Entropy and life
Encyclopedia
Research concerning the relationship between the thermodynamic
quantity entropy
and the evolution
of life
began in around the turn of the 20th century. In 1910, American historian Henry Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume A Letter to American Teachers of History proposing a theory of history
based on the second law of thermodynamics
and the principle of entropy. The 1944 book What is Life?
by Nobel
-laureate physicist
Erwin Schrödinger
served largely to stimulate this research. In this book, Schrödinger states that life feeds on negative entropy, or negentropy
as it is sometimes called. Recent writings have utilized the concept of Gibbs free energy
to elaborate on this issue.
published his noted memoir "On the Concentration of Rays of Heat and Light, and on the Limits of its Action" wherein he outlined a preliminary relationship, as based on his own work and that of William Thomson
, between his newly developed concept of entropy and life. Building on this, one of the first to speculate on a possible thermodynamic perspective of evolution
was the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann
. In 1875, building on the works of Clausius and Kelvin, Boltzmann reasoned:
and Carnot
; which constitute the fundamental laws of our subject." McCulloch then goes on to show that these two laws may be combined in a single expression as follows:
where
McCulloch then declares that the applications of these two laws, i.e. what are currently known as the first law of thermodynamics
and the second law of thermodynamics
, are innumerable. He then states:
McCulloch then gives a few examples of what he calls the “more interesting examples” of the application of these laws in extent and utility. The first example he gives, is physiology
wherein he states that “the body of an animal, not less than a steamer, or a locomotive, is truly a heat engine
, and the consumption of food in the one is precisely analogous to the burning of fuel in the other; in both, the chemical process
is the same: that called combustion
.” He then incorporates a discussion of Lavoisier
’s theory of respiration with cycles of digestion and excretion, perspiration, but then contradicts Lavoisier with recent findings, such as internal heat generated by friction, according to the new theory of heat
, which, according to McCulloch, states that the “heat of the body generally and uniformly is diffused instead of being concentrated in the chest”. McCulloch then gives an example of the second law, where he states that friction
, especially in the smaller blooded-vessels, must develop heat. Without doubt, animal heat is thus in part produced. He then asks: “but whence the expenditure of energy causing that friction, and which must be itself accounted for?"
To answer this question he turns to the mechanical theory of heat and goes on to loosely outline how the heart is what he calls a “force-pump”, which receives blood and sends it to every part of the body, as discovered by William Harvey
, that “acts like the piston of an engine and is dependent upon and consequently due to the cycle of nutrition and excretion which sustains physical or organic life.” It is likely, here, that McCulloch was modeling parts of this argument on that of the famous Carnot cycle
. In conclusion, he summarizes his first and second law argument as such:
, Nobel
-laureate physicist
Erwin Schrödinger
theorizes that life
, contrary to the general tendency dictated by the Second law of thermodynamics
, decreases or maintains its entropy by feeding on negative entropy. In a note to What is Life?, however, Schrödinger explains his usage of this term:
This is what is argued to differentiate life
from other forms of matter
organization. In this direction, although life's dynamics may be argued to go against the tendency of second law, which states that the entropy of an isolated system tends to increase, it does not in any way conflict or invalidate this law, because the principle that entropy can only increase or remain constant applies only to a closed system
which is adiabatically isolated, meaning no heat
can enter or leave. Whenever a system can exchange either heat or matter with its environment, an entropy decrease of that system is entirely compatible with the second law. The problem of organization in living systems increasing despite the second law is known as the Schrödinger paradox.
In 1964, James Lovelock
was among a group of scientists who were requested by NASA
to make a theoretical life detection system to look for life on Mars
during the upcoming space mission. When thinking about this problem, Lovelock wondered “how can we be sure that Martian life, if any, will reveal itself to tests based on Earth’s lifestyle?” To Lovelock, the basic question was “What is life, and how should it be recognized?” When speaking about this issue with some of his colleagues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
, he was asked what he would do to look for life on Mars. To this, Lovelock replied:
Thus, according to Lovelock, to find signs of life, one must look for a “reduction or a reversal of entropy.”
