Please be patient. I will get to the topic "Searching for the word".
Someone wrote to me in private. The following is, for me, a most important
extract from that letter. I want to share it with you fellow learners:
>Anyhow, may I ask you one very straightforward question...
>You write "The work W seems to indicate pragmatism, but the
>/_\F on the other side seems to indicate something else"
>Is this something else deep creativity in human imagination?
>Or am I barking up a wrong tree?
It refers to the dialogue between me and John Gunkler. John said that
I was a closet pragmatist. In my reply to John I said that the issue
of work is very important to me because of the Gibbs order relation
/_\F < W
where /_\F is the change in free energy of any system and W is any
possible work flowing between the system and its surroundings.
To summarise a few things before I try to answer the "one very
straightforward question".
Before anything else, I want to make it clear that I support
questioning anywhere at anytime. Asking questions is the best way to
delve in our vast reservoir of tacit knowledge.
What is free energy F? Consider any system SY. It has a (total) energy
E and an entropy S. The entropy measures the EXISTING ORGANISATION of
the system. For more than a century since its discovery, people
thought that entropy S expresses only chaos. Only since the seventies
is it becoming clear that entropy S expresses the existing chaos and
order (diversity of processes and structures) of any system.
The quantities energy and entropy have different units so that they
should never be compared with each other. The quantity energy is
involved in the Law of Energy Conservation (LEC) -- the energy of the
universe is constant during the creative course of time. The quantity
entropy is involved in the Law of Entropy Production (LEP) -- the
entropy of the universe increases during the creative course of time.
Gibbs managed to find the relationship between energy E and entropy S.
It is given by
E = F - T*S
where * is multiplication, F is the free energy of the system and T
the temperature (intensity of chaos). From this relationship it is
clear that the units of energy and entropy differ by the units of
temperature.
Gibbs accomplished something even more astounding. He "translated" the
LEP from the entropy dimension into the energy dimension. The LEP in
the entropy dimension is
/_\Sun > 0
It says that the entropy of the universe UN must increase. There is no
restriction on the possible changes, except the LEP itself. It means
that only changes for which the contrary to LEP, namely
" /_\Sun < 0 "
are excluded. After WWII Schroedinger tried to justify such impossible
changes by the principle of negentropy. He did so because he believed
that LEP is concerned only with chaos. If that were the case, then
processes which leads to greater order had to follow rather the
principle of negentropy.
This expression
/_\Sun > 0
may be expanded into
/_\Ssy + /_\Ssu > 0
where /_\Ssy is the change in entropy of the system SY and
/_\Ssu is the change in entropy of the surroundings. Anyway, as a
result of the "translation"
E = F - T*S
beginning from the expanded expression of LEP, Gibbs arrived at the
expression
/_\F < W
It is this latter expression which makes it so important to know more
what free energy F is. One way to increase our knowledge, is to look
at the relationship
E = F - T*S
We can arrange it mathematically, using / for division, into
S = (E - F)/T
On the left side the entropy S measures the existing organisation of
the system. So what is being done with the free energy F doing on the
right side? (The role of dividing by T is to transform E-F in energy
units into entropy units.) The free energy F is substracted form the
total energy E to give, after the necessary division by T, the entropy
S. In other words, the free energy does not measure the existing
organisation of the system. Should the free energy F measure rather
the capacity of the system to change its future organisation, then by
substracting this capacity F from the total energy E, we arrive at the
energy difference E-F. Consequently E-F is the energy unavailable to
future organisational changes since it must uphold the present
organisation of the system. This meaning for the right side
corresponds to the meaning for S on the left side.
Should F measure rather the capacity of the system to change its
future organisation, then /_\F expresses the change in this capacity
for any change. The LEP now says that whenever F changes with an
amount /_\F, there is an order relationship between /_\F and any
possible (even none) work W given by
/_\F < W
During such a change, we have to think about what becomes of the
change in free energy /_\F. Obviously, it used to change the
organisation of the system. But how?
/_\F adds to E-F by CREATING additional organisation, first
automatically as chaos and then contingently as order. Scientists and
engineers refer to the first automatical phase as the dissipation of
(free) energy. The second contingent phase may be called in complexity
theory the self-organisation of (free) energy. Both phases are
CREATIVE phases. In order to CREATE additional organisation (chaos and
order), /_\F must create primarily entropy, i.e /_\F must contribute
to
/_\Sun > 0
In fact, no entropy can ever be CREATED without having a source of
free energy to do so.
