Some scientists are trying prove that we are mere accident.

Heh. Actually techno-jokes do have a wry drollness, usually: the good kind.

 

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Well I don't know what the black cats in your parts do but in my parts cats meaow and chase mice. Meanwhile black coal in a coal bunker at midnight does neither of those things. Oh FFS if you are looking for black cats in a coal bunker at midnight just pretend to be a mouse or employ a heat seeking device.

So you see a little philosophy and a little science should root out that darn pussy!

 

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:bugeye:

 

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Well, the analogy only goes so far.

 

If you look at the human brain, neurons makes use of cation pumping, which is an energy intensive process, to create what is called a membrane potential. Neurons will use up to 90% of their energy for this purpose. In terms of priorities, this is way at the top of these cells.

The segregation of cations, as the ion pumping occurs, lowers the entropy of these cations and therefore lowers the entropy of the neuron membrane. What is created is a boundary condition of induced lowered entropy.

This induced low entropy boundary, is part of a universe, which prefers much higher entropy. The result will be a universal push to increase this entropy again; neuron firing will increase the entropy. This is the basis for memory and consciousness. Once the boundary is set, it is inevitable that neurons will need to fire, since firing is a way to allow the entropy to increase back, more in line with the universe.

Cells use a similar schema, in that they also pump a lot of energy into the membrane lowering the entropy at the boundary. Again this creates a boundary conditions that is opposite the universe. The universe, in all its choatic diversity, is trying to increase the entropy back. The boundary provides an amplified potential for changes compare to if it was not there; higher entropy potential.

The brain is easier to see in terms of its variety of entropy inductions to overcome the low entropy boundary. For example, the wide range of ideas in the human imagination all helps the universe increase entropy via neuron firing. Even spontanoeus thought has a logical explanation in term of universal entropy attempting to increase with this even more likely the lower the brain entropy induction; bigger brain. The brain constantly restores the potential, thereby moving memory into lower and lower entropy (higher order) such as behavior, instincts, concepts, etc.

The premise of this topic works under the assumption that the entropy of the universe will always try to increase, which is true. They then assume life is fully under the direction of universal entropy. If this premise was true, life would be a natural part of universal chaos and disorder.

But what is missing in their logical analysis, is the energy intensive entropy lowering induction at the membranes of life. Life has a fundamental way to move in a direction opposite to the entropy of universe. Like our memory of sensory input, which is firing neurons to increase entropy, the induced memory is also being induced into an order (explanation).

If universal entropy was leading the process, life lacking a sense of direction would be totally consistent. But since life creates order via the cations at the boundary, the result is a foundation for order not chaos. This is obvious, if you look around at life, since all life is about large scale integrated order. Some people dwell on the small superficial differences, like color, while ignoring trillions of bits of integrated order which are all consistent with the bonudary condition of life.

 

I don't think it follows that life "creates order at the boundary", resulting in a "foundation for order". Life extracts its own order according to its requirements, by exploiting energetic gradients that it creates. Where it cannot do so, it perishes, generally. You sound as though you're referring to life resting on a prepared, pre-existing chemical foundation. Is this your intent?

 

Nah. The analogy goes all the way.

That is; if you are looking for something that isn't there, either it doesn't exist at all or it does exist but it exists elsewhere to the location currently looked in.

If you are looking for something that is there but you just can't see it then there is something wrong with the way you are looking or the equipment you are using to look with.

Perception. It's a funny business.
Language gets us knotted.

 

Or as you point out, it cannot be detected with our tools:

Very well: then with which instruments shall we detect this supernatural entity? And will it, like a faerie, approach these self-same instruments for a saucer of milk, so that we may describe it by height, width and depth?

 

The foundation potentials for life are connected to energy and entropy. We can burn wood for fuel because trees, like the rest of life, gain and store potential energy by accumulating reduced materials. Life will try to gain net energy, while the universe prefers lower energy. The instinct to eat is from the universal energy idreciton, since this will help lower the energy of the food. Our bodies follow life and wil try to increase our energy storage. Both work together but for opposite purposes.

The same is true of entropy. Life lowers the entropy of cations at the cell membrane, using the lions share of its expendable energy. The universe goes the opposite way trying to increase entropy. Once the membrane boundary is set, the universal potential of higher entropy will have an increased potential to act in all types of ways to reverse the potential. This ended up as a large number of transport proteins, all will help increase the universal entropy of the boundary. Without the lower entropy potential boundary there is less need for universal entropy to act. Life can coax change by increasing entropy potential.

