Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life [Hardcover]

Eric D. Schneider (Author), Dorion Sagan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226739368 | ISBN-13: 978-0226739366 | Publication Date: June 1, 2005 | Edition: 1

Scientists, theologians, and philosophers have all sought to answer the questions of why we are here and where we are going. Finding this natural basis of life has proved elusive, but in the eloquent and creative Into the Cool, Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan look for answers in a surprising place: the second law of thermodynamics. This second law refers to energy's inevitable tendency to change from being concentrated in one place to becoming spread out over time. In this scientific tour de force, Schneider and Sagan show how the second law is behind evolution, ecology,economics, and even life's origin.

Working from the precept that "nature abhors a gradient," Into the Cool details how complex systems emerge, enlarge, and reproduce in a world tending toward disorder. From hurricanes here to life on other worlds, from human evolution to the systems humans have created, this pervasive pull toward equilibrium governs life at its molecular base and at its peak in the elaborate structures of living complex systems. Schneider and Sagan organize their argument in a highly accessible manner, moving from descriptions of the basic physics behind energy flow to the organization of complex systems to the role of energy in life to the final section, which applies their concept of energy flow to politics, economics, and even human health.

A book that needs to be grappled with by all those who wonder at the organizing principles of existence, Into the Cool will appeal to both humanists and scientists. If Charles Darwin shook the world by showing the common ancestry of all life, so Into the Cool has a similar power to disturb—and delight—by showing the common roots in energy flow of all complex, organized, and naturally functioning systems.

“Whether one is considering the difference between heat and cold or between inflated prices and market values, Schneider and Sagan argue, we can apply insights from thermodynamics and entropy to understand how systems tend toward equilibrium. The result is an impressive work that ranges across disciplinary boundaries and draws from disparate literatures without blinking.”—Publishers Weekly

(20050502)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his well-known essay "The Two Cultures," C.P. Snow famously remarked that an inability to describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics was a form of ignorance comparable with never having read a work of Shakespeare. It's fair to say that these days, the Second Law gets far less press than the Bard. Enter Into the Cool, in which the authors claim that the study of thermodynamics (in some ways the neglected stepchild of the sciences) can inform our understanding of biology, ecology and even economics. The authors (Schneider is an authority on thermodynamics; Sagan is a science writer and author of Acquiring Genomes) begin by rephrasing the Second Law—as "Nature abhors a gradient"—and proceed to illustrate its relevance to large systems in general. Whether one is considering the difference between heat and cold or between inflated prices and market values, they argue, we can apply insights from thermodynamics and entropy to understand how systems tend toward equilibrium. The result is an impressive work that ranges across disciplinary boundaries and draws from disparate literatures without blinking. It's also a book that (much like Shakespeare and the Second Law of Thermodynamics) requires effort on the reader's part—it's not for casual reading. 30 b&w illus.
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Review

"Into the Cool is a dazzling exposition of an idea: that life is fundamentally not a noun, or a thing, but a verb. Building upon the beautiful subtleties of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Eric Schneider and Dorion Sagan take us on a tour de force through biology, touching upon the origin of life, sex, evolution, ecology, and even economics. Along the way, they dethrone the idea that the gene is the central actor in the drama of life and put the focus properly back on the plot--the organized flows of matter and energy that make life what it is. This book is destined to be a classic."--J. Scott Turner, author of The Extended Organism

(J. Scott Turner )

"The idea seems paradoxical--that the source of all the complexity of life might just be nature''s tendency to equalize things. But Schneider and Sagan''s readable book makes the notion plausible. And the authors do more than demystify thermodynamics, they make it come to life! So you didn''t think that nonequilibrium thermodynamics could be romantic? This book, fascinating as it is provocative, proves you''re wrong!"--Roald Hoffmann, chemist and writer

(Roald Hoffmann )

"In Into the Cool, the authors unravel the intricacies of cosmology, meteorology, chemistry, ecology, and even the mysteries of human aging in an unexpected but accessible and entertaining manner. It''s all very simple. It''s all very complex. The book careens between these poles like a pinball in urgent play, until the reader is forced, willy-nilly, to think in terms of energy flow, gradients, and the Second Law. This turns out to be something of a delight, like using a new tool specially sharpened and specifically made for that job that we all assume when we first ask ''Why?''"--Tim Cahill, author of Hold the Enlightenment and Lost in My Own Backyard

(Tim Cahill )

"In his well-known essay ''The Two Cultures,'' C.P. Snow famously remarked that an inability to describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics was a form of ignorance comparable with never having read a work of Shakespeare. It''s fair to say that these days, the Second Law gets far less press than the Bard. Enter Into the Cool, in which the authors claim that the study of thermodynamics (in some ways the neglected stepchild of the sciences) can inform our understanding of biology, ecology and even economics. The authors begin by rephrasing the Second Law—as ''Nature abhors a gradient''—and proceed to illustrate its relevance to large systems in general. Whether one is considering the difference between heat and cold or between inflated prices and market values, they argue, we can apply insights from thermodynamics and entropy to understand how systems tend toward equilibrium. The result is an impressive work that ranges across disciplinary boundaries and draws from disparate literatures without blinking. It''s also a book that (much like Shakespeare and the Second Law of Thermodynamics) requires effort on the reader''s part—it''s not for casual reading."--Publishers Weekly
 
 

(Publishers Weekly )

“A well-researched and often fascinating discussion that covers an impressive range of subjects, including Maxwell’s demon, weather patterns, natural selection, the maturity of ecosystems, and the purposefulness of life. . . . Into the Cool shows that there is much more to thermodynamics than Carnot cycles and phase diagrams. . . . An engaging, non-technical introduction to a variety of topics.”—Christopher Jarzynski, Physics Today

(Christopher Jarzynski Physics Today )

"The book succeeds in highlighting the potential importance of thermodynamic ideas in understanding certain aspects of organization in biological systems. . . . A good reference for readers interested in exploring an area of theoretical biology whose relevance has increased with the current interest to forge a rapprochement between physics and biology."