All of the above can be summarised by the following sentence: "A
change in free energy F measures the capacity of the system to change
its future organisation by producing entropy principally". Let us
think of any human as a specific system. Substituting this in the
sentence leads to "A change in free energy F measures the capacity of
the human to change his/her future organisation when producing entropy
principally". Now look at the following phrase in the last sentence:
"the capacity of the human to change its future organisation". Does
this phrase not describe creativity? If yes, then the sentence becomes
"A change in free energy F measures creativity when producing entropy
principally". Should we now also accept the tenet "(Deep) creativity
is the result of entropy production", then the sentence becomes, by
getting rid of the tautology "A change in free energy F measures
(deep) creativity".
In other words, if we look at the order relationship
/_\F < W
of Gibbs, we have on the right side that W expresses work -- "the flow
of organised energy between the system SY and its surroundings SU".
But what do we have in /_\F on the left side? Is it not "the change in
free energy F which measures (deep) creativity". We can remove the
brackets ( ) when we consider any other system that the human as
system to emerge into the idea of "deep creativity".
So far the answer to the question posed at the beginning.
Let us investigate the order relationship
/_\F < W
a little more. Let us assume that /_\F = 0, in other words, that the
system does not change in free energy. This is the case where the
system remains fixed in its present organisation. There are two
possible reasons why /_\F may be zero. The one is a the dynamical
reason. The system SY is at equilbrium with its surroundings SU. The
other reason is mechanical. One of the seven essentialities is
completely impaired -- for example, the system cannot make contact
(fruitfulness) with its surroundings. In any case, with /_\F=0 for the
system with a fixed organisation, the order relationship reduce to
0 < W
where the sign < means " is smaller than". What does this expression
mean?
When W > 0 (the same as 0 < W), energy ENTERS the system through work
the surroundings working ON the system. When W < 0, energy LEAVES the
system through work done BY the system on the the surroundings. Thus,
when
0 < W
it means that the surroundings have to work on the system to bring any
change about. Unfortunately, this work is dissipated by producing
entropy. Trying to induce by external work a direct organisational
change in an organisationally fixed system of which its free energy F
is constant, i.e /_\F =0, is a futile attempt. The only thing which
that work can accomplish, is to produce entropy. By increasing the
entropy production, the system is driven to the edge of chaos. Since
the system could not transform itself, the bifurcations at the edge of
chaos will be destructive immergences. In other words, there is little
hope, if any, for organisationally fixed systems to become transformed
constructively.
If /_\F is NOT equal to xero, we have two possibilities,
/_\F < 0 and /_\F >0. Let us take these two possibilities together
with the sign <> ("is not equal to"). What does
/_\F <> 0
mean? Principally, it defines spontaneity for organisationally
non-fixed systems. When /_\F < 0, the system changes spontaneously.
When /_\F > 0, the system changes non-spontaneously. In both cases
/_\F < W
must still apply.
When
/_\F < 0 (free energy F decreases)
the order relationship
/_\F < W
tells us that W can even have a negative value, so long as it is "not
as negative" as /_\F. But negative values for the work W means that
energy flows out of the system as a result of the system working on
its surroundings. In other words, systems changing spontaneously in
their organisation, can do work.
However, when
/_\F > 0 (free energy F increases)
the order relationship
/_\F < W
tells us that W must have a minimum positive value. It means that
energy have to flow into the system by the surroundings doing work on
the system. In other words, systems which do not change spontaneously
in their organisation, can be forced by the surroundings to do so at
the expense of free energy sources in the surroundings.
By now I hope it is clear how important it is to distinguish between
/_\F = 0 for organisationally fixed systems
and
/_\F <> 0 for organisationally non-fixed systems.
The latter case is vitally important to nature and culture.
I am now in a position to come to the topic of this contribution
"Searching for the word". It concerns the case "organisationally
non-fixed" systems. Another way to decribe such systems for which
/_\F <> 0
is to call them systems "committed to organisational change". Still
another way to describe such systems, is to speak of them as "creative
systems" since /_\F measures (deep) creativity. A system for which
/_\F = 0
is a non-creative system.
If I speak of commitment, does it carry the meaning "systems committed
to organisational change"?
If I speak of creativity, does it carry the meaning "systems
manifesting a change in their free energy"?
To save myself from a lot of unnecessary typing, look up what the
dictionaries have to say about the following words:
abandon, abjure, addapt, bind, cede, commit, compel, concern, employ,
engage, engross, hold, interest, matter, sacirifice, secure and yield.
There are many more which you can add for yourself. All of them,
whether positive or negative, concerns the case
/_\F <> 0
rather than the case
/_\F = 0
I am searching for a word with an existing meaning corresponding to
the formal expression
/_\F <> 0 (non-zero change in free energy)
The closest I can get is "creative" system. Is there any other word in
English which will allow me to get even closer? Thank you for your
help.
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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