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Life and Negative Entropy
Posted on 1 December, 2015 in biology and second law, biosphere, complexity,
definition of life, entropy
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A tropical rain forest. All the organisms from

October 2017
large trees to small insects depend on the
September 2017 constant flow of energy in the form of sunlight
July 2017 which powers photosynthesis and through
May 2017 photosynthesis, makes the evolution and
December 2016 organization of life possible. Flow of energy can
organize any system of carbon and water into a
June 2016
local system of negative entropy known as life.
March 2016
(Ashwin Kumar)
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015

On the other hand, not all life depends on

sunlight. The flow of chemicals from
Categories geothermal activities at deep sea vents can
power life forms such as this ecosystem of
astrobiology tubeworms and sea anemones. All are
organized and also characterized by negative
biochemistry
entropy like those life forms that depend on
biology and second law sunlight. ( NOAA Ocean Explorer)
biosphere
cell biology  
cells
For those of you who have read my blogs regarding the definition of life as a process
Charles Darwin
that evades thermal equilibrium, by now you are probably aware that a definition of
complexity

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definition of life life must include the fact that life does many activities of many kinds in order to stay
ecology alive and also that ultimately there are two energy sources that life has evolved to
use, one is the energy released by the sun because of thermonuclear reactions where
entropy
earth receives a tiny amount of sunlight on its surface and that energy is transformed
Evolution into biomass through photosynthesis while oxygen is released and organisms that
general biology use oxygen, namely animals convert all the food they eat into biochemical energy
genes while releasing carbon dioxide and waste heat and heat, mainly infrared energy is
genetics released into space. The other energy source is generated from within the planet
which powers all the plate tectonics and through geothermal energy, there are
Gregor Mendel
organisms that are adapted to cold and high pressure at the ocean bottom converting
history of biology
chemical energy into biochemical energy or chemosynthesis as it is called.
History of Life on Earth
Information Technology  
information theory
Life uses two forms of energy to power all of its vital activities of growth,
microbiology
reproduction, and metabolism but ultimately from organism to biosphere dissipate
Modern Synthesis all the energy that was used to power those three vital functions into the larger
molecular biology environment where it can no longer use the wastes and so must continuously be
natural selection replenished using those two kinds of energies.
philosophy of biology
 
population thinking
proximate questions As a process, what life is doing is actually breaking down a chemical gradient and in
species concepts doing so create disorder or rather life is not so much as using energy to do work but
ultimate questions to create entropy. What is entropy? If you have read my previous blog ” Energy, Life,
and the Second Law”, then you may know that entropy is basically the amount of
disorder that result from any energy converting processes, In physics, there is
thermodynamics which studies how energy is converted into many forms, and that is
the basis of the first law or that energy can change into many forms and life is in the
business of transforming energy. What life cannot do, and this has been confirmed by
experiments is that energy can never be created nor destroyed. Life may change
energy starting from sunlight into the growth of leaves. Some species of animals can
expend energy such as finding food, synthesize enzymes for the breakdown of
carbohydrates if the animals is a herbivore as well as synthesizing enzymes for
protein digestion if the animal is a carnivore for preying herbivores. Energy is passed
first from sunlight into plants, then into herbivores of all sizes from caterpillars up to
deers and then up into carnivores such as hawks and bears and up into what is called
the food chain, some of that energy is used in supporting metabolism while the rest is
dissipated as heat. According the first law, energy is converted but it is not created
out of nothing nor is it destroyed. Life is no exception to this rule and the same is true
for life, its origin, and its distribution throughout the universe.

As you also know there is a second law which states that disorder increases until no
more disorder further increases or rather that entropy increases until it is maximum
and that maximum is what is known as thermal equilibrium and nothing changes
once equilibrium is achieved.

Ever since the laws of thermodynamics was found, it seems life evades the second
law because it is organized and does something unlike an inanimate object such as a
crystal. It has structure but it does not do anything. Life can do many things such as
grow from the ground, expand into larger territory, swim through the seas, and even
wonder about its own origin, future, and destiny. Life may evade equilibrium or death
it cannot evade the second law. Why is that? That is because when the second law
was first studied, physicist first studied thermal equilibrium by considering what are
called “isolated systems” which are basically systems where nothing can come out
and nothing can enter. Equilibrium was easy to study since the fact that nothing
changes once entropy becomes maximum, certain properties like temperature would
be also easy to characterize but in truth, nothing in the biosphere ever reaches true
equilibrium and it is because of these two energy sources, the sun and the earth
which prevents anything alive from reaching that state of equilibrium and from the

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fossil record which shows that life on earth, despite extinctions of species, is as old as
the earth, and will continue to evolve until the sun goes red giant.

To understand how this is possible, is to focus from isolated to open systems and an
open system is the opposite of the isolated system. An open system never reaches
thermal equilibrium that is as long as there is a flow of matter and energy in and a
flow of matter and energy out. Energy flows into the biosphere from the sun as well
as from the earth and whatever is living from bacteria to humans will take advantage
of forms of energy such as glucose molecules that are accessible to bacteria to
proteins, carbohydrates, and fats that make up a slice of pizza all of which can
support the metabolism needed for life. Wastes such as heat and carbon dioxide then
leak out into the environment.

Notice that to support organizations wastes must be released and that is as vital and
as long as wastes are produced, there can be organization. Also note the importance
of the open system which I argued about in depth in my previous blog and only by
treating an organism as an open system, we can then see that there is no conflict to
the second law. A small region can organize or become disorganize and if you add up
the entropies in the surroundings and system, the total entropy increases but also
some parts of the system can become organized so entropy can become negative or
with more order but the overall entropy increases.

