Order from Disorder

When?

Reply to Vera Mont Qua lawfulness.

Ah!

Quoting Pantagruel

If entropy is a law, then the tendency to disorder introduces order to the universe.

IMO, less vaguely: "The tendency to global disorder" is accelerated by emergent, local order (i.e. dissipative structures) in the universe.

Reply to 180 Proof descriptively accurate for sure

Quoting Pantagruel

If entropy is a law, then the tendency to disorder introduces order to the universe.

To me entropy is an emergent law that arises from probability, which is a more fundamental concept. When matter has space to move into, entropy occurs, and the more space there is, the greater the potential for entropy. For example, a ball that fits perfectly in a box and cannot move has no entropy. However, if the space is doubled, the probable states the ball can take becomes 1/2 (1 ball and two spaces), and if the space is doubled again to four spaces, the probability (entropy) increases to 1/4. Within a certain "goldilocks zone" ratio of matter to space, complex forms can emerge and become highly ordered dynamical systems, along with dissipative structures as mentioned by 180 Proof.

It appears to me that there is a logical order at the root of the universe, and perhaps even beyond and further below its roots, contingent on nothing. Out of this primordial logic modulated by space emerges the logic of probability, and in turn, entropy (chaos), which then leads to evolution and organizational complexity (order).

I'm getting some really clear ideas while reading Dewey's essays on experimental logic. It's roughly conformant with what's being looked at in the current thread on mind and nature. About the facticity of phenomenological data. To me it suggests that information emerges through a natural process, having both a synchronic-objective form but also a diachronic aspect. And this becomes instrumental in the unfolding of negentropy, which I see as a kind of amplification of quantum-coherence.

Reply to Pantagruel Decreases in local disorder (aka "negentropy") accelerate increasing global disorder.

Reply to 180 Proof I think whether the total entropy of the universe is conserved or not is an open question. In any case, I'm not speculating as to that at this time.

Reply to Pantagruel An "open question" for whom?

Reply to 180 Proof Are you saying that there is a consensus as to the overall entropy state of the universe? That would be news to me. In any case, its not germane to the mechanism of negentropy and whether total entropy increases, decreases, or remains the same is moot to me at this moment.

Reply to Pantagruel So is it or is it not an "open question"? If it is, cite some sources.

Reply to 180 Proof It's your topic. I suggest you start one.

Suppose the universe starts at a state of low entropy A and ends up in a state of high entropy B. Now suppose that the event of the transition from state A to B leaves an informational footprint. It is possible that the informational entropy decrease complements the physical entropy increase.

I suggest that the nature of the relationship between physical and informational entropy is only beginning to be understood. Therefore I refrain from making judgements that rely on presuppositions about overall entropy state, whether the universe is an open or closed system, etc., Negentropy emerges locally. That's a fact and it's what I'm currently thinking about. :)

Given the givenness of reality, the natural order of things is for things to fade away. So for any apparently existing structure, the tendency is for that structure to dis-integrate. That is the most general conceptualization of physical entropy. Any structure which contradicts this law cannot have physicality as a sufficient cause. So emergent structures necessarily involve transphysical causation. Energy flows downhill, just like streams of water. And just like streams of water, energy can be harnessed by certain types of structures and made to flow along the reverse gradient. An adventitious momentary configuration becomes advantageous in storing energy (because that is essentially what negentropy does). Informationally, the adventitious momentary configuration is the physicality of the medium. Words can be written. They can be in any language. They can be carved in stone. Or transmitted as pulses of energy. But the essential symbolicity of meaning is what is completely transphysical, what exists across and transcends all possible physical configurations. And the ongoing physical evolution confirms the efficacy of the informational. Information tends to accrue, just like matter, and imposes form upon matter. Dark energy and dark matter, for example, appear to interact with matter, and also appear not to be affected by matter. There are dimensions of overlap.

How do you define (dis)order? The capacity for intentional change? There aren't too many definitions of order and disorder that generally confer with negentropy and entropy.

@Pantagruel – Just as I suspected, you're just making up shit (i.e pseudo-science aka "alternative facts"). :shade:

Reply to 180 Proof It's metaphysical speculation, sure. That's why its in the lounge. Of course, science isn't sacrosanct for most of us.

