The Thermodynamics of evolution: Essay

By François Roddier

Thermodynamique de l'évolution - Un essai de thermo-bio-sociologie - translated into English with the help of Steve Ridgway

À PROPOS DE L'AUTEUR

François Roddier est né en 1936. Astrophysicien, il est connu de tous les astronomes pour ses travaux qui ont permis de compenser l’effet des turbulences atmosphériques lors de l’observation des astres. Après avoir créé le département d’astrophysique de l’université de Nice, c’est aux États-Unis, au National Optical Astronomy Observatory (Tucson, Arizona) puis à l’Institute for Astrophysics de l’Université d’Hawaii, qu’il participe au développement des systèmes d’optique adaptative qui équipent désormais les grands outils d’observation comme le télescope CFHT (Canada-France-Hawaii), ou le télescope japonais Subaru tous deux situés à Hawaii, et les télescopes de l’ESO (European Southern Observatory), l’observatoire européen austral situé au Chili. Savant toujours curieux, il s’intéresse aux aspects thermodynamiques de l’évolution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Editions Parole
• Release date: Apr 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9782917141892

Book preview

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ISBN : 978-2-917141-89-2

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Page de titre

François Roddier

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The

Thermodynamics

of evolution

Translated into English with the help of

Steve Ridgway

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Introduction

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Fifty years ago, I began my scientific career under the direction of Jacques-Émile Blamont. He had just returned from the United States, where he had contributed to the beginnings of space research. Back in France, he intended to put the country, and with it the rest of Europe, on the same track. In March, 1959, I joined him in the first European space experiment: a launch of Véronique rockets in the Sahara desert.

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The fifty years that followed were marked by spectacular progress in our knowledge of the universe. Similar progress was made in practically all other fields of knowledge. Such progress is unprecedented in human history. One would think that it must have improved the fortunes of mankind, and to a degree, it has. The field of medicine, and especially surgery, has seen great advances; agricultural production has considerably improved, too. But only a fraction of humanity is really profiting from all this progress. After temporarily receding, hunger is on the rise again all over the world. Virtually non-existent at the beginning of my career, unemployment has become endemic in France. Around the world, economic crises are now pervasive, oil resources are dwindling and our planet’s protective ozone layer is in danger of destruction. And if that was not enough, the threat of global warming is looming. What have we done?

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Most researchers of my generation are asking themselves this question, especially those in the space sciences. In 2004, Jacques Blamont, for instance, published a book called Introduction au siècle des menaces (Introduction to the century of threats)¹, in which he deconstructs, bit by bit, the infernal machine that we are now in the process of bequeathing to our children, thanks to the scientific progress we so strongly believed in…². In 2008, at the fiftieth anniversary of his laboratory, he confided to me that this is going to be worse than I predicted. The next year, together with theologist Jacques Arnoud, he wrote the book Lève-toi et marche (Stand up and walk)³, in which they debated the human condition and the state of the world.

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In 2005, another space scientist, geophysicist André Lebeau who occupied prominent positions at the CNES and ESA⁴, published L’engrenage de la technique (The grip of technique)⁵, in which he analyses human evolution in terms of biological evolution. His next book, L’enfermement planétaire (Planetary containment, 2008)⁶, came to troubling conclusions based on the limits of our resources.

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That same year, Roger-Maurice Bonnet, my colleague, friend and fellow student under Blamont, scientific director at ESA and then at ISSI⁷, co-authored a book with Lodewijk Woltjer, former director of ESO⁸. This publication, entitled Survivre mille siècles, le pouvons-nous? (Can we Survive a Thousand Centuries?)⁹, reviews a number of possible causes for human extinction.

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After spending the last sixteen years of my career in the United States, I moved back to France for retirement in January 2001. Here, I became interested in biological evolution and started asking myself the same questions. Initially, I shared my reflections on a dedicated website:

http://francois-roddier.fr/

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These studies led me very quickly to the laws of thermodynamics, a subject I was familiar with from teaching it at the University of Nice. On re-establishing contact with Roger Bonnet, I learned about his forthcoming book. I mentioned to him that I might have an answer to his central question, and in response, he invited me to present my ideas in Bern, at which time he convinced me to publish them.

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Writing a book on this subject is an especially arduous undertaking for various reasons, the first being the difficulty of explaining the little taught science of thermodynamics, particularly the new field of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. For example, the notion of entropy¹⁰ is so complex that it took scientists a whole century to understand it. Even today, some people still distinguish between thermodynamic entropy and informational entropy without knowing that these are one and the same concept. The entropy of a system is a measure of our lack of knowledge about this system. This implies that entropy is as much a property of the observer as it is of the system observed. A number of scientists are still reluctant to accept this.