Entropy can be positive and only positive once system and surroundings are
considered but at the level of the system, positive or even negative and with negative
entropy there is usually a high degree of order and that can be the organelles all
performing their functions in an eukaryotic cell, movement of cytoplasm in a cell, cells
performing similar functions in a tissue, flow of blood in a small mammal, formation
of an embryo, the migratory patterns of birds, and distribution of populations in a
savannah, all of which are forms of biological organizations from organism to
ecosystem, all of which are examples of negative entropy. A handful of these forms of
biological negative entropy can be seen by the videos displaying life processes below

cytoplasmic streaming in Amoeba

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Pollen tube growth

Cell Division

Inner Life Of A Cell - Full Version

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WaveFX - Drosophila 17h Embryo Development

Amoebae aggregation and slime mold formation

CapillaryBloodFlow.wmv

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Caterpillar to Chrysalis Metamorphosis Timelapse

From watching these life processes in action, there is nothing at all random in how
these processes are conducted and that beginning at the cellular to the organisimal
level, the parts that make up each organism is anything but random. Randomness, on
the molecular level is indicative of matter in equilibrium but none of these are in
equilibrium and being far from equilibrium, matter in the form of carbon, nitrogen,
and oxygen are arranged in two chief important molecules, proteins and nucleic
acids, the former is functional and the latter informational. This degree of order that
is necessary to carry out these functions in order for the organisms to survive is also a
form of negative entropy but at this point you may interject and say that living things
are not the only entities with negative entropy. There are crystals such as a quartz
crystal which is composed of atoms of oxygen and silicon and since there is a regular
array of atoms, the crystal has negative entropy in lieu of the fact that the atoms are
arranged periodically throughout in one local region of space. There is a difference
between life and the crystal in that the latter is a static object while life is a dynamic
object which has the ability to seek out sources of food as well as evolve into new
forms with effective ways of finding foods to attracting mates that is life is a dynamic
system that evolves through natural selection while it has the ability to find chemical
gradients or food for the sole purpose of staying away from equilibrium. There is that
crucial difference in that life in all its forms does what it can to stay alive while
ultimately breaking down gradients and creating positive entropy something objects
in equilibrium can never do ( if it is possible for a crystal to actually seek out energy
and matter, then we would have no hesitation in saying that it is alive according to
this definition but let’s not complicate the argument further).

Flow of energy is all that is needed and as long as there is the right amount that is not
too much nor too little and in the right amounts, then matter can organize itself
spontaneously into far from equilibrium structures which could evolve into life and
with the imperative of finding ways to survive then life can evolve into various forms
with new forms along with new species, and the degree of organization that is
negative entropy can to our eyes be of such wondrous and fascinating delights to
behold, delights that can inspire the most wondrous works of art and philosophy.

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Snapdragons. This is just one

example of life as a dynamic
process of negative entropy
formation. (Paul Sullivan).

Flower in the crannied Wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower-but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, all in all,

I should know what God and Man is.

                     Alfred Lloyd Tennyson

References:

Flower in the Crannied Wall. (n.d). All poetry. Retrieved from

http://allpoetry.com/Flower-in-the-Crannied-Wall

Martinez, A (2015, August 19). What is Life, Really?[Web log

post]  http://unityoflifeblog.com/what-is-life-really-2/

Martinez, A (2015, Sept 9). Evolution and the Second Law can go Together[ Web log
post]

http://unityoflifeblog.com/evolution-and-…an-go-together/

Martinez, A (2105, Nov. 24). Energy, Life, and the Second Law [Web log post]

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Morowitz, H.J (1968) Energy Flow in Biology: Biological Organization as a Problem in

Thermal Physics New York, NY: Academic Press, Inc

Photo and Video Credits:

Ashwin Kumar Cherrapunjee Rain Forests

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ashwinkumar/7158995367/in/photolist-bUBHUB-
6C64t-r9KW6-pNm6CM-bUBJdg-cbYY5Q-bUBJ92 CC BY-SA 2.0

NOAA Ocean Explorer NOAA Ocean Explorer: NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer:
Galapagos Rift Exploration 2011 – EX1103 Leg2
 https://www.flickr.com/photos/oceanexplorergov/6837383487/in/photolist-bqcnUc-
5JoavG-6q35rB-8D9zZR-8DcGS1-93kmya-8D9zuP CC BY-SA 2.0

Paul Sullivan Snapdragons 05-11-10

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pfsullivan_1056/4752408638/in/photolist-8eXkvY-
6DM5j1-88cKpS-6cUU47 CC BY-ND 2.0

fijimermaid 9 (n.d) cytoplasmic streaming in Amoeba[ video file]. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEK9EdvDz2w

Giampero cai (n.d) Pollen tube growth.[ video file].Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kw2U2E1POM

dan izzo (n.d) Cell division [ video file]. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgLJrvoX_qo

Kanal na Nicknamercho (n.d) Inner Life of a Cell-Full Version. [ video file] Retrieved

from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_zD3NxSsD8

Light at Work (n.d) WaveFX-Drosophila 17h Embryo Development.[ video

file] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxECLgspbnI

tglab (n.d) Amoebea aggregation and slime mold formation. [ video file].Retrieved
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYu3F8VyGTQ

hnm13 (n.d) CapillaryBloodFlow.wmv. [ video file].Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuWhKN1bHLA

Strang Entertainment (n.d) Caterpillar to Chrysalis Metamorphosis. [ video file].

Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gsm_ZyJz_s

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Tags: biosphere, dissipative structures, ecology, general biology, negative entropy, non

equlibrium thermodynamics, second law of thermodynamics.

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