, Belinda -----Original Message----- From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On Behalf Of Stephen Guerin Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2003 1:54 PM To: Friam Subject: [FRIAM] Request for an exorcism I am requesting a group intervention to exorcise the demon of "maximum entropy production driving organization" from my belief structure. :-) First, thank you to all that showed up at my talk at Jose's "SFI working group on Cities and Organization" yesterday. It was a pleasant surprise to see so many FRIAM faces. Those that attended probably noticed a bumbling in the first portion of my talk where I stumbled on the role of entropy production in organization. Roger Critchlow, as a good friend, gave me the following feedback (which I beg his pardon for sharing with the group without checking with him first): > Stephen -- > > I must confess that your thermodynamic muddle embarrassed me > yesterday, If you send me a copy of the first part of the > presentation, I can respond point by point. The rest of the talk went > quite well, your taste in visual materials is excellent. > > -- rec -- Yep, the first section of the talk was somewhat painful for me. I prepared the presentation thinking I was going to be preaching to the choir and thought the first section would be a quick breeze through. There were so many blank faces that it somewhat threw me and I was ill-prepared to elaborate on the statements. For those that know me, I tend to speak on topics that I am deeply struggling with and don't yet quite have a grasp on. Thank you for your patience with me. Having said that, I believe in the content. The idea (not invented by me) of far from equilibrium boundary conditions as Aristotilian final cause for the creation and maintenance of organization I believe is foundational. I think this is an idea that maps across social, biological, physical and agent systems that are self-organizing. As you requested, I've posted the presentation at http://www.redfish.com/research/LivingCity_Roger.htm. I deleted the unshown 3rd ABM section to cut down 4Mb in size. I can show you that at the office if you're interested. I left in the unshown 4th section, "design heuristics for self-organizing systems:, which may further irritate you. I'm grasping at the application of self-organization to ABM. I'm posting this to the group because I would like to open debate to whether the idea is bunk and needs to be discarded or it is indeed foundational and has important implications for systems design and interaction. I am too distracted by it to let it sit in the corner. It keeps winking at me and won't let me do my work ;-) Related/referenced readings: Shrodinger: http://dieoff.org/page150.htm Swenson (on Maximum Entropy Production) - it's either right on or completely flakey: http://www.entropylaw.com/entropyproduction.html Parunak (on application to ABM): http://www.redfish.com/research/p124-van_dyke_parunak.pdf http://www.redfish.com/research/gotoant.pdf Heylighen (general vocabulary for SOS): http://www.redfish.com/research/EOLSS-Self-Organiz.pdf Thanks, -Steve ____________________________________________________ http://www.redfish.com [hidden email] 624 Agua Fria Street office: (505)995-0206 Santa Fe, NM 87501 mobile: (505)577-5828 ========================================================= FRIAM Complexity Coffee listserv Meets Fridays 9AM @ Museum Hill Cafe Archives, unsubscribe, etc.: http://www.redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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Thanks for the feedback, Belinda.
> With regard to the entropy discussion, I > think one of the difficulties is the wide use of this term, > different people > may have different perspectives on what entropy mean. On top of > that, people > may have failed to make the connection between entropy and cities and > organization. You and I had many discussions on this subject before so I > knew where you were heading. For those that have not had the pleasure of hearing my rambling firsthand at one time or another (of which there are probably few), here is the explicit statement summing up Schneider, Swenson, Kugler, and potentially Shrodinger and Boltzmann: Nature abhors a gradient. Gradients are low entropy configurations. Equilibrium is defined as the absence of a gradient. This is the maximum entropy configuration. Gradients are concentrations of conserved quantitites (energy, charge, linear momentum, etc.) which constitute a potential. Potentials give rise to flows. If the potential exceeds a threshold, self-organization will begin. The second law is responsible for the construction of organizing structures to oppose gradients. I'll make the strong claim in the hope that it it makes it easiest to refute: ALL organization arises for the purpose of destroying a gradient (ie producing entropy). In the Cities and Organization workshop, I was trying to find the overlap between organization and cities. Certainly cities are organizations and if the above is true, it may give us a novel perspective to approaching how cities come about, how they persist and how cities adapt. Again, the maximum entropy production idea is not mine. I rather like it but it would not kill me if it turns out to be false. I'd kind of like to know, though, one way or the other. I missed posting the Schneider and Kay papers last time: http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/u/jjkay/pubs/Life_as/text.html http://www.redfish.com/research/SchneiderKay1995_OrderFromDisorder.htm -S ____________________________________________________ http://www.redfish.com [hidden email] 624 Agua Fria Street office: (505)995-0206 Santa Fe, NM 87501 mobile: (505)577-5828 |