, rather than entropy. This is because biological processes on earth take place at roughly constant temperature and pressure, a situation in which the Gibbs free energy is an especially useful way to express the second law of thermodynamics
. The Gibbs free energy is given by:
The minimization of the Gibbs free energy is a form of the principle of minimum energy
, which follows from the entropy maximization principle for closed systems. Moreover, the Gibbs free energy equation, in modified form, can be utilized for open systems when chemical potential
terms are included in the energy balance equation. In a popular 1982 textbook Principles of Biochemistry by noted American biochemist Albert Lehninger
, it is argued that the order produced within cells as they grow and divide is more than compensated for by the disorder they create in their surroundings in the course of growth and division. In short, according to Lehninger, "living organisms preserve their internal order by taking from their surroundings free energy
, in the form of nutrients or sunlight, and returning to their surroundings an equal amount of energy as heat and entropy."
Similarly, according to the chemist John Avery
, from his recent 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution, we find a presentation in which the phenomenon of life, including its origin and evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its basis in the background of thermodynamics
, statistical mechanics
, and information theory
. The (apparent) paradox between the second law of thermodynamics
and the high degree of order and complexity produced by living systems, according to Avery, has its resolution "in the information content of the Gibbs free energy
that enters the biosphere from outside sources." The process of natural selection responsible for such local increase in order may be mathematically derived directly from the expression of the second law equation for connected non-equilibrium open systems.
, implying gradual pre-Darwinian chemical evolution. In 1924, Alexander Oparin suggested that sufficient energy was provided in a primordial soup. The Belgian scientist Ilya Prigogine
was awarded with a Nobel prize for an analysis in this area. A related topic is the probability that life would emerge, which has been discussed in several studies, for example by Russell Doolittle
.
Thermodynamics
Thermodynamics is a physical science that studies the effects on material bodies, and on radiation in regions of space, of transfer of heat and of work done on or by the bodies or radiation...
quantity entropy
Entropy
Entropy is a thermodynamic property that can be used to determine the energy available for useful work in a thermodynamic process, such as in energy conversion devices, engines, or machines. Such devices can only be driven by convertible energy, and have a theoretical maximum efficiency when...
and the evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
of life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
began in around the turn of the 20th century. In 1910, American historian Henry Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume A Letter to American Teachers of History proposing a theory of history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
based on the second law of thermodynamics
Second law of thermodynamics
The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the tendency that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential equilibrate in an isolated physical system. From the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, the law deduced the principle of the increase of entropy and...
and the principle of entropy. The 1944 book What is Life?
What is Life? (Schrödinger)
What Is Life? is a 1944 non-fiction science book written for the lay reader by physicist Erwin Schrödinger. The book was based on a course of public lectures delivered by Schrödinger in February 1943, under the auspices of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies at Trinity College, Dublin...
by Nobel
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
-laureate physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was an Austrian physicist and theoretical biologist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, and is famed for a number of important contributions to physics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933...
served largely to stimulate this research. In this book, Schrödinger states that life feeds on negative entropy, or negentropy
Negentropy
The negentropy, also negative entropy or syntropy, of a living system is the entropy that it exports to keep its own entropy low; it lies at the intersection of entropy and life...
as it is sometimes called. Recent writings have utilized the concept of Gibbs free energy
Gibbs free energy
In thermodynamics, the Gibbs free energy is a thermodynamic potential that measures the "useful" or process-initiating work obtainable from a thermodynamic system at a constant temperature and pressure...
to elaborate on this issue.
Origin
In 1863, Rudolf ClausiusRudolf Clausius
Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius , was a German physicist and mathematician and is considered one of the central founders of the science of thermodynamics. By his restatement of Sadi Carnot's principle known as the Carnot cycle, he put the theory of heat on a truer and sounder basis...
published his noted memoir "On the Concentration of Rays of Heat and Light, and on the Limits of its Action" wherein he outlined a preliminary relationship, as based on his own work and that of William Thomson
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin OM, GCVO, PC, PRS, PRSE, was a mathematical physicist and engineer. At the University of Glasgow he did important work in the mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and did much to unify the emerging...
, between his newly developed concept of entropy and life. Building on this, one of the first to speculate on a possible thermodynamic perspective of evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
was the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann
Ludwig Boltzmann
Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann was an Austrian physicist famous for his founding contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics...
