"Everything that moves can be viewed as an engine that is connected to a device that dissipates power, and which functions as a brake. The engine produces the power, and the brake dissipates (destroys) the power and transmits it as heat to the ambient. The earth itself is an engine + brake system. The fuel is solar, and the heat rejection is the thermal radiation released to the cold sky. The heat inflow equals the heat outflow. Between the inflow and the outflow hovers the globe, which we can imagine as a ball of yarn with innumerable moving threads, all rubbing in ways that resist movement: atmospheric and oceanic currents, river basins, forests, heat leaks from burning fires and animal and human movement."
("The Physics of Life: The Evolution of Everything", Adrian Bejan)
Some days ago a good friend of mine talked me about a book: "The Physics of Life: The Evolution of Everything", by Adrian Bejan. At first I read in internet a bad review in a bad magazine about the words of this writer, but anyway and despite of that I finally got and read the whole book...and it was really amazing. The author develops his argument using a very clever physics thesis that goes to the core point of the traditional question of what's life. And this is important because if we want to understand objectively the concept of life, it should be already clear that we have to study it from the physics, the very basic of all sciences: the one that is able to explain the dynamics and movement (the flow) of all the phenomenons in the world.
It took my attention also the big similarities that this great scientific work had with another essay published by the Oxford University Press titled: "Everything Flows, Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology", and even more with a former publication titled "Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature" by Eric Chaisson. It really seems that all the current intellectual endeavour runs in this direction, looking life as what it is: a continual process with no definitive bounds. A natural and structural flow from which the essence of reality gets its final and unique "will": reach at any time the maximum amount of movement per unit of mass and volume (density). Adrian Bejan calls this fact as the constructal law and it references to the evidence that all phenomena in the existence rearrange always in order to achieve the greatest work possible (work in the physic term of the weight moved over distances during the lifetime of a system). In this manner all in the world is alive because there is no real (essential) difference between animate and inanimate. There is just flow of systems and structures. In short: movement.
And, having said this, how can we get then the maximal work given the circumstances? It's easy: by organization. Organization is the speed-governor of nature, it's the manner in which the reality always finds (evolutionarily) the best ways to construct and adjust structural patterns such that the global work is maximized. Understood in this way, life is everything and it's everywhere. And so the traditional concept of "life" (our common sense interpretation) is nothing but an abstract and arbitrary concept that our mind conforms to grasp the reality, but whose boundaries are illusory. In any case, all we can say objectively about the world is that the only real thing we can empirically observe is a constant flow of movement that naturally trends to organize the matter to get always per unit time the most vast net production (the higher weight density moved over distance per unit of time).
Anyway, why does the Universe want to generate as much work as possible? It's also simple: because to do work is to consume highly useful energy (as well know as exergy) and expel in exchange a low useless energy form (like for example infrared radiation). That's the true goal of the cosmos: to burn out as soon as possible all the potential energy able to generate new net movement. And to do so, the universe just use any available flow structure as a medium to this end: the only true purpose of existence, by the way.
And what about we as humans? Well...we are just another natural medium with no essential faculty aside our current huge efficiency to produce work density along our planet. That's all. Nothing special in us, or in our society, nor in our objectives: we are basically machines (organized structures) inside an universal flow system in charge to diminish asap the inner potential energy gradient available. And although we are normally no aware of this fact, just ask yourself about your life and your ambitions and personal targets. You'll see (probably astonished) you can always reduce ALL your conduct to an urge for extending and/or increasing in a way or another the global net movement contained in the Earth. As Adrian Bejan says:
"The effect of a flow system over time is measurable in terms of the weight moved over distances during the lifetime of that system. The work required to move any weight on the world map (whether a vehicle, river water or animal mass) is proportional to the weight of that mass times the distance to which it is moved horizontally, on the landscape. It is this way with the life of the river basin and the animal, and it is the same with the life of man, family, city and country. The economic activity of a country is all this movement—weight (people, goods) moved over distances. In politics, history and sociology one observes and speaks about the increasing speed of everything—faster modes of transportation and communication, the acceleration of technology, social change and the pace of life. People feel that they are running out of time, even though technological changes generate more free time for everybody. More time to do what? In geography, economics and urbanism one observes and speaks of humanity needing more space. More space to do what? This continuing phenomenon is known as expansion and globalization. It is marked by the spread of city living in three dimensions, horizontally on the landscape and vertically, upward and downward. People complain about lack of space because of all the construction sites, even though the construction sites are creating new habitable space. Better language, writing and science also give us more time to think. Again, the question is, to think about what? The answer is that we need to think about more activity, more movement, more flow of humanity on the surface of the earth. The same answer holds true for the questions about why we need more time and more space.
These seemingly unrelated and paradoxical tendencies constitute a universal urge and phenomenon, the generation of greater flow access and the evolution of design in nature. These tendencies are predictable. They are to be expected because they have been an integral part of organization in nature forever."
We wants to live more, to produce and consume more, to know more, to understand more, to enjoy more, to travel more, we want our children to grow and live the more, and in general to experience as much as possible: more, more and more...movement. That's the basic physic principle after all this urge of ours. All what we really want, every and each of our wills are focused (no matter if we are aware of that or not) to boost and increase the net work made in our planet as a whole. We are just thermal designs flowing side by side with the rest of the biosphere. And moreover, the biosphere itself is just a little part of the entire terrestrial machinery of work:
"Before the emergence of the biosphere, the global movement was intense and evolving toward better architectures of atmospheric currents, oceanic currents, dust, volcanic eruptions and so on. Before the biosphere, the global flow architecture was a tapestry, a weave of lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. To these three flowing vasculatures, the biosphere added itself as the fourth. Together, the four vasculatures are reshaping the landscape much more effectively than before the biosphere."
In this sense the biosphere, and we as part of it, are just a new layer of natural evolution towards favoring this urge for maximizing the entropy production (by generating movement and efficient flows). In short: we (biology in general) are just mediums by which the nature is able to increase the work production given the circumstances. A simple and spontaneous step forward to improve the energy consume per unit time...and nothing else. This natural urge was our creator (designer) and this same innate impulse will ever be our conductual guideline: we live so by (and only by) this essential will to flow as much as possible...and period.