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At the origin of the problem is the physical interpretation of probability. To some, probability is a physical quantity that is measurable through statistical procedures, called the frequentist interpretation. The work of researchers in this tradition is based on steady state and ergodic hypotheses that are physically unverifiable. To others, probability is a subjective quantity that depends on our a priori knowledge, a statement called the Bayesian interpretation. In his book The logic of science, the American physicist E. T. Jaynes shows how the Bayesian approach allows us to unify probability theory and statistics in one unique deductive logic that, in turn, enables us to take optimal decisions in the face of incomplete information. He calls this the logic of science.

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The recent advances on which this book relies are founded on and implicitly follow the Bayesian approach. As our knowledge forms part of the universe we are studying, it is incomplete and always will be. As we shall see, humankind is a dissipative structure. By importing information from its environment, mankind continuously improves its knowledge base; by doing this, it diminishes its internal entropy and dissipates energy ever more efficiently.

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It is clear that, while the laws of physics are understood to be generally valid, their application to domains as complex as biology or human sciences seems still far from satisfactory. The difficulty here lies in the number of variables at play, as well as in the non-linearity of phenomena. However, the second half of the twentieth century saw considerable progress in both areas. The problem posed by the number of variables was tackled through a statistical approach, forming the discipline of statistical mechanics - the continuation of what was once called thermodynamics. The problem of non-linearity has evolved thanks to numerical experimentation, forming the discipline of non-linear dynamics, or chaos theory.

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Despite these improvements, difficulties persist, and the validity of certain theoretical results used in this book is actively debated. These difficulties affect the very notion of dissipative structure. By definition, such a structure is in a steady state, which seems to exclude a priori the possibility of studying its evolution. Another problem lies in the exact boundaries of these structures. Such issues are the subject of continuing discussion by specialists.

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Despite these on-going difficulties, results obtained so far are immensely significant. Had I been told ten years ago that the laws of statistical mechanics could explain human behaviour, I would have smiled dubiously. Today, however, I am absolutely convinced that they do. The fundamental laws of biochemistry are those of thermodynamics, as established by Gibbs, and insofar as living beings are made up of biochemical reactions, they cannot but obey these laws.

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My aim is to show that the results we have so far obtained open up great perspectives, not just in relation to biology, but also to the human sciences. The results that I describe in this essay are remarkably coherent to me, which is why I am confident of their significance. Undoubtedly, I will be criticised for over confidence, though in this essay I will only identify the pieces of the puzzle. Essentially, I see this book as the prologue to a scientific programme for the twenty-first century, a programme that allows us to unify the sciences, from cosmology to human sciences.

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Regrettably, the natural sciences are strongly partitioned at this moment in time. Very few physicists show an interest in biology, and even less in the human sciences. Conversely, few biologists and even fewer humanities and social science researchers have mastered the tools of physics. Each to their own discipline! In my case, I trained and worked in physics and, ten years ago, embarked on studying biology. To write a book that encompasses all disciplines, from cosmology to sociology, is not an easy undertaking, and mistakes and imprecision are unavoidable. I therefore ask my readers to be forgiving, and to correspond with me about potential issues, so that these can be included and addressed in a future edition.

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One of the issues that I have struggled with is language, as each discipline develops its own jargon. To assist the readers, a definition of the scientific and technical terms that are italicized in the main text will be found in a glossary at the end of the book. The use of everyday language turned out to be equally tricky. Richard Dawkins entitled his first book "The Selfish Gene", as if a gene could exhibit human behaviour. Dawkins justified this by saying that it was a figure of speech. My own book goes even further: it is my goal to show that, with different aspects, one is able to find the same underlying processes as much in physics as in biology or sociology. One can follow these processes continuously from one discipline to another and therefore can describe them with the same vocabulary. Thus it may seem that I am using terminology carelessly, when the opposite is more nearly true.

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Everyday language is especially suited for describing human and even animal behaviour. But can one also use it to talk about things? People say, for instance, that an individual imitates another. The same thing can be said about a monkey or a bird. But if a magnet aligns itself to its neighbour, can we say that this, too, is imitation? In this book (section 3.1), I will show how these processes are similar and deeply related.

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The issue of language becomes particularly acute when we are dealing with manifestations of intention. We may kill a rabbit to eat - a cat could be said to do the same, albeit perhaps more instinctively. As we shall see, bacteria orient themselves towards their food source. Is this because they intend to feed themselves or, more simply, because their behaviour follows the law of Le Chatelier (section 9.1)? For me, the question is one of language.