. In 1875, building on the works of Clausius and Kelvin, Boltzmann reasoned:
Early views
In 1876, American civil engineer Richard Sears McCulloh, in his Treatise on the Mechanical Theory of Heat and its Application to the Steam-Engine, which was an early thermodynamics textbook, states, after speaking about the laws of the physical world, that "there are none that are established on a firmer basis than the two general propositions of JouleJames Prescott Joule
James Prescott Joule FRS was an English physicist and brewer, born in Salford, Lancashire. Joule studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work . This led to the theory of conservation of energy, which led to the development of the first law of thermodynamics. The...
and Carnot
Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot
Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot was a French military engineer who, in his 1824 Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, gave the first successful theoretical account of heat engines, now known as the Carnot cycle, thereby laying the foundations of the second law of thermodynamics...
; which constitute the fundamental laws of our subject." McCulloch then goes on to show that these two laws may be combined in a single expression as follows:
where
-
= entropy
= equals a differential amount of heatHeatIn physics and thermodynamics, heat is energy transferred from one body, region, or thermodynamic system to another due to thermal contact or thermal radiation when the systems are at different temperatures. It is often described as one of the fundamental processes of energy transfer between...
passed into a thermodynamic system
= absolute temperatureThermodynamic temperatureThermodynamic temperature is the absolute measure of temperature and is one of the principal parameters of thermodynamics. Thermodynamic temperature is an "absolute" scale because it is the measure of the fundamental property underlying temperature: its null or zero point, absolute zero, is the...
McCulloch then declares that the applications of these two laws, i.e. what are currently known as the first law of thermodynamics
First law of thermodynamics
The first law of thermodynamics is an expression of the principle of conservation of work.The law states that energy can be transformed, i.e. changed from one form to another, but cannot be created nor destroyed...
and the second law of thermodynamics
Second law of thermodynamics
The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the tendency that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential equilibrate in an isolated physical system. From the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, the law deduced the principle of the increase of entropy and...
, are innumerable. He then states:
McCulloch then gives a few examples of what he calls the “more interesting examples” of the application of these laws in extent and utility. The first example he gives, is physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
wherein he states that “the body of an animal, not less than a steamer, or a locomotive, is truly a heat engine
Heat engine
In thermodynamics, a heat engine is a system that performs the conversion of heat or thermal energy to mechanical work. It does this by bringing a working substance from a high temperature state to a lower temperature state. A heat "source" generates thermal energy that brings the working substance...
, and the consumption of food in the one is precisely analogous to the burning of fuel in the other; in both, the chemical process
Chemical reaction
A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Chemical reactions can be either spontaneous, requiring no input of energy, or non-spontaneous, typically following the input of some type of energy, such as heat, light or electricity...
is the same: that called combustion
Combustion
Combustion or burning is the sequence of exothermic chemical reactions between a fuel and an oxidant accompanied by the production of heat and conversion of chemical species. The release of heat can result in the production of light in the form of either glowing or a flame...
.” He then incorporates a discussion of Lavoisier
Antoine Lavoisier
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier , the "father of modern chemistry", was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry and biology...
’s theory of respiration with cycles of digestion and excretion, perspiration, but then contradicts Lavoisier with recent findings, such as internal heat generated by friction, according to the new theory of heat
Theory of heat
In the history of science, the theory of heat or mechanical theory of heat was a theory, introduced predominantly in 1824 by the French physicist Sadi Carnot, that heat and mechanical work are equivalent. It is related to the mechanical equivalent of heat...
, which, according to McCulloch, states that the “heat of the body generally and uniformly is diffused instead of being concentrated in the chest”. McCulloch then gives an example of the second law, where he states that friction
Friction
Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and/or material elements sliding against each other. There are several types of friction:...
, especially in the smaller blooded-vessels, must develop heat. Without doubt, animal heat is thus in part produced. He then asks: “but whence the expenditure of energy causing that friction, and which must be itself accounted for?"
To answer this question he turns to the mechanical theory of heat and goes on to loosely outline how the heart is what he calls a “force-pump”, which receives blood and sends it to every part of the body, as discovered by William Harvey
William Harvey
William Harvey was an English physician who was the first person to describe completely and in detail the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped to the body by the heart...
