AN ANSWER TO ALL THESE QUESTIONS CAN BE FOUND IN THE theories of an extraordinary Russian-born Belgian theoretical chemist, Ilya Prigogine. For the last half century, Prigogine has devoted himself to the study of thermodynamics. This science of "heat dynamics," that is, the relationship between mechanical energy (or work) and heat, developed during the industrial revolution of the late eighteenth and nineteenth cen- turies, as engineers and physicists studied the workings of thermal engines.
As scientists pondered the workings of the steam engines 54
EVOLUTION AGAINST ENTROPY
that powered the factories of emerging industry they discov- ered that there is an interesting relationship between heat and work. First, they noted that work and heat can be converted into each other. If, for example, someone applied work to a piece of metal by rubbing a file against it, the friction would produce heat; and heat applied to water in the boiler of a steam engine would cause the piston to move and produce work. Scientists then discovered that this interchangeable relation- ship existed not only between heat and work; chemical, me- chanical, thermal, and electrical energies can all be converted into one another.
On the heels of this discovery came another, with powerful implications. While an engine can transform energy into work, no engine can ever yield as much work as the energy it con- sumes. So whenever work is done, energy is irretrievably lost. In a steam engine, for example, the heat is transformed to mechanical work by causing a piston to move; however, no matter how well the engine is designed and built, there is always a certain amount of friction between the piston, cylinder, and other parts of the engine, and in this friction energy is lost.
Not only is this energy loss inescapable, the scientists dis- covered, but as a corollary the machine or system itself neces- sarily becomes increasingly disordered in the process of transforming energy to work. In the case of the steam engine, the friction inevitably wears away the metal engine parts; fine tolerances become loose, rubs turn to knocks and clanks, and more energy is lost; the engine grows even less efficient. Un- less more energy is put into the system in the form of new parts or an overhaul, the clanking, shuddering engine will eventually crash into a great heap of twisted rubble. In plain terms, all machines must eventually run down, a conclusion which remains unshaken as the second law of thermody- »amics: in any energy interchange, there is a decrease in the amount of energy available to perform useful work.
Since the scientists have verified that the law which gov- erns the exchange of energy in a machine can be expanded to include all the matter and energy in the universe, what the second law of thermodynamics dictates is that the universe is
MEGABRAIN
red shift, or a specific red in some spectrogram, and it sud- denly triggers a full-blown Eureka experience, leading him to the solution of his problem. A third person, having recently experienced certain personal traumas, sees the light, is re- minded of the red skirt of the woman who has left him, and is immediately thrown into such an extreme emotional state he loses control and goes mad. Same red light in all cases.
Why can such simple stimuli have such extraordinary transforming effects in the brain? Why can such stimuli lead in some cases to brain states that produce higher levels of order, beauty, complexity, and in others to disorder and de- struction? Why is it that the brain even needs the input of an external stimulus to be spurred or boosted or triggered into making new connections, forming new ideas, experiencing Eureka moments?
These are important questions; but they are doubly impor- tant in this context because if we can answer them, we can perhaps discover something of momentous consequence: how to intentionally direct specific stimuli to specific areas of the brain and trigger new ideas or Eureka moments at will. In fact, users and designers of some of the machines we will look at claim that this is exactly what they do. What an idea! Crea- tivity on command! Flashes of insight at the push of a button! Is this possible?
WHY THE UNIVERSE IS RUNNING DOWN
AN ANSWER TO ALL THESE QUESTIONS CAN BE FOUND IN THE theories of an extraordinary Russian-born Belgian theoretical chemist, Ilya Prigogine. For the last half century, Prigogine has devoted himself to the study of thermodynamics. This science of "heat dynamics," that is, the relationship between mechanical energy (or work) and heat, developed during the industrial revolution of the late eighteenth and nineteenth cen- turies, as engineers and physicists studied the workings of thermal engines.
As scientists pondered the workings of the steam engines 54
EVOLUTION AGAINST ENTROPY
that powered the factories of emerging industry they discov- ered that there is an interesting relationship between heat and work. First, they noted that work and heat can be converted into each other. If, for example, someone applied work to a piece of metal by rubbing a file against it, the friction would produce heat; and heat applied to water in the boiler of a steam engine would cause the piston to move and produce work. Scientists then discovered that this interchangeable relation- ship existed not only between heat and work; chemical, me- chanical, thermal, and electrical energies can all be converted into one another.
On the heels of this discovery came another, with powerful implications. While an engine can transform energy into work, no engine can ever yield as much work as the energy it con- sumes. So whenever work is done, energy is irretrievably lost. In a steam engine, for example, the heat is transformed to mechanical work by causing a piston to move; however, no matter how well the engine is designed and built, there is always a certain amount of friction between the piston, cylinder, and other parts of the engine, and in this friction energy is lost.
Not only is this energy loss inescapable, the scientists dis- covered, but as a corollary the machine or system itself neces- sarily becomes increasingly disordered in the process of transforming energy to work. In the case of the steam engine, the friction inevitably wears away the metal engine parts; fine tolerances become loose, rubs turn to knocks and clanks, and more energy is lost; the engine grows even less efficient. Un- less more energy is put into the system in the form of new parts or an overhaul, the clanking, shuddering engine will eventually crash into a great heap of twisted rubble. In plain terms, all machines must eventually run down, a conclusion which remains unshaken as the second law of thermody- »amics: in any energy interchange, there is a decrease in the amount of energy available to perform useful work.
Since the scientists have verified that the law which gov- erns the exchange of energy in a machine can be expanded to include all the matter and energy in the universe, what the second law of thermodynamics dictates is that the universe is
MEGABRAIN
moving irreversibly toward increasing decay and disorder. Most of us have a fair layman's grasp of this idea in what has become known as the law of increasing entropy: like some vast industrial machine the universe is running down.
One way of defining entropy is as a measure of the amount of randomness in a system. The less entropy there is in a system, the less randomness - in other words, the more order, the less entropy. A new steam engine, with exact tolerances, correctly assembled, has its maximum amount of internal order. But as it begins wearing down, disorder - randomness - increases.
In molecular terms (the machine consists of molecules), heat causes increased molecular motion; as the moving mole- cules collide with each other, they are knocked out of their normal course into essentially random paths. As the collisions between the molecules continue, the randomness of the paths of the molecules increases until finally all molecules are bouncing around totally at random. Total randomness is chaos. What was once a system of organized structures has become an inert, featureless fog; that is, the system has reached a state of maximum entropy that scientists call equi- librium. In universal terms, this state of equilibrium - popu- larly known as "heat death" - is like a tepid, homogenous soup of random molecules and atoms.
If order and structure must become disorder and chaos, if the universe tends toward ever-increasing randomness, then how did life develop? This process of evolution is a process of ever-increasing order and complexity - atoms become mole- cules become amino acids become proteins become cells be- come complex organisms, which themselves become ever more complex in response to environmental challenges, or- ganizing, growing, evolving. Life, it seems, moves toward increasing order, while the second law of thermodynamics de- mands that it should gain entropy, decaying into the lifeless soup of equilibrium. Is this a paradox? A contradiction? An illusion? What's going on?
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