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Conversely, we now know that the Earth’s atmosphere maintains itself in a state of "maximum production of entropy" that correspondingly maximizes its dissipation of energy. It appears increasingly clear that these processes apply to ecosystems, too. In fact, ecosystems are observed to self-organise so as to constantly maximize their rate of energy dissipation. One is left wondering whether the same principles might also apply to human societies. Could we say, for instance, that a human society self-organises to maximize the speed with which it dissipates energy? I will not hesitate to assert this, even if the range of our choices and the goals of our actions may appear to differentiate us from nature.

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Physicists are effectively accustomed to expressing the laws of physics in the form of variational principles: a mechanical system evolves according to a principle of least action; light propagates by minimising its optical path. For a physicist everything takes place as if light is constantly looking for the fastest way of getting from one point to another. Thus one could come to the conclusion that the universe incessantly strives to maximize the speed with which energy dissipates. That this principle also applies to human evolution is not an obvious consequence, but it should not surprise us, even if humans can experience their intentions differently.

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We know that the laws of chemistry derive entirely from those of physics, even if this derivation is not always easy to trace. The same thing can be said of biochemistry. There are still a number of biologists who are reluctant to accept that the laws of biology stem entirely from those of chemistry. Even if the origin of life has not yet been resolved, it has become clear that it resulted from particular chemical reactions that scientists call autocatalytic (section 8.1). We can thus move seamlessly from chemistry to biology. Natural selection now appears as a consequence of the laws of thermodynamics (section 5.3).

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The application of biology to humanity encounters even greater reluctance and resistance. In the past, premature extrapolation of biological laws towards human society has lead to aberrations¹¹. The idea that our behaviour could follow natural laws hurt our feeling of free will. To reduce humankind to the laws of physics comes close to a terribly materialist approach. It seems to obscure the spirituality of humanity that we consider essential to us. We shall see that, far from occulting it, this shows its role and significance.

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In fact, the central idea of this book is that evolution has progressively shifted from genetic to cultural. Culture is defined here as the set of information that is available in the brain. Following this definition, culture is not exclusive to humanity. Three chapters are dedicated to the passage from genes to culture. The particularity of humankind is that has become the dominant factor in its evolution. In other words, one cannot apply the laws of biology to humans without replacing genes with culture: human evolution is essentially cultural. Thermodynamically speaking, human minds reduce their entropy (culturally self-organise) so that we (and our society) can dissipate more energy.

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In the course of this book, we will see that certain phenomena, such as cyclones, memorise information about their environment. Their memory is inertial. Plants memorise information in their genes. Evolved animals also memorise information in their brains, which is why we can train them. One can say that they are capable of learning. When we speak of human beings, we describe ourselves as being conscious. As being part of humankind, we share vast reservoirs of information and experience. Thus, one can speak of a collective conscience.

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What physics and biology teach us – and history confirms – is that the problems that humankind faces can be resolved by utilizing our collective conscience. At the moment, humanity is becoming conscious of itself and begins to worry about its chances of long-term survival. This book is a contribution to this growing collective consciousness, which is likely to take several generations. In this spirit, I would like to dedicate this book to all young people. It is they, who will finally and fully elucidate the laws of evolution. With this awareness, they will build a future humanity, filled with hope.

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There remains a last concern: the reflections that I put forward in this book entirely confirm the fears expressed by many authors, notably those I mentioned at the beginning. More and more work is published each year on environmental issues, the end of oil or the collapse of societies. The risk in writing this book, for me, is to come across as just another bearer of bad news and of being ignored as a consequence. This is why I only briefly touch on the multiple crises that affect our world, and leave this task to more qualified authors. Instead, I will concentrate on what might happen after the current crises, because that is where hope appears. I am convinced that this hope is justified: it is confirmed by the laws of physics and by everything that we know from modern biology. Although my conclusion may seem too optimistic, I believe it is grounded in the underlying laws of evolution.

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Finally, I would like to extend a message towards current and future generations. History has shown us that each time a society is in crisis, it searches for the guilty and identifies its scapegoats. Primitive civilisations offered human sacrifices to their gods; the Romans tortured Christians; the Middle Ages ended in religious wars; the French monarchy decapitated their king and a number of aristocrats. More recently, Nazi Germany gassed Jews. Today, we blame immigrants or gypsies for crime or unemployment. This book wants to show the real culprit: the laws of statistical mechanics against which we are powerless. Howard Bloom¹² speaks of a Lucifer principle without acknowledging that it is really a matter of fundamental principles of thermodynamics. Our suffering is caused by the entropy associated with our lack of knowledge about the laws of the universe. As soon as these laws are universally recognised and understood, this entropy will go away, and humanity will be enabled to take charge of its destiny and alleviate its misery.