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OK, I've been staring at this for awhile, trying to figure out
what bothers me about the argument. So here are my own ramblings. First, I think it may be hard to refute in part because it is hard to pin down; that is, there appear to be intuitively based counter-arguments. For example, one might point to convection in gravity gradients, or to HOX gene complexes that help create chemical gradients as reference frames for gene expression. In neither case does it seem right to say that "nature abhors a gradient"; elements of the structure depend on them. Further, we don't usually think of these cases as being about dissipation of the gradient. Structural elements often use the environment of gradients to minimize their own dimensionality (e.g. logs self-orienting in a river). First and a half, potentials may create flows, but they also provide reference frames against which other organizational elements orient and within which they may situate (or be situated). I don't understand how dissipation of such uber-gradients would necessarily serve the emergence of organization (unless they were simply temporary scaffolding that eventually got "eaten" up). Secondly, though this may happen to play a key role in emergent organization, it is not necessarily foundational. Much of the argument depends on a geometrical frame (some quantity of stuff moves from point A to point B) rather than a topological one. I am perhaps weird in thinking that topology preceeds geometry; that geometry is a particular informational overlay on some topology. Then there's time and spatial metrics and all that. So this may not be foundational, but rather one of those things that tends show up around organization. Loop Quantum Gravity, how to talk about dissipation down there? Thirdly, there is a question around stability of non-adjacent organizational entities. Why are there species? The statement at hand does not quite deliver on how (more or less) stable *classes* of organizations arise. (Yeah, ant trails and coupling through the environment, but why don't ants metamorphose constantly?). How does the statement show how novelty interacts with stability? Forthly, any given agent is possibly situated in multiple gradients that are mediated by other gradients, in different ways and at different times, and so forth. Definitions of autonomy are difficult to formulate precisely against that backdrop; how does some "outside" agency percieve when autonomy has emerged? Is a log in a river an autonomous agent? Which gradient is getting dissipated and why? In any case, the dissipation may not be linear, so we might have some trouble predicting the emergence of organization by looking at the pattern of dissipation of the various gradients involved (or know which ones are involved or salient). Fifthly, I haven't figured out how the maximum entropy hypothesis integrates with the dumb-network notion that most "value" is at the edges. There might be an experiment or visualization here integrating these two notions that could clarify things.... It would be very cool to have some unifying notion of how maximal entropy integrates with dimensionality, selection and recombination, but I don't have a satisfactory formulatation of that question tonight. I've always liked the notion of work cycles and autonomy, but the one-paragraph statement is a big pill to swallow without offering a lot back in terms of explanatory power. How does the statement help unify other possibly ad-hoc explanations about organizations that are expressed in some other idiom? I don't quite see it --- yet. Best Regards, and thanks for all the fish, Carl -----Original Message----- From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On Behalf Of Stephen Guerin Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2003 7:23 PM To: [hidden email] Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Request for an exorcism Thanks for the feedback, Belinda. > With regard to the entropy discussion, I > think one of the difficulties is the wide use of this term, > different people > may have different perspectives on what entropy mean. On top of > that, people > may have failed to make the connection between entropy and cities and > organization. You and I had many discussions on this subject before so I > knew where you were heading. For those that have not had the pleasure of hearing my rambling firsthand at one time or another (of which there are probably few), here is the explicit statement summing up Schneider, Swenson, Kugler, and potentially Shrodinger and Boltzmann: Nature abhors a gradient. Gradients are low entropy configurations. Equilibrium is defined as the absence of a gradient. This is the maximum entropy configuration. Gradients are concentrations of conserved quantitites (energy, charge, linear momentum, etc.) which constitute a potential. Potentials give rise to flows. If the potential exceeds a threshold, self-organization will begin. The second law is responsible for the construction of organizing structures to oppose gradients. I'll make the strong claim in the hope that it it makes it easiest to refute: ALL organization arises for the purpose of destroying a gradient (ie producing entropy). In the Cities and