Oh heck!
Didn't quite get out before checking mail.
> 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.
As I said, I'm not a scientist. But my understanding of entropy is that it
a process of increasing disorder. Dissipation is just my own metaphorical
device for understanding it. I also understand that an apparent decrease of
entropy in one place always means there is a corresponding increase of
entropy in response. That's a little macro for me. I'm interested in life
processes on earth. So... ...
>
> >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).
>
... ...I'm not convinced yet that it doesn't apply here, or that it isn't
relevant. I don't need 2LT to know oil is running out. True. But it is
very relevant to the consequences and aftermath of that event. It's an
aggregated massive reversal of the very foundation upon which the biosphere
was constructed, when that oil has been used in a very short period of time
to build an infrastructure that is rapidly using up the available
concentrations of energy still active in the bioshpere. I think it is
relevant to the discussion of whether there really is a viable "alternative"
energy source, since biological processes are what do the concentrating.
> >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.
>
As I said, I haven't totally thought through this. But I'm not prepared yet
to say that because capitalism is not a strictly chemical process that the
law of entropy doesn't apply. There's a certain amount of reification we
all engage in when we use the linguistic shorthand of "capitalism." I don't
believe you can build a wall between "social" processes and "physical"
processes. Economics is most definitely about the movement of real,
physical energy. That's what the labor theory of value was trying to
understand. If that system--again this word is shorthand for a whole lot of
very concrete, energy-using processes, operating within a specific network
of social relations (that also involve energy consumption)--takes existing
concentrations of energy and uses them--as a whole--without a coordinated
and conscious effort to conserve, then that system as a whole accelerates
entropy. It works in reverse against the whole tendency of life.
Best,
Stan
>
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