, that “acts like the piston of an engine and is dependent upon and consequently due to the cycle of nutrition and excretion which sustains physical or organic life.” It is likely, here, that McCulloch was modeling parts of this argument on that of the famous Carnot cycle
Carnot cycle
The Carnot cycle is a theoretical thermodynamic cycle proposed by Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot in 1824 and expanded by Benoit Paul Émile Clapeyron in the 1830s and 40s. It can be shown that it is the most efficient cycle for converting a given amount of thermal energy into work, or conversely,...
. In conclusion, he summarizes his first and second law argument as such:
Negative entropy
Later, building on this premise, in the famous 1944 book What is Life?What is Life? (Schrödinger)
What Is Life? is a 1944 non-fiction science book written for the lay reader by physicist Erwin Schrödinger. The book was based on a course of public lectures delivered by Schrödinger in February 1943, under the auspices of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies at Trinity College, Dublin...
, Nobel
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
-laureate physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was an Austrian physicist and theoretical biologist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, and is famed for a number of important contributions to physics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933...
theorizes that life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
, contrary to the general tendency dictated by the Second law of thermodynamics
Second law of thermodynamics
The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the tendency that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential equilibrate in an isolated physical system. From the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, the law deduced the principle of the increase of entropy and...
, decreases or maintains its entropy by feeding on negative entropy. In a note to What is Life?, however, Schrödinger explains his usage of this term:
This is what is argued to differentiate life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
from other forms of matter
Matter
Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume...
organization. In this direction, although life's dynamics may be argued to go against the tendency of second law, which states that the entropy of an isolated system tends to increase, it does not in any way conflict or invalidate this law, because the principle that entropy can only increase or remain constant applies only to a closed system
Closed system
-In physics:In thermodynamics, a closed system can exchange energy , but not matter, with its surroundings.In contrast, an isolated system cannot exchange any of heat, work, or matter with the surroundings, while an open system can exchange all of heat, work and matter.For a simple system, with...
which is adiabatically isolated, meaning no heat
Heat
In physics and thermodynamics, heat is energy transferred from one body, region, or thermodynamic system to another due to thermal contact or thermal radiation when the systems are at different temperatures. It is often described as one of the fundamental processes of energy transfer between...
can enter or leave. Whenever a system can exchange either heat or matter with its environment, an entropy decrease of that system is entirely compatible with the second law. The problem of organization in living systems increasing despite the second law is known as the Schrödinger paradox.
In 1964, James Lovelock
James Lovelock
James Lovelock, CH, CBE, FRS is an independent scientist, environmentalist and futurologist who lives in Devon, England. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the biosphere is a self-regulating entity with the capacity to keep our planet healthy by controlling...
was among a group of scientists who were requested by NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
to make a theoretical life detection system to look for life on Mars
Life on Mars
Scientists have long speculated about the possibility of life on Mars owing to the planet's proximity and similarity to Earth. Fictional Martians have been a recurring feature of popular entertainment of the 20th and 21st centuries, but it remains an open question whether life currently exists on...
during the upcoming space mission. When thinking about this problem, Lovelock wondered “how can we be sure that Martian life, if any, will reveal itself to tests based on Earth’s lifestyle?” To Lovelock, the basic question was “What is life, and how should it be recognized?” When speaking about this issue with some of his colleagues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California, United States. The facility is headquartered in the city of Pasadena on the border of La Cañada Flintridge and Pasadena...
, he was asked what he would do to look for life on Mars. To this, Lovelock replied:
Thus, according to Lovelock, to find signs of life, one must look for a “reduction or a reversal of entropy.”
Gibbs free energy and biological evolution
In recent years, the thermodynamic interpretation of evolution in relation to entropy has begun to utilize the concept of the Gibbs free energyGibbs free energy
In thermodynamics, the Gibbs free energy is a thermodynamic potential that measures the "useful" or process-initiating work obtainable from a thermodynamic system at a constant temperature and pressure...
, rather than entropy. This is because biological processes on earth take place at roughly constant temperature and pressure, a situation in which the Gibbs free energy is an especially useful way to express the second law of thermodynamics
Second law of thermodynamics
The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the tendency that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential equilibrate in an isolated physical system. From the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, the law deduced the principle of the increase of entropy and...
. The Gibbs free energy is given by:
The minimization of the Gibbs free energy is a form of the principle of minimum energy
Principle of minimum energy
The principle of minimum energy is essentially a restatement of the second law of thermodynamics. It states that for a closed system, with constant external parameters and entropy, the internal energy will decrease and approach a minimum value at equilibrium...