An analogy in nature can be done with pressure. If we expand a gas into lower pressure, its entropy will increase. The entropy increase will be in proportion to the pressure gradient for the expansion. As such, we can regulate how much entropy goes into the expansion by regulating the two pressures. If we took a balloon full of gas, as we lower the external pressure lower and lower, we can reach a point where the balloon bursts. We just added an additional degree of freedom that is not likely occur, unless we tune the entropy potential to be high enough. But at that pressure/entropy gradient, we can pop all types of balloons.

Why does life create this low entropy boundary condition? It is due via a unique set of conditions that are induced by water. Once this aqueuous sweet spot is set up, it is perpetual.

When the cations are pumped, potassium ions concentrate on the inside of the cell and cell membrane. Potassium cations are considered, koatropic which means they create disorder or chaos within water relative to pure water. The entropy of the water gets higher inside the cell. This is consistent with the universal potential, at least with respect to water; more entropy in the water.

The anion phosphate (-PO4), which is in ATP, DNA and RNA, etc. is cosmotropic anion, which means it creates order within water relative to pure water. The DNA, ATP, etc. help create order in the water because of their high ratios of phosphate. The ATP which has three phosphates is one of the best for creating aqueous order where needed.

The worse place in the cell for water disorder is at the inside of the cell membrane, due to the potassium ions. Many potassium cations will linger there due to the concentration gradient to the outside being higher than to the inside. The ATP diffuses to the membrane hoping to add some order to the disorder in the water; balance things out. But the ATP ends up pumping cations, causing even more potasisum to get in. The ATP tries to lower the aquoeus entropy on the inside membrane water, only to make it worse. The universe does gain a slight decrease in energy as ATP goes to ADP but it creates a perpetual entropy paradox at membrane.

With the potassium accumulating in the cell and these having a chaotic impact on the cellular water ATP will also go elsewhere. Enzymes are bathes in the potassium effect and can use a little order. This lowers the energy but typically resets the enzyme back into aquoeus entropy.

 

Sorry I trampled.

Lets start with the tool we have in common...the brain.


Tip toes through the tulips into the dark, dark coal bunker in search of black cat.

Here kitty kitty....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/feb/09/neuroscience.ethicsofscience

Here pussy pussy...

http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/dark_energy/

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/PR14.11E.html

Psh psh psh...wanna play with my bucky ball....

http://http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20110815.html

 

@wellwisher --

I don't think that you've fully grasped the concept of entropy. For example, while it is true that the total entropy of the universe tends to increase, this doesn't mean that a local decrease of entropy through natural and even random means is impossible, in fact it's exactly what we expect when we study thermodynamics.

Energy moves from high energy systems to available low energy systems until they achieve a state of equilibrium. This transfer has the effect of increasing the entropy of the higher energy system and decreasing the entropy of the low energy system. For example, the sun is a high energy system radiating that energy into the low energy systems around it such as the planet Earth, this means that the entropy of the Earth is not always increasing and this allows for an increase in order at the expense of increased entropy in the sun. Of course, some of the energy transferred is lost along the way(there is no such thing as a perfect energy transfer), usually to heat, which is why the second law holds for the universe as a whole while allowing local entropy to decrease.

Nothing you've posted has shown that life necessitates a violation of the laws of thermodynamics. All it shows is that you have a very narrow view of what those laws actually say.

 

Arioch, Wellwisher hasn't grasped the concept of most things.
He/ she specialises in posting wordy nonsense that invokes scientific terminology in an effort to appear knowledgeable.
And fails miserably.

 

Is it possible that the 'big bang' and the few billion years 'immediately' after was a period of entropy and that what followed (including now) is moving away from that entropy? That is to say 'now' is order following the chaos 'then'?

 

You mean that the imposition of energy from the Big Bang is causing order now? Via the medium of gravity or something?

Actually, speaking as a non-physicist (and thus probably ignorant) that is very interesting. Are planets or other stellar bodies entropic or ordered, by nature? Is a natural sphere not a product of lowest energetic state, much as a blade will dull over time, its edges becoming rounder?

 

It is a bloody good question is it not? I think of it in terms of order to chaos to order to chaos as part of a process possibly one that goes on, if not 'forever', then for a very, very, possibly even more very long time.

You might like to seek out my good friend Prof Roger Penrose. He calls them aeons.....

 

Interesting. Being largely ignorant of it, I'm not sure what to say. Perhaps the physicists can put down their pocket calculators and send us scurrying with some thrown mathematics.

Also, was that rhetorical, or do you know the fellow personally?

 

GeoffP,


Are you theist or atheist?

jan.

 

Jan Ardena,

Yes.

Geoff

 

Both?

jan.

 

I've no idea at this stage. I'm not anti-theist, or anti-atheist. Beyond that, who the hell knows.

I suppose at heart I'm some kind of theist.