Randy

I had the pleasure of co-hosting a visit by Dr. Prigogine to the company I was working for in 1986. I also met him in the early 70's before he won the Nobel Prize. He is a fascinating man and very humble for one of his accomplishments. I thoroughly enjoyed his visit.

I don't have time to discuss the details of his work in this area right now but here is a quote from his recent book, Modern Thermodynamics From Heat Engines to Dissipative Structures, Kondepudi, D. and Prigogine, I. 1998, New York, Wiley pp 453-452.

“Many detailed studies of such structural instabilities and molecular evolution have been conducted[34-37]. These models are beyond the scope of this text but we will note an interesting thermodynamic feature summarized in Fig. 19.13. Each new structural instability generally increases the dissipation or entropy production in the system because it increases the number of reactions. This is in contrast to the near-equilibrium situations discussed in chapter 17 in which the entropy production tends to a minimum. Structural instability may progressively drive far-from-equilibrium systems to higher states of entropy production and higher states of order. Needless to say, biochemical evolution and the origin of life is a very complex process which we are only beginning to understand. But now we see instability, fluctuation and evolution to organized states as a general nonequilibrium process whose most spectacular manifestation is the evolution of life.”

References 34-37

34. Prigogine,I., Nicholis,G. and Babloyantz,A., Physics today 25(1972) No.11. p.23, No. 12, p. 38.

35. Eigen,M. Schuster,P., The hypercycle – A principle of Natural Self-Organization, 1979 Heildeberg:Springer.

36. Nicolis,G. and Prigogine,I. Self-Organization in Nonequilibrium Systems, 1977 New York, Wiley

37. Kuppers,B-O. Molecular Theory of Evolution, 1983, Berlin:Springer.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to review equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics from the classical point of view. It is available online in paperback at a reasonable price.

Randy

[ October 31, 2002: Message edited by: Randy ]</p>

wdog

thanks randy, that is interesting stuff. I think it is rather ironic that far from being a barrier to evolution, the 2nd law may be a driving force.