Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Ordering Principal

In order for a system to increase in complexity, i.e., for entropy to decrease, it is not enough that energy be added to the system.  The energy must be organized and controlled in order to produce something more complex than existed prior.

Consider a the building of a book factory, with a steam powered printing press.  Materials brought to the site include the paper, ink, glue, boilers, steam turbines, fuel tanks and gasoline to power the boilers.  Shortly after construction is completed, fuel is added to the system in an unsafe way and causes a massive explosion.  It is not reasonable to expect that the results of the blast will create a finished book.  However, if you organize the materials properly according to a blueprint and operate the factory according to the right processes, the output of the factory will be a finished book.  In this case, you are still adding energy to the system via burning of the fuel, only it is guided by the work of people who monitor and correct the functioning of the system in order to use the energy effectively to create an increased complexity from the system, the book.

Likewise, natural processes that produce more complex forms from less complex materials, must not only receive energy, they must have some mechanism to order the use of that energy in generating the complex form.

I propose that in cosmology the fundamental ordering principal is gravity.  Every organized structure at the astronomical level is formed in some way by gravity, either directly as in the formation of stars, planets and solar systems, or indirectly as in the creation of supernova which are the rebound from gravitational forces overcoming the supporting energy generated by a stars nuclear reaction.