Abstract
This chapter attempts to show that the thermodynamic laws are by no means just restricted to the study of thermal effects in man-made artefacts and heat engines. The growing evidence is that, provided they are applied with suitable caution, these laws can also explain, elegantly and succinctly, complex systems in the natural world. It is self-evident that some aspects of thermodynamics must apply to living organisms because life clearly depends critically on cell temperature. For humans death occurs for temperatures transgressing the quite limited range of 32–42°C. But why should this be? The chapter shows that thermodynamics can provide the answer. In thermodynamic terms it seems that life is comprised of two fundamental mechanisms: one ‘order from order’ and the other ‘order from disorder’. The inference is that living things can reverse entropy, thus defying the second law of thermodynamics. By using thermodynamics principles to resolve these apparent dilemmas, we seek here to illustrate their explanatory power.
A transformation whose only final result is to transform into work, heat from a source which is at a single temperature is impossible
Lord Kelvin
Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy
Vaclav Havel
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Notes
- 1.
A thorough and comprehensive exposition of the notion that complex life forms on this planet, and perhaps others, have evolved in response to thermodynamic imperatives in order to mitigate or dissipate gradients in their environment, much as a tornado, which is also a complex system, can develop to degrade temperature and pressure gradients in the atmosphere. The presentation style is disconcertingly variable but otherwise for a science text it is not a difficult read. It contains at least one minor error, which James Clerk Maxwell, if he were alive, might consider to be serious. He would be ‘hypercycling in his grave’ if he could know that he had been described as English.
- 2.
The word ‘photon’ is used here and throughout this book to imply power density flow in electromagnetic waves. It has a very specific frequency dependent magnitude only for atomic absorption and emission at the infrared and light portions of the spectrum.
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Sangster, A.J. (2011). Equilibrium Thermodynamics and Life. In: Warming to Ecocide. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-926-0_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-926-0_2
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