Organization workshop, I was trying to find the overlap between organization and cities. Certainly cities are organizations and if the above is true, it may give us a novel perspective to approaching how cities come about, how they persist and how cities adapt. Again, the maximum entropy production idea is not mine. I rather like it but it would not kill me if it turns out to be false. I'd kind of like to know, though, one way or the other. I missed posting the Schneider and Kay papers last time: http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/u/jjkay/pubs/Life_as/text.html http://www.redfish.com/research/SchneiderKay1995_OrderFromDisorder.htm -S ____________________________________________________ http://www.redfish.com [hidden email] 624 Agua Fria Street office: (505)995-0206 Santa Fe, NM 87501 mobile: (505)577-5828 ========================================================= FRIAM Complexity Coffee listserv Meets Fridays 9AM @ Museum Hill Cafe Archives, unsubscribe, etc.: http://www.redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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In reply to this post by Friam mailing list
Stephen Guerin wrote:
> > For those that have not had the pleasure of hearing my rambling firsthand at > one time or another (of which there are probably few), here is the explicit > statement summing up Schneider, Swenson, Kugler, and potentially Shrodinger > and Boltzmann: > > Nature abhors a gradient. Gradients are low entropy configurations. > Equilibrium is defined as the absence of a gradient. This is the maximum > entropy configuration. Gradients are concentrations of conserved quantitites > (energy, charge, linear momentum, etc.) which constitute a potential. > Potentials give rise to flows. If the potential exceeds a threshold, > self-organization will begin. The second law is responsible for the > construction of organizing structures to oppose gradients. > > I'll make the strong claim in the hope that it it makes it easiest to > refute: > > ALL organization arises for the purpose of destroying a gradient (ie > producing entropy). The good news is that your strong claim is impossible to refute. The bad news is that it's impossible to refute because it's a restatement of the second law which says nothing about organization. Everything that happens in the universe happens as a consequence of a thermodynamic gradient. In the absence of a thermodynamic gradient, stuff is at equilibrium and just sits there doing nothing. That organization occurs as a consequence of thermodynamic gradients is necessarily true, for it to happen otherwise would contradict the second law. But disorganization also happens as a consequence of thermodynamic gradients, for it to happen otherwise would also contradict the second law. Gradients are required for all change whether it is organizing change, disorganizing change, or neutral change. Water flows downhill. Sometimes there are eddies and whirlpools, sometimes there aren't, but the fact that water flows downhill is always true whether self-organizing structures occur or not. The thermodynamic gradient explains water flowing downhill, not the presence or absence of the eddies. A pan of water heated on the bottom and cooled on the top will transfer heat from the bottom to the top. Sometimes there are convection cells, sometimes there aren't, but the fact that heat flows from warmer to cooler is true whether convection cells occur or not. The thermodynamic gradient explains the direction of heat transfer, not the mechanism of transfer. All that Boltzmann and Schrodinger are saying in the quotes you gave is that life obeys the second law: the flow of matter and energy through living organisms is from higher thermodynamic potential to lower. They are restating the second law of thermodynamics, nothing more. (Well, Ludwig is making larger claims about which he is incorrect, but that doesn't matter.) I have more fish to fry, but I'll stop at this point so you can try to persuade me that there's some other content to read into your quotes from Boltzmann and Schrodinger, or your strong claim. What's here besides a restatement of the second law? How could organization happen without a thermodynamic gradient to feed from, leaving aside divine interventions? -- rec -- |
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Just a quick comment while I'm thinking about it right now; more
thought-out words later. On Sunday, March 9, 2003, at 05:03 PM, Roger E Critchlow Jr wrote: > Everything that happens in the universe happens as a consequence of a > thermodynamic gradient. In the absence of a thermodynamic gradient, > stuff is at equilibrium and just sits there doing nothing. That > organization occurs as a consequence of thermodynamic gradients is > necessarily true, for it to happen otherwise would contradict the > second law. But disorganization also happens as a consequence of > thermodynamic gradients, for it to happen otherwise would also > contradict the second law. Gradients are required for all change > whether it is organizing change, disorganizing change, or neutral > change. I think the strong claim is not simply that organization happens _in_ a gradient, or even _because_ of it (which, as was pointed out, is necessarily true due to the 2nd law). The strong claim is that organization happens only for the purpose of accelerating the destruction of a gradient (maximum entropy creation). Perhaps, the only thing all self-organizing systems have in common (besides that they happen in a gradient) is that the gradient they use to organize themselves dissipates faster than if the system had not organized. Then, it would seem that self-organization is natural, and even expected, if the 2nd law is the final cause, because all self-organizing systems would accelerate entropy creation. Of course, this isn't my strong area, so these things may reduce to a simple statement of the 2nd law itself and provide no new insight. -dan |