, which follows from the entropy maximization principle for closed systems. Moreover, the Gibbs free energy equation, in modified form, can be utilized for open systems when chemical potential
Chemical potential
Chemical potential, symbolized by μ, is a measure first described by the American engineer, chemist and mathematical physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs. It is the potential that a substance has to produce in order to alter a system...
terms are included in the energy balance equation. In a popular 1982 textbook Principles of Biochemistry by noted American biochemist Albert Lehninger
Albert L. Lehninger
Albert Lester Lehninger was an American biochemist in the field of bioenergetics. He made fundamental contributions to the current understanding of metabolism at a molecular level. In 1948, he discovered, with Eugene P...
, it is argued that the order produced within cells as they grow and divide is more than compensated for by the disorder they create in their surroundings in the course of growth and division. In short, according to Lehninger, "living organisms preserve their internal order by taking from their surroundings free energy
Thermodynamic free energy
The thermodynamic free energy is the amount of work that a thermodynamic system can perform. The concept is useful in the thermodynamics of chemical or thermal processes in engineering and science. The free energy is the internal energy of a system less the amount of energy that cannot be used to...
, in the form of nutrients or sunlight, and returning to their surroundings an equal amount of energy as heat and entropy."
Similarly, according to the chemist John Avery
John Scales Avery
John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist noted for his research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. Since the early 1990s, Avery has been an active World peace activist. During these years, he was part of a group associated with the Pugwash...
, from his recent 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution, we find a presentation in which the phenomenon of life, including its origin and evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its basis in the background of thermodynamics
Thermodynamics
Thermodynamics is a physical science that studies the effects on material bodies, and on radiation in regions of space, of transfer of heat and of work done on or by the bodies or radiation...
, statistical mechanics
Statistical mechanics
Statistical mechanics or statistical thermodynamicsThe terms statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics are used interchangeably...
, and information theory
Information theory
Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and...
. The (apparent) paradox between the second law of thermodynamics
Second law of thermodynamics
The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the tendency that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential equilibrate in an isolated physical system. From the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, the law deduced the principle of the increase of entropy and...
and the high degree of order and complexity produced by living systems, according to Avery, has its resolution "in the information content of the Gibbs free energy
Gibbs free energy
In thermodynamics, the Gibbs free energy is a thermodynamic potential that measures the "useful" or process-initiating work obtainable from a thermodynamic system at a constant temperature and pressure...
that enters the biosphere from outside sources." The process of natural selection responsible for such local increase in order may be mathematically derived directly from the expression of the second law equation for connected non-equilibrium open systems.
Entropy and the origin of life
The second law of thermodynamics applied on the origin of life is a far more complicated issue than the further development of life, since there is no "standard model" of how the first biological lifeforms emerged; only a number of competing hypotheses. The problem is discussed within the area of abiogenesisAbiogenesis
Abiogenesis or biopoesis is the study of how biological life arises from inorganic matter through natural processes, and the method by which life on Earth arose...
, implying gradual pre-Darwinian chemical evolution. In 1924, Alexander Oparin suggested that sufficient energy was provided in a primordial soup. The Belgian scientist Ilya Prigogine
Ilya Prigogine
Ilya, Viscount Prigogine was a Russian-born naturalized Belgian physical chemist and Nobel Laureate noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility.-Biography :...
was awarded with a Nobel prize for an analysis in this area. A related topic is the probability that life would emerge, which has been discussed in several studies, for example by Russell Doolittle
Russell Doolittle
Russell F. Doolittle is an American biochemist at the University of California, San Diego with focus in structure and evolution of proteins. Born in Connecticut, he earned a B.A. in Biology from Wesleyan University in 1952, and an M.A. in Education from Trinity College in 1957. He earned his Ph.D...
.
Further reading
- Schneider, E. and Sagan, D. (2005). Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
- La Cerra, P. (2003). The First Law of Psychology is the Second Law of Thermodynamics: The Energetic Evolutionary Model of the Mind and the Generation of Human Psychological Phenomena. Human Nature Review, Volume 3: 440–447. Full text
External links
- Life on Earth – Flow of Energy and Entropy – Marek Roland-Mieszkowski, M.Sc., Ph. D.,
- Thermodynamic Evolution of the Universe