The Tao of Entropy

Over at the always excellent Empirical Zeal there is a new post that helps provide a non-mathematical understanding of the strange concept of negative temperature (related to a new finding in physics). The post is titled  'What the Dalai Lama can teach us about temperatures below absolute zero' and is well worth a read. Perhaps I will post on negative temperature when I get a good conception of it's potential implications.

For now, in this less ambitious post I am going to briefly introduce the normal everyday type of temperature and link it to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, increasing entropy, and chapter 77 of the Tao Te Ching.

As pointed out at Empirical Zeal:

Temperature measures the average kinetic energy of motion of particles. When you heat a substance, you’re speeding up its molecules, and when you cool it down, you’re slowing the molecules down. 

Temperature, motion and energy are unified, and you can play with the relationships using this online simulation (click the heater box and slide the temperature).

The second law of thermodynamics describes the tendency of all closed systems to approach equilibrium. This tendency only moves in one direction (with time) and we call this tendency of approaching equilibrium, increasing entropy. Often it is also described as a movement away from order and towards disorder. It requires work through an infusion of energy to delay this process. One example of increasing entropy is your hair style. After styling (an ordered state), if left alone the hair style will become more disordered. 

It is required by the nature of thermodynamics that energy flows from high energy states to lower energy states as fast as the constraints internal to the system will allow.

Take for example a cabin the in woods heated by a wood stove. When the stove is burning the wood, the energy state inside the cabin is greater greater than that outside the cabin. The hot temperature inside has greater kinetic energy than the cooler temperature outside the cabin. Gradually however, heat will be lost as it flows from the higher energy state inside cabin to the lower energy state outside the cabin.  

If a window or door inside the cabin is open the flow of energy will be less constrained and therefore will dissipate more rapidly than if the boundaries of the cabin more tightly constrained the heat. This relates to another physics principle known as the 'Principle of least action'. Regardless to the strength of the constraints, the flow of energy will always be directed from higher energy to low energy otherwise known as increasing entropy. This tendency is behind all the change that we experience.

Some find this dynamic depressing since everything at some level is in the process of dissipation. As is always the case however, there is another way to view the dynamic. Nature is altruistic in the sense that in every interaction it takes from what is more excessive, and gives to what is weaker. Thus at Empirical Zeal they define temperature as follows:

Temperature measures the willingness of an object to give up energy

Lau Tzu had this insight some 2500 years ago. Here is a translation of chapter 77 thanks to Stan Rosenthals online version:

77. THE WAY OF THE TAO
The Tao is as supple as a bow;
the high made lower, and the lowly raised.
It shortens the string which has been stretched,
and lengthens that which has become too short.
It is the way of the Tao to take from those
who have a surplus to what they need,
providing for those without enough.

The way of the ordinary person,
is not the way of the Tao,
for such people take from those who are poor
and give to those who are rich.

The sage knows that his possessions are none,
therefore he gives to the world;
without recognition, doing his work.
In this way he accomplishes
that which is required of him;
without dwelling upon it in any way,
he gives of his wisdom without display.

 The first sentence of the chapter describes this altruistic tendency in nature. 

The second sentence describes the misguided and overly self-conscious tendency to insulate ourselves from others and the outside world in an unbalanced way.

Life emerges from non-life, not by violating the entropic tendency, but by flourishing in the flow that entropy makes possible. This can only occur when each sub-system accepts the constraints that its complementary opposite provides. In this way the tendency toward disorder makes order possible, and the tendency towards dissipation causes things to flourish.

The third sentence describes how we might increase flourishing both within ourselves , and in the world outside by following the example of nature.