I know some peope like "sociophysics" but it doesn't make much sense.
Sociobiology, I can understand, but physics is completely irrelevant here. Of
course, everything depends on physical laws but most of them have no
mechanism which prolongs them at higher scales. Like, quantum physics doesn't
apply to chemistry.
I guess that "sociophysics" is liked by people who make a science of identifying
underlying process and framing them as laws.
>CB: Would that be the 2nd Law asserting itself ?
No. The second law itself universally applies and can thus not reassert itself. The
thing about increasing entropy either does or doesn't apply. Even if for some
reason the conditions changed enough so that it started to apply, all the 2nd Law
tells is that there must be *some* increase in entropy. Nothing like an event such as
a crash.
>http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/u/jjkay/pubs/sch/sch.html
This URL seems bad.
Stan wrote:
>The 2nd Law doesn't state categorically that energy always becomes more
>entropic. It says that it does so when it is (1) not interfered with by
>counter-entropic structures or (2) when it is used for work. Dissipation
>occurs during all SPONTANEOUS processes.
I'm not sure about what you mean with "dissipation". Anyway...
Increases of entropy can occur anytime under any conditions. Decreases of
entropy can not.
>The pertinence of the 2nd Law, at least to this non-scientist, is at the
>much more tangible (not philosophical) level of using it for work, as we do
>with fossil fuels and so forth FASTER than life as an intervening structure
>can re-concentrate it... thereby leaving less and less of the useful,
>pre-concentrated (life) energy to meet the needs of the concentrators (life
>forms).
OK. When oil is consumed, it's not there anymore. You don't need thermodynamics
to reach that conclusion. BTW, oil is consumed even if you do not use it for work
(like if you use it to make plastics or if you spill it into the sea).
>Intuition, not always reliable, leads me to think that entropy is a process
>that applies to all spontaneous systems. I haven't thought this completely
>out, but capitalism seems to be just such a spontaneous system. Certainly
>it is a system that is wasteful because it lacks organization between its
>parts. Don't all systems require energy?
Capitalism is not a spontaneous process in the chemical sense precisely because
it consumes energy. Not all systems require energy. But any system not recieving
energy from the outside must consume itself. The 2nd law does not tell us anything
about those system like capitalism which consume energy from the outside.
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