F IGURE 16 A UTOCATAKINETIC PROCESS

infinitely impossible. Since Boltzmann’s reduction of entropy production to that of statistical

tendency, a lot of debate has gone into what entropy actually is, and some conjecture about what it does. Clausius, writing at a time of burgeoning scientific enquiry in the 1860’s, wrestled with how to define thermodynamic behaviour and is credited with saying that ‘the energy of the world remains constant; the entropy of the world tends to a maximum’. Swenson is among those who disagree with a narrow definition of entropy as the statistical variation in a population. Boltzmann shows that in near equilibrium closed systems, particles tend to a maximum. What Swenson found when he read the original German was that Clausius actually said:

Die Entropie der Welt strebt einem Maximum zu

The word ‘strebt’ translates from the German as ‘aims, seeks, strives, aspires’ but not ‘tends’. Swenson therefore argues for a fuller exploration of Clausius’s originally intended meaning. The ‘seeking, striving’ or ‘aspiring’ allows Swenson to argue that order within an evolutionary process spontaneously occurs because the pull of entropy maximises energy flow in ordered systems. Structure then develops because ordered and more complex systems can produce entropy faster than disordered systems. This is subtly different to the view of Odum who attributed maximised power as the driver of structure.

That second law of thermodynamics is silent about the path or means for achieving change.

Swenson (Swenson, 1997b, p. 13) says that dynamically ordered structures will select the best path from all possible structures in order to maximise entropy production in the fastest way possible. Swenson provides a clearer case for maximum entropy production being a nomological law than Odum’s focus on maximum power aligned with Darwin’s focus on competition and fecundity to explain why things evolve. It seems that structured systems are held far from equilibrium by maximising the energy that flows through them. Systems develop more complexity as their energy flows increase, and successful systems maximise the amount of power to the system though systems of feedback. Odum describes the energy flow as ‘tripartite altruism’, where a third of energy is consumed at the level of focus, with a third fed back to a lower level, and a third fed forward, or upwards to the next level. Swenson expresses this process in a similar way (see figure 16) by showing a feedback as FII and higher quality energy flowing forward as EIII.

3.5

Summary of implications for transport

The editors of the Handbook of Transport and Development (2015) accept the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, 2000) definition of transport as a verb ‘to carry, convey, or remove from one place or person to another, to carry across. And as a noun: ‘the action of carrying or conveying a

thing or person from one place to another; conveyance’(Handbook of transport and development, 2015, p. 4). The second part of the definition includes the active process of carrying, and conveyance and so indicates the provision of a service as well as the physical process of moving materials from one place to another. The definition does not however extend to transport as a flow – but it comes close. Using the laws of thermodynamics to explain selection processes expands possible definitions of transportation to be a part of physical evolutionary processes and so links transport with complex and orderly systems that exist because of the second law of thermodynamics.

My investigation into transport systems and energy flow challenges the idea that Darwinian selection is the evolutionary function that creates complexity without disputing that natural selection maintains order and accounts for adaptive traits in populations. This exposes a gap in the understanding of how living systems originally came about. Within that gap, transport is active in some way that is linked to thermodynamic flow. It seems that energy flows through systems are a common denominator in the natural ecology and human economy (Howard Thomas Odum, 1971, 1996a; Howard Thomas Odum & Odum, 2001) and with it transport processes. Energy flow is therefore a strong contender for being the single common denominator of all life where an energy basis to the process can be found behind many important political and public affairs issues (Howard Thomas Odum, 2007). For example, Odum finds that they can be used to select policy for land zoning, trade equity, health care and the provision of power plants. By applying thermodynamic understanding to social structures Odum provides a lawful basis to show that natural systems do not grow in a haphazard way and mean that transport within those systems is a method of feedback and feed forward of materials and information to systems at different levels of energy quality. The structure that forms in living systems includes material self-selecting pathways that extend the ‘reach’ of energy collection. Self-selection of flow pathways entailed in thermodynamic processes provide part of a lawful explanation for how living systems form as a consequence of energy from the sun acting on the materials of the world. This suggests that structure could develop at the first possible opportunity where interactions are possible in thermodynamic selection processes. Transport plays a special role in a growing economy as a growth developer.

Through the work of Odum we can see that transport systems act as pumps in promoting growth and have the capacity to speed up the intake and flow of energy consumption within all systems. This capacity also appears to apply to economic systems, which when coupled with a countervailing money flow stimulates the development of material structure and complexity. Transport therefore has a role as a growth-priming activity along with marketing, subsidies to growth, and incentives such as oil depletion allowances. As an economic enabler, transport systems are costly in energy but

economically viable as long as their role as pump primers is successful in increasing the flow of energy beyond their special costs. The role of transport is of particular use during growth, where the cost of the high quality energy employed by the goods transport function as a priming activity, as described by Odum (Howard Thomas Odum, 1974) creates a flow of energy over and above the cost, especially during expanding energy availability.

Access to oil over the past century allowed high intensity and growth promoting policies and structures to flourish. Conversely transport and other growth priming activities such as advertising will become an energy liability because their high energy costs are no longer effective in

accelerating energy yield. A weakness in Odum’s description is his explanation that thermodynamic processes seek to maximise power. While he can describe systems that maximise energy flows as powerful, he does not convince me that the concept of seeking maximum power can be proved. Odum’s approach does find that maximum power is consistent with the idea of competition for resources in Darwinian evolution and work well describes energy quality and hierarchy, and its application to thermodynamic systems as a way to explain fecundity and competition for resources. In ecological systems, transportation is part of a physical mechanistic process that increases energy intake by actively moving energy and materials into a system. This transport activity happens within all systems as they feed higher transformity energy forward and energy back as informational controls or throughput increase mechanisms to systems at lower levels. When energy flows through the system, free energy, being energy not required for system maintenance becomes available to other parts of the system. For any work to happen there must be a large flow of energy and most of it leaves in a state of low entropy. The production of large amounts of entropy is a direct

consequence of producing high energy fuel and maintaining complex systems far from equilibrium. This is shown to be the case in ecological studies, and while most energy leaves the system as low- grade heat, the other part of the story is that this flow maintains and is fundamentally responsible for high entropy entities. While not yet fully understood8_{, thermodynamic structuring acts as a}

driver of order with containing feedback, and feed forward transport systems. A critical analysis of transport phenomena in evolutionary development may better inform this argument, and that is the topic of the next chapter.

8 _{Some current and emerging theories about transport in active informational systems are discussed in Chapter}