Dear Mike (the mad scientist) Oliker,
Answering a question as graciously as you did is like cleaning polishing a
tile counter ... you wouldn't do it unless you expected it to STAY polished
for a bit. Thus, it seems unkind -- perhaps even disrespectful-- for me
to reply to it so quickly. Alas......
In my attempts to understand the second law, think I cottoned to the
information thing early on. To me the information question is why do laws
about entropy and laws about information have the same FORM. They clearly
aren't the same THING. Besides, Shannon and Whazzis notwithstanding, I
think of information as it is used in the animal behavior literature is a
classic example of a category error. Animals interact; they don't pass
stuff around.
Ok, so you do reassure me that there is some objective way of ranking cow,
beetle, and fire such that, despite the manner in which the cow strives to
prepare the table for the dung beetle, the meal it leaves behind for the
beetle has less free energy than the meal it devours. I infer from your
post that one gets more energy per gram if you burn grass and if you burn
cow dung, right?. Believe it or not I had not thought of the burning
operation when I posed the question. Sorry. I guess that settles the
intensionallity question.
I understand that we have also consider all products. I should not be
surprised if the free energy in milk is greater than the free energy in
grass, right? Ditto filet mignon. Else the notion of trophic level would
have no meaning whatsoever.
Thanks so much.
Nick Thompson
Soft Scientist
Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[hidden email]
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/ [hidden email]
Locked
