Entropy and ectropy
James Lovelock proposed in his Gaia hypothesis that Nature (for his
mathematical model he used the name 'Daisyworld') regulates the
Earth's energy balance through natural feedback mechanisms to
suit the evolution of life forms. All energy used by living and non-
living systems eventually degrades to irrecoverable waste heat, or
disorder. All our physical processes lead to entropy. Nature made use
of this to create the greenhouse effect, by which increasingly com-
plex life forms were introduced into the biosphere as the climate
was gradually modified.^5
Entropy or disorder has been recycled by the Earth's greenhouse
effect for millions of years. Every time we walk a pace forward, res-
piratory processes in the body burn a little ordered carbohydrate to
power the muscles of our legs, and some disordered waste heat has
been lost without trace from the surface of the body. Every time a
simple bacterium moves a milli-millimetre it releases a few micro-
calories of disordered heat waste. But every time a jet plane cuts its
way through the stratosphere it leaves behind a massive amount of
irrecoverable heat that disperses into the planetary heat sink in total
disorder. It is all a question of degree. We are now increasing entropy
to an unsustainable degree that is decimating life on the planet.
The Earth environment provides an extremely narrow tempera-
ture range compared to the extremes found in the Universe. Growth
and development of life forms require moderate temperature con-
ditions, as large or abrupt changes are harmful to most organisms.
Our warped technology has made us used to very high tempera-
tures; we produce power through combustion and hot fission. Most
of our manufacturing processes require excessive heat and high
pressure. We create chemical compounds using the coercion of heat
and pressure. Technical man can indeed produce a high degree of
order in one place, but in so doing he creates a much greater amount
of disorder elsewhere.
Scientific 'laws'
Scientific laws are fairly reliable general statements about particu-
lar events under specific circumstances. The Second Law of Thermo-
dynamics, for example, which states that all closed systems must
HIDDEN NATURE