Chaisson Chapter One Cosmos Evolution

Sep 14, 2010 7:25 PM  (this is copied from node above... make all addenda here!)

COSMIC EVOLUTION Eric Chaisson

Rising Complexity:  energy is a principal driver.

But ... can we reconcile the observed constructiveness of cosmic evolution

with the inherent destructiveness of thermodynamics.

We especially want  to know about  the origins of  the diverse  structures

spanning our universe, notably those often characterized by the intuitive term

“complexity”—a  state  of  intricacy,  complication,  variety,  or  involvement,  as

in  the  interconnected parts of a system. Particularly  intriguing  is  the rise of

complexity  over  the  course  of  time,  indeed dramatically  so within  the past

half-billion years since the start of the Cambrian Era on Earth.

(Is there a unifying principle ... a kind of Neoplatonism that puts everything on common ground?)

Energy flows engendered largely by the expanding cosmos do seem to be as

universal a currency in the origin of structured systems as anything yet found

in nature. Furthermore, the optimization of such energy flows might well act

as the motor of evolution broadly conceived, thereby affecting all of physical,

biological, and cultural evolution, the sum total of which constitutes cosmic

evolution—much as presented in Figure 1.

page 5...  (from chaos to ORDER)

CHAISSON  figure 1 is GREAT:  3 pictures:

Phys evolution  globular cluster;  bio evolution  view down axis of DNA  and

3)  Cultural evol  a gothic cathedral stain glass window. ... all look similar... beautiful rotational symmetry.

Arrow of Time

Figure 2 (a) shows the archetypal illustration of cosmic evolution—the arrow

of  time. Regardless  of  its  shape  or  orientation,  such  an  arrow  represents  a

symbolic  guide  to  the  sequence  of  events  that  have  changed  systems  from

simplicity to complexity, from inorganic to organic, from chaos to order. That

sequence,  as  determined  by  a  large  body  of  post-Renaissance  data,  accords

well with the idea that a thread of change links the evolution of primal energy

into elementary particles, the evolution of those particles into atoms, in turn

of  those atoms  into galaxies and stars, and of stars  into heavy elements,  the

evolution  of  those  elements  into  the molecular  building  blocks  of  life,  of

those molecules  into  life  itself,  and of  intelligent  life  into  the  cultured  and

technological society that we now share.

In short, what

Darwinian  change does  for plants  and  animals,  cosmic  evolution  aspires  to

do for all things. And if Darwinism created a revolution of understanding by

helping to free us from the notion that humans differ from other life-forms

on our planet,  then cosmic evolution extends  that  intellectual  revolution by

treating matter on Earth  and  in our bodies no differently  from  that  in  the

stars and galaxies beyond.

Figure 2:  ARROW of TIME:  evol from the particulate to galactic to Stellar to

Planetary to Chemical

page 8   greater amounts of diversity and complexity...  get change in surrounding environment first.

NONEQUILIBRIUM THERMODYNAMICS 

thermodynamics ... do not translate as movement of heat, rather better is change of energy.

All systems of interest are OPEN systems (energy flows in and out)

the free energy builds structures.

Structures left alone naturally tend

to break down and increase entropy. When unattended, for example, domestic

households grow more disorderly: lawns become unkempt, stoves greasy, roofs

leaky. Even human beings who fail to eat gradually become less ordered and die;

and when we die we decay to ultimate disorder, thereby returning our elemental

resources to Earth and the universe that gave us life. All things will eventually

degenerate into chaotic, randomized, less ordered states.

By utilizing energy, however, order can be achieved temporarily, or at

least the environmental conditions made conducive for the potential rise of

order within open systems ripe for growth. To extend our example, some

human sweat and hard work—an energy flow—can put a disarrayed house

back in order, yet this reordering comes at the expense of those cleaning the

house; we get tired and increasingly disordered ourselves. In turn, humans

can become reinvigorated (i.e., personally reenergized or reordered) by eating

again—which is also an energy flow—but this renewed order arises, further

in turn, at the expense of the agricultural environment th

Look at Figure 3B (not A... A is too general)  3B really explains it...

you have a species A that is stable, then the environment changes at time of first arrow and

species either adapts and changes to species B or goes extinct as C.