Doubtless many and many an act of thought has intervened in effecting the organization of our commonest practical-affectional-aesthetic environment. I only mean to indicate that thought does take place in such a world; not after a world of bare existences. and that while the more systematic reflection we call organized science may, in some fair sense, be said to come after, it comes after affectional, artistic, and technological interests which have found realization.
Dewey, "The Antecedents and Stimuli of Thinking"

Which is to say, of course, that thinking precedes science. Which seems pretty obvious. Science is a product of instrumental thought. Since I'm interested in the instrumentality of thought (for which science is only a tool) I'm crossing the boundaries of intuition, epistemology, social linguistics, science, etc.. There's actually a method which formalizes this type of project called "intertheoretic reduction." The result of an intertheoretic reduction is known as a 'reducing theory' which explains or predicts a wider range of phenomena under more general conditions.

The recognition then of intra-organic events, which are not merely effects nor distorted refractions of cosmic objects, but inchoate future cosmic objects in process of experimental construction, resolves. to my mind, the paradox of so-called subjective and private things that have objective and universal reference, and that operate so as to lead to objective consequences which test their own value. When a man can say: This color is not necessarily the color of the glass nor the picture nor even of an object reflected but is at least an event in my nervous system, an event which I may refer to my organism till I get surety of other reference—he is for the first time emancipated from the dogmatism of unquestioned reference, and is set upon a path of experimental inquiry.
~John Dewey, The Logical Character of Ideas

He's not wrong. This is the essence of my own position which I'd describe as experimental constructivism.

Jeremy England's theory of "dissipative-driven adaptation" is interesting step toward explaining abiogenesis, but probably still a bit of a hunch at the moment.

You might be able to conceive of a macroscopic analogue to a molecule, a bunch of sticks jointed together by springs, that has very interesting/dynamic behavior depending on how/where energy is introduced into it. The idea would be, whatever degrees of freedom the structure has, it reconfigures in such a way as to increase heat dissipation (but I don't really understand this).

Think about correctly holding a tuning fork. Depending on which handle we hold, determines how the input energy gets dissipated. It hums if one of its modes of vibration is not dissipated by holding the correct end. Maybe we could imagine some molecules as tuning forks, which act differently depending on how they got tethered/distributed in a solution/matter mix. Maybe when these molecules vibrate that actually cause some-kind of alignment of their neighbors, and thus the process of higher order self-assembly gets going... Energy from outside the system would drive oscillations that drives self-assembly.

Such configurations that become locked into dynamic cyclical processes may always require the flow of energy of a universe moving toward thermodynamic equilibrium.

The periodic table for instance is an amazing example of transient negantropy (structure), as the phenomenon of gravity has pushed hydrogen atoms into relatively (un)stable atomic configurations, through a process that has increased global entropy. The interplay of these differentiated atoms allow for some wild inorganic processes to occur, even before life could ever begin.

For instance, there is evidence in Gabon, Africa, of a cycle of natural fission during a time in Earth's history when Uranium-235 was in high enough natural concentrations to undergo a chain reaction. This natural atomic reactor required water (neutron moderator) to sustain the reaction. Sunlight no doubt played a part, as well the presence of an underground river, in delivering the water back to the fission site after it was evaporated. So here you have a very strange example of a unique cycle in the crust of the Earth, dependent on all kinds of just so structures (the special ashes of long dead stars bathed in the light of a living star).

Life is just another just so structure, on par with what we might consider less exciting stuff.

Quoting Nils Loc

Jeremy England's theory of "dissipative-driven adaptation" is interesting step toward explaining abiogenesis, but probably still a bit of a hunch at the moment.

I just encountered this idea in Deacon's Incomplete Nature. Fascinating. And a propos the OP. In order to maximize the entropy gradient, organized structures form (viz. Benard cells in fluid thermodynamics).

When you think about it, the universe is essentially the presentation of the counterbalance of forces in relative parity. Otherwise stars would just be explosions. Or black holes. Which ultimately they are I guess.