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Daniel Kunkle wrote: > Just a quick comment while I'm thinking about it right now; more > thought-out words later. > > On Sunday, March 9, 2003, at 05:03 PM, Roger E Critchlow Jr wrote: > >> Everything that happens in the universe happens as a consequence of a >> thermodynamic gradient. In the absence of a thermodynamic gradient, >> stuff is at equilibrium and just sits there doing nothing. That >> organization occurs as a consequence of thermodynamic gradients is >> necessarily true, for it to happen otherwise would contradict the >> second law. But disorganization also happens as a consequence of >> thermodynamic gradients, for it to happen otherwise would also >> contradict the second law. Gradients are required for all change >> whether it is organizing change, disorganizing change, or neutral change. > > > I think the strong claim is not simply that organization happens _in_ a > gradient, or even _because_ of it (which, as was pointed out, is > necessarily true due to the 2nd law). The strong claim is that > organization happens only for the purpose of accelerating the > destruction of a gradient (maximum entropy creation). Perhaps, the only > thing all self-organizing systems have in common (besides that they > happen in a gradient) is that the gradient they use to organize > themselves dissipates faster than if the system had not organized. Then, > it would seem that self-organization is natural, and even expected, if > the 2nd law is the final cause, because all self-organizing systems > would accelerate entropy creation. So, you'd expect that a blue green algae, as a self-organizing system, would dissipate the solar flux gradient faster than a rock? Then why does the blue green algae convert the energy of the photons it absorbs into an intermediate form of stored energy while the rock just converts it immediately into heat? Seems like the rock is degrading the gradient in one instantaneous step, while the photosynthetic organism is delaying the degradation an indeterminate period of time. I can see how Benard cells increase the rate of heat transfer through a fluid, I can see how hurricanes and tornadoes increase the mixing of thermal gradients, but I don't see how the theory applies to living organisms, so I don't see how it applies to all self-organizing systems. -- rec -- |
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Hi Guys,
I didn't want to get in the middle of this, but Roger asks just the right question, and it happens to be one on which I have an opinion. (I am currently trying to make it into better than just that.) (btw, Steve: our general sense of how things fit together seems enough alike that it surprises me how I continue to be unable to contribute anything useful to you. I could at least enjoy the talk, though, and I think the ideas you are pushing for are deep and promising.) > So, you'd expect that a blue green algae, as a self-organizing system, > would dissipate the solar flux gradient faster than a rock? Then why > does the blue green algae convert the energy of the photons it absorbs > into an intermediate form of stored energy while the rock just converts > it immediately into heat? Seems like the rock is degrading the gradient > in one instantaneous step, while the photosynthetic organism is delaying > the degradation an indeterminate period of time. > > I can see how Benard cells increase the rate of heat transfer through a > fluid, I can see how hurricanes and tornadoes increase the mixing of > thermal gradients, but I don't see how the theory applies to living > organisms, so I don't see how it applies to all self-organizing systems. Two things are central to answering this. First, biomass implements more perfect inelastic absorption than nonbiomass made of the same stuff, if what you mean by ``biomass'' is averaged to include the chromophores (chlorophylls and rhodopsins). Second, the earth rotates, so there is a shuttle cycle between day and night (though that is less important, as I realize in the course of writing this mail). So, roughly, the similarity to Benard cells should go like this: Rocks, the atmosphere, etc, elastically scatter a lot more photons than they absorb. Simple molecules, even when they absorb inelastically by breaking, often re-emit the same stuff when they recombine (O2 up high that mostly doesn't make ozone). Net effect is that the energy-momentum transfer is mostly that of elastic scattering, which causes big rises in kinetic temperature for small changes in energy -- while the sun is shining --. Photons get re-radiated back into the same spectral ranges and a relatively narrow solid angle around the direction of incidence, and the capacity of the earth's matter to heat is limited by the E/p relation of light to heavy stuff. The chromophores solve the hard engineering problem of absorbing without breaking the chemical, so that on average their dE/dp ratio per absorption is about 10^9 what you get from elastic scattering (easy relativistic calculation to do). Since photons shine on the biomass and the nonbiomass alike, and those that don't get absorbed scatter elastically just like they would anyway, even only absorbing some fraction of that excess energy effectively raises the energy capacity per temperature (kinetic molecular motion) change of the part of terrestrial matter participating as biomass. The important thing is that all of that absorbed energy is then made available to the molecular-level processes of metabolism, which leak it out as a fantastically larger number of low-energy photons, throughout the day _and the night_. So the earth is cooler during the day and warmer during the night, with plants and all that feeds on them, than it would be without them. More importantly, it is also redder over the day/night average. The key is to realize that the differences that power flows are not just spatial, but also compositional (the configuration space of matter has a lot more topology than just the geography of the globe). Without chromophores, there is a bath of thermal photons, and a background of microwave energy and all the molecular excitations that couple to them, and selection rules more or less prohibit the coupling of those two baths, so not much energy flows between them, just like any two energy levels decoupled in a solid-state device, or whatever. With the invention of the chromophores, life effectively opened a gate between those two energy levels, which gets around the selection rules as they act on small-molecule scattering. The heat from 6000K -> 300K phonons, conserved on average, and from a narrow spatial angle to the whole solid angle sphere (a less important effect) represents a fantastic entropy exchange, and entropy production. Even if one were only to operate reversible cycles between two such reservoirs (possible for transient periods), the energy taxable at fixed entropy from such a difference of effective temperature would allow you to build a lot of structure (these are the processes that I somewhat understand). If it turns out that there is also something gained from the entropy production (about which I think people understand less but say more, so it is a dangerous topic), then the entropy gain is similarly huge. A comment for the discussion on the second law, too, just to be picky. The second law postulates maximum ignorance given constraints, as a property of equilibrium states. Properly understood (see Gell-Mann and Lloyd, Complexity Vol.2, p.44-56 (1996)), the second law only says that, if you knew the true constraints determining a distribution, then you could never choose another set of measurement criteria in which there could be less uncertainty. Since time evolution frequently changes the meaning of even the same measurements as reflections of the constraints on a system (due to small-scale mixing), the entropy in a macroscopically-specified coarse-graining at later times can never be less than that of the same coarse-graining _if it was the one used to prepare the ensemble in the first place_. Second law says nothing about whether entropy will increase (only that under certain circumstances it can), and it _certainly_ says nothing about the rate of increase, or a preference for maximization of that rate. Truly it is just an informational law about incompletely-constrained dynamical systems, and is only as useful as the care you put into understanding the roles of the macrovariables, whether as constraints or characterizations. This is why a lot of unnecessary confusion has been created (beyond the necessary confusion) about the role of life as a thermal process. Just the fact that you can measure something as a macroscopic average doesn't tell you whether it is a state variable, or whether some entropy function computed from it actually measures the uncertainty inherent in the system. All the stuff on increase of entropy production rate, and any possible association with the structuring of intermediate components, is much shakier, though there is probably a grain of truth in some of it. We just don't know which parts yet. Eric |
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Eric Smith wrote: > Hi Guys, > > I didn't want to get in the middle of this, but Roger asks just the > right question, and it happens to be one on which I have an opinion. > (I am currently trying to make it into better than just that.) Eric -- I don't think you're in the middle of this, I'd say you're some ways out ahead of us. In any case, there isn't really any middle here, we're just clarifying Guerin's ideas for him. And it seems to me that you've essentially confirmed my point: inelastic scattering from air and rocks happens at the speed of light; elastic scattering from chloroplasts and their ilk happens at the speed of life. Life harvests some proportion of the solar flux that otherwise would have been immediately dissipated by inelastic scattering, and dissipates it in little belches and farts of heat over time. Life dissipates energy when it needs to, it's not in a race with the abiotic world. So it's still hard for me to see how life as a self-organizing phenomenon could ever be an example of Daniel's formulation: "The strong claim is that organization happens only for the purpose of accelerating the destruction of a gradient (maximum entropy creation)." Stephen, is this becoming any clearer? -- rec -- |
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> Stephen, is this becoming any clearer?