There is a genl trend toward increased complexity with time...  increasing adaptability.

(Bob note:  survival/ persistence is the key item:  has that complexity rendered you capable of

longer life ...  more heirs... or not.)

Order is often sustained by consumption of substances rich in energy, accomp by

a discharge of substs low in energy.

page 11 is the heart of the explanation:  need fluctuations that are so great that they cannot be damped,

the system is forced to regroup.   The amplified fluctuations are continuously driven by a flow of energy

and stabilized by a flow of energy.  (sounds like bullshit).  Order thru fluctuations

Examples:  convections cells in a pot of warm water, river eddies behind rocks, and atmospheric storms

that turn into hurricanes  all display enhanced order when energies exceed threshold.

Even kitchen refrigerators and coherent lasers maintain order when fed energy.

TECH LIFE page 14 is the key transition;

technology enables life to manipulate matter even to control it, much as matter

evolved to overwhelm radiation.

Life is now taking matter into its own hands.

Empirically MEASURING COMPLEXITY page 14

page 15 ...   how to characterize complexity

is it  nonjunk genome size (no)  John Maynard Smith

being morphology and behavioral flexibility  John Tyler Bonner

number of cell types  Stuart Kauffman

CHAISSON likes  ENERGY  (rather than Shannon type energy etc)

but, it cannot be energy alone... a star has more energy than an ameba.

Absol energies are not as telling as relative values, which depend of a system's size, composition and

efficiency. Rather, organization  is  seemingly governed by  the optimum use of energy—not  too

little as to starve a system, yet not too much as to destroy it.

page 16  RATE at which free energy transits complex systems of a given mass.

ENERGY RATE DENSITY  in ergs per second per gram.

a kind of  energy density  is Cosmos and Culture

useful, much as it was competing energy densities of radiation and matter

that  dictated  events  in  the  earlier  universe. Moreover,  it  is  the  rate  at

which free energy transits complex systems of given mass that seems most

constructive. Hence,  “energy  rate  density”

Figure 5 plots a sampling of findings, where energy rate densities, in units of

erg/second/gram, are graphed as horizontal histograms proportional to vari-

ous  systems’ historical  longevities. As  expected,  yet here only briefly  stated:

red giant stars are more complex than main-sequence stars, eukaryotes more

complex  than  prokaryotes,  animals  more  complex  than  plants,  industrial

society more complex than hunter-gatherers,

This  is not  to say, by any means,  that galaxies per se evolved  into stars,

or  stars  into planets,  or planets  into  life. Rather,  this  analysis  suggests  that

galaxies  gave  rise  to  environments  suited  to  the  birth  of  stars,  that  some

stars spawned environments conducive to the formation of planets, and that

countless  planets  likely  fostered  environments  ripe  for  the  origin  of  life.

Cosmic  evolution,  to  repeat,  incorporates  both  developmental  and  genera-

tional change.

See Fig 5  ENERGY RATE DENSITY  ergs per sec per gram

As  such,  selected  objects  are  simply  those  that  remain  after  all  the

poorly adapted or  less fortunate ones have been removed from a population

of  such objects. A better  term might be “nonrandom elimination,” a phrase

long  championed  by  one  of  the  20th  century’s  leading  evolutionists, Ernst

Mayr (1997)

Selection works alongside  the  flow of  resources  into and out of all open

systems, not just life-forms. Ordered systems are selected partly for their abil-

ity to command energy; and this energy is the “force,” if there is any at all, in

evolution.

Starting with

life’s precursor molecules  (the  realm of chemical evolution) and all  the way

up to human brains exemplifying the most complex clump of animate matter

known, we encounter the same general trend found earlier for stars: the greater

the perceived complexity of the system, the greater the flow of energy density

through that system—either to build it, or to maintain it, or both.

Example 1:  Stars:  gradually enrich the interstellar medium with greater elemental complexity.

Example 2 (page 19)  PLANTS:   clearly using energy rate densities well in excess of those

in stars.