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1. Jacques Blamont. Introduction au siècle des menaces (Introduction to the Century of Threats). Odile Jacob (2004).

2. A quote from the book editor.

3. Jacques Arnould, Jacques Blamont. Lève-toi et marche. Propositions pour un futur de l’humanité (Stand up and Walk. Propositions for a Future of Mankind). Odile Jacob (2009).

4. CNES: Centre National d’Études Spatiales (French National Centre for Space Studies); ESA: European Space Agency.

5. André Lebeau. L’engrenage de la technique. Essai sur une menace planétaire (The grip of Technique. Essay on a World Threat). Gallimard (2005).

6. André Lebeau. L’enfermement planétaire (A Closed World). Gallimard (2008).

7. International Space Science Institute, based in Bern, Switzerland.

8. ESO: European Southern Observatory, headquartered in Garching, near Munich, Germany.

9. Roger-Maurice Bonnet, Lodewijk Woltjer. Surviving 1000 Centuries, Can we do it? Springer, Praxis, (2008).

10. The terms that are printed in italics are scientific and technical terms and are explained in the glossary at the end of this book.

11. Examples include social darwinism, biological justifications for racism and eugenics.

12. Howard Bloom, The Luficer Principle. Atlantic Monthly Press (1995).

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"The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world."

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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Phenomenon of Man

Prologue

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The Concept of Evolution

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The idea that the world evolves seems self-evident to us. Every day, my computer reminds me to update its software. Everyone is eager to upgrade their mobile phones in order to take advantage of the latest gadgets. We forget that only fifteen years ago, ownership of a mobile phone or home

internet was a novelty.

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For the last two hundred years, humanity has become used to constant scientific and technological progress. This progress happens faster and faster, with no end to this acceleration in sight. To us, it feels like the natural state of things. The majority of us believe that this trend will continue forever. Few people realize that things have not always been this way. In the following paragraphs, I will show that they have not, indeed.

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In the Middle Ages, progress was so slow that it was almost imperceptible. The idea of evolution is entirely absent from the literature of this epoch. The perception was that humanity had always been in the state in which it could then be observed, that is, in the state in which God had created it. Therefore, medieval paintings always show the holy family wearing the fashion of the time.

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It seems as if everything started to change around the end of the fifteenth century, with the development of typography, pioneered by Johannes Gutenberg. At that time, people generally believed that the world could be explained through the Bible. Accordingly, it was the Bible that became the first mass printed book. Throughout the sixteenth century then, people learned to read in order to read the Bible. Consequently, there was a great surge of literacy. By reading the Bible, people learned how to interpret and think for themselves. Michel de Montaigne notably encouraged his readers to engage in philosophical reflection. Books became more abundant.

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By the seventeenth century, scholars such as René Descartes proclaimed the possibility that the world could be understood independently of religious beliefs. This moment marked the rise of rational thought that we call Cartesian. Blaise Pascal, by contrast, remained undecided between religion and reason, leading to his famous wager.

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With the arrival of the eighteenth century, books had become so ubiquitous that the need arose to compress this information and to assemble all of human knowledge in a single book. This project resulted in the Encyclopaedia of Denis Diderot and Jean de Rond d’Alembert, and in L’Histoire Naturelle (Natural History) by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. Because the unification of all of this knowledge enlightened humans, this period has been called the Enlightenment.

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From Buffon’s Natural History, readers learned that remains of seashells are sometimes found in the high mountains. The findings of such shells, normally present in the ocean, put in question whether the rock formations may once have been submerged in water. Around the same time, Scottish naturalist James Hutton identified lava pieces in his garden and wondered whether there had once been volcanoes in Scotland. Bit by bit, new evidence came to light, leading to the conclusion that Earth itself is subject to evolution.

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Less than half a century later, Jean Baptiste de Lamarck first studied botany, then zoology, and finally became interested in palaeontology. The latter suggests that living organisms that once existed on Earth are now extinct. The mounting evidence led to the hypothesis that plant and animal species evolve as well. Moreover, they evolve along a trajectory from most simple to most complex. In their perfection, humans appeared to be the pinnacle of evolution. A further half-century later, Charles Darwin published his book on the origin of species as a consequence of natural selection, bringing the mechanism of evolution to light.

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In 1916, Albert Einstein published his equation connecting the form of space-time to the distribution of energy. To his great surprise, the Universe appeared to vary in time. As the concept of an evolving universe seemed impossible to Einstein, he added a cosmological constant to his equation in order to render the Universe stationary. When, in 1929, Edwin Hubble demonstrated that the universe is indeed expanding, Einstein remarked that the inclusion of his