and another one
>> Obviously, you are mistaken David. There are no exceptions to the laws
>> of thermodynamics. They apply everywhere -- even in your backyard.
>>
>> The laws of thermodynamics tell us that you can not burn a barrel of oil
>> twice. It's like gravity -- you can try it at home.
>>
>> Let me know how your experiment turns out. <G>
>> Jay
Jay is correct about the second law of thermodynamics applying to all
natural systems (but not human social ones). The biosphere of the earth
certainly obeys the second law. The second law essentially states that in a
closed system, entropy (the degree of disorder) will tend to increase or at
best remain constant. However, within a closed system, parts of the system
may experience a decrease in entropy at the expense of a larger increase
elsewhere in the system.
The earth by itself is an open system. The earth and Sun together comprise
a closed system. Life on earth, consisting of complex, low entropy
organisms, developed from a state of higher entropy. But it did so at the
expense of a massive increase in entropy in the Sun. For the earth and Sun
taken together as a closed system, there was an overall massive increase in
entropy.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Erwin Schrodinger (1945) has described life as a system in
>> steady-state thermodynamic disequilibrium that maintains its
>> constant distance from equilibrium (death) by feeding on
>> low entropy from its environment -- that is, by exchanging
>> high-entropy outputs for low-entropy inputs. The same
>> statement would hold verbatim as a physical description
>> of our economic process. A corollary of this statement
>> is an organism cannot live in a medium of its own
>> waste products.
>> -- Daly and Townsend
>>
It's nearly always inappropriate to apply scientific theories to human
social constructs.
Ron Ebert
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
*******************
The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they
have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact. -John
Tyndall
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