I've seen the flash of the crucifix, my head is spinning and I'm tasting the bile in my throat. Projectile vomit to follow ;-) Give me a day or two to respond. I need to get a project out the door. In the meantime, thanks for the useful feedback. I have to tighten up my language when I talk about constraint construction and destruction with respect to free energy decreasing in spontaneous reactions. I certainly would like to avoid using the term entropy. -Steve "The use of thermodynamics in biology has a long history rich in confusion" - Harold J. Morowitz ____________________________________________________ http://www.redfish.com [hidden email] 624 Agua Fria Street office: (505)995-0206 Santa Fe, NM 87501 mobile: (505)577-5828 > -----Original Message----- > From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On Behalf > Of Roger E Critchlow Jr > Sent: Monday, March 10, 2003 11:33 PM > To: [hidden email] > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Request for an exorcism > > > > > Eric Smith wrote: > > Hi Guys, > > > > I didn't want to get in the middle of this, but Roger asks just the > > right question, and it happens to be one on which I have an opinion. > > (I am currently trying to make it into better than just that.) > > Eric -- > > I don't think you're in the middle of this, I'd say you're some ways > out ahead of us. In any case, there isn't really any middle here, we're > just clarifying Guerin's ideas for him. > > And it seems to me that you've essentially confirmed my point: > inelastic scattering from air and rocks happens at the speed of light; > elastic scattering from chloroplasts and their ilk happens at the speed > of life. Life harvests some proportion of the solar flux that otherwise > would have been immediately dissipated by inelastic scattering, and > dissipates it in little belches and farts of heat over time. Life > dissipates energy when it needs to, it's not in a race with the abiotic > world. > > So it's still hard for me to see how life as a self-organizing > phenomenon could ever be an example of Daniel's formulation: "The > strong claim is that organization happens only for the purpose of > accelerating the destruction of a gradient (maximum entropy creation)." > > Stephen, is this becoming any clearer? > > -- rec -- > > > ========================================================= > FRIAM Complexity Coffee listserv > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Museum Hill Cafe > Archives, unsubscribe, etc.: > http://www.redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > |
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Stephen Guerin wrote: >> Stephen, is this becoming any clearer? > > > I've seen the flash of the crucifix, my head is spinning and I'm tasting the > bile in my throat. Projectile vomit to follow ;-) I'm sure you'll post a flash when you have time. -- rec -- |
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And to continue the annual tradition, I'll be selling mine @ $4.50/box for
anyone that forgot to place their order. :-) -S ____________________________________________________ http://www.redfish.com [hidden email] 624 Agua Fria Street office: (505)995-0206 Santa Fe, NM 87501 mobile: (505)577-5828 -----Original Message----- From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 8:53 AM To: [hidden email] Subject: [FRIAM] Girl Scout Cookies The cookies have arrived. I will bring them with me this Friday. They are $3 per box. Cash or checks accepted. Checks should be made out to "Girl Scouts Troop 46". If you don't remember how many boxes you ordered send me an email. Frank --- Frank C. Wimberly 505 995-8715 or 505 670-9918 (mobile) 140 Calle Ojo Feliz [hidden email] or [hidden email] Santa Fe, NM 87505 http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/wimberly |
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Now THAT'S the Stephen I know!
----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Guerin" <[hidden email]> To: <[hidden email]> Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 11:04 AM Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Girl Scout Cookies > And to continue the annual tradition, I'll be selling mine @ $4.50/box for > anyone that forgot to place their order. :-) > > -S > > ____________________________________________________ > http://www.redfish.com [hidden email] > 624 Agua Fria Street office: (505)995-0206 > Santa Fe, NM 87501 mobile: (505)577-5828 > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On Behalf Of > Frank Wimberly > Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 8:53 AM > To: [hidden email] > Subject: [FRIAM] Girl Scout Cookies > > > The cookies have arrived. I will bring them with me this Friday. They > $3 per box. Cash or checks accepted. Checks should be made out to "Girl > Scouts Troop 46". If you don't remember how many boxes you ordered send me > an email. > > Frank > --- > Frank C. Wimberly 505 995-8715 or 505 > 670-9918 (mobile) > 140 Calle Ojo Feliz [hidden email] > or [hidden email] > Santa Fe, NM 87505 > http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/wimberly > > > ========================================================= > FRIAM Complexity Coffee listserv > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Museum Hill Cafe > Archives, unsubscribe, etc.: > http://www.redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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In reply to this post by Friam mailing list
Roger writes:
> I'm sure you'll post a flash when you have time. Can we show some professional respect here. It's Director and Shockwave that we spew out. The Flash guys are 5 pegs below us in the pecking order. ;-) -S ____________________________________________________ http://www.redfish.com [hidden email] 624 Agua Fria Street office: (505)995-0206 Santa Fe, NM 87501 mobile: (505)577-5828 > -----Original Message----- > From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On Behalf > Of Roger E Critchlow Jr > Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 11:20 PM > To: [hidden email] > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Request for an exorcism > > > > > Stephen Guerin wrote: > >> Stephen, is this becoming any clearer? > > > > > > I've seen the flash of the crucifix, my head is spinning and > I'm tasting the > > bile in my throat. Projectile vomit to follow ;-) > > I'm sure you'll post a flash when you have time. > > -- rec -- > > > ========================================================= > FRIAM Complexity Coffee listserv > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Museum Hill Cafe > Archives, unsubscribe, etc.: > http://www.redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > |
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