If entropy is always growing, how is it possible that complex and ordered systems like life emerged ?

Answer 1

Biological systems degrade a large amount of very organized food in the process of growing and maintaining themselves. We are not an isolated system and overall we add to entropy while locally reversing it.

Ilya Prigogine won the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his "Theory of Dissipative Structures" which addressed this question.

Answer 2

Life does not go against entropy, it actually requires entropy to function

Respiration is a good example of a life process that is driven by entropy. Entropy makes the air rush into the lungs when the chest expands. Entropy makes oxygen diffuse from the lungs into the blood. When the oxygen-rich blood reaches the capillaries, entropy makes the oxygen diffuse into the oxygen-hungry tissues.

The order in life, in a chemical and entropic sense, involves the sequestering of materials and the formation of gradients. Both processes are reversible, so the negative change in entropy is balanced by a positive change when the reverse process occurs. Even so, the entropic drive toward equilibrium is so great, that huge amounts of energy are required to generate gradients and isolate materials from mixed substances. This is why living organisms must constantly consume food and absorb energy to live.

Answer 3

My goodness! Keep religion out of science questions. Complex and ordered systems arrive from the use of energy. The overall entropy of the system increases, locally it decreases.

Let me give you an example. A car is a well ordered low entropy device. BUT huge amounts of entropy come about because of its manufacture.

Nothing to do with a creator .... ugh !!!!

Answer 4

They had to be complex and ordered to deal with the entropy and each other complex and ordered system. Once we form and grow, and are set out into the world. Entropy takes over and we die... so sad.

Answer 5

The only way to reverse entropy is to add energy to the system. It is theorized that the energy came from lightning in the atmosphere.

Think about a cluttered desk. Entropy is at work when you take the easy way and just drop you papers on the desk. The only way you get order on the desk is to use your own energy to put things into the proper place.

Answer 6

Try to put a tomato seed into a flowerpot. Add water, sunlight and a little fertilizer. A tomato plant grows.

This is a tremendous reduction of entropy in a very short time.

Is this physically possible? Obviously it is. The sunlight contains enough free energy to "finance" the process.

Compared to this "miracle", evolution is a very slow reduction of entropy.

Just one of many pseudo-scientific arguments used against evolution. It has never appeared in a serious scientific article. Just put forward by fundamentalists who know nothing about entropy and about evolution, and probably not much more about theology.

Answer 7

Entropy and self-organization are both always growing. Self-organization is obviously marginally more influencial, or you wouldn't be here to ask that question! (Good question, though!)

P.S. To clarify, "self-organization" does not require any 'outside force', it is the sort of activity created by gradients in chemical reactions, gravity, magnetism, etc.,etc.,etc....

Answer 8

Eeyore and Pooh are better of acquaintances so i'm hoping they are consistently chuffed. it rather is possibly achievable if there is not any longer any honey left and Eeyore is going forward and unearths some for Winnie the Pooh!

Answer 9

The nature of the Universe is to achieve balance. It's ordered chaos, we just can't see the patterns yet.

Answer 10

And there is one of the questions of the ages. The answer? There is a Creator.