(Lloyd Demetrius Quarterly Review of Biology )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 378 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (June 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226739368
• ISBN-13: 978-0226739366
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #564,798 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars May the Flow Be With You, January 3, 2006

By 

G. Bestick (Dobbs Ferry, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life (Hardcover)

Life has both purpose and direction, assert the authors of this bold and stimulating work. Neither God nor Darwin satisfactorily accounts for life's forward momentum, but the Second Law of Thermodynamics does.

Thermodynamics began as the study of energy transformation in closed systems. The second law says that a system left to its own devices will lose its capacity to transform energy into work, eventually reaching a state of equilibrium. What's hot becomes cool, which for living systems such as you and I isn't a good thing. Our goal is to stay near but not at equilibrium by importing energy into ourselves and being smart about how much energy we use to stay in a stable state. It's a tricky balancing act: expend too much energy and you can't sustain your self over a long lifetime; use too little and equilibrium wins, bringing you to a full stop; export too much waste in the process and you damage the sources of energy you need to keep going.

In the first part of the book, Schneider and Sagan move the discussion of thermodynamics from classical closed systems to complex open systems. They label these open systems "non-equilibrium thermodynamics" or NET. What NET systems abhor isn't a vacuum, but a gradient, which is a disparity in temperature, pressure, or some other physical force across a distance. Complex systems, living or non-living, will work to degrade gradients in the most energy efficient manner possible, becoming bigger, more organized and more sophisticated in the process. Part II is a fascinating look at how non-living systems such as Benard cells, Taylor votices and tornadoes react in complex, coherent patterns to break down gradients, almost seeming to exhibit a form of intelligence as they organize matter in the most efficient manner to reduce the disparity confronting them.

Part III examines the effect of thermodynamic action on living systems. If, as the authors maintain, the purpose of a living system is to "catch, store and degrade gradients" then "entropic dissipation propels evolutionary structuring; nature's force gives it form." You'll come away with a new appreciation of the complexity, utility and elegance of mature ecosystems such as old growth forests. The trees in such forests work over time to break down the disparity between the sun's heat and the earth's surface, helping to regulate the temperature of the planet in the process. They do this using a minimal amount of external energy, thereby causing much less ecological disruption than we do in trying to regulate air temperature. Trees make HVAC systems look primitive; we can learn a lot from them.

The last section deals specifically with humans. You, too, argue the authors, are more than a set of blindly replicating genes. Viewing yourself as a complex open system has implications for your health, mainly of the use it or lose it variety. The authors also apply NET systems rules to economics, urban planning, and political science. As with most attempts to bring physical laws into humanity's group endeavors, most of the conclusions are too general to be interesting outside the realm of systems theory - you won't learn how to predict the direction of interest rates, where the next hot neighborhood will be, or which party will take the Senate in the next US congressional elections.

The final chapter discusses the purpose of life. The higher purpose of humans is apparently to seek out and efficiently destroy energy gradients without destroying their sources of energy or their selves in the process. Procreation is the way that you as a complex, open system sustain your energy degrading function over a span longer than your natural lifetime. Or, as religious philosopher Alan Watts puts it, humans are tubes, "which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it, and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes..." Understanding our purpose better positions us to understand that we're not the sum and center of the universe, and to know how we fit into the "cosmically creative process" that builds up structure, complexity and intelligence as it destroys the solar electromagnetic gradient between the extremely hot sun and the extremely cold outer space of the universe.

If the image of your self as a metastable open system that's inferior to tropical rain forests in your gradient reducing capabilities doesn't make you leap out of bed in the morning, you can use your glucose-fed mental processes to invent a grander, more comforting eschatology. You won't be the first to do so.

As should be evident by now, the authors will wade into any pool of scientific controversy - how the universe was formed, how life started, why evolution by itself is an inadequate explanation of life's direction over the past four billion years, why intelligent design is hokum. This book is a brilliant, provocative argument for why we need add a temporal, energetic element to any practical discussion of how the universe works. In an appendix, they helpfully include the organizing principles of open thermodynamic systems. It will be interesting to see whether other scientists will heed Schnieder and Sagan's call to push past the boundaries of their current disciplines and help flesh out this promising schema.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Benard's Cells, Human Life, and Thermodynamics, August 15, 2005

By 

Libb Thims (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life (Hardcover)

Stimulating book! By far, this compendium is a `huge' step in the right direction. If, resultantly, life is to be defined via energy and matter interactions, according to which thermodynamics is home, than by all means Into the Cool has done justice. If not, nevertheless, we still have ground-breaking work. In the near future, I envisage a definitive set of twelve books on the thermodynamics of human life. Into the cool will certainly be in this collection.
Libb Thims, Chemical Engineer

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very impressive effort, April 10, 2006

By 

Steven Caldwell (Montana, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life (Hardcover)

Works of scientific significance tend to fall into one of two categories: those that present new material, and those that reconfigure existing material into something that is new by virtue of its originality of insight. "Into the Cool" falls decisively into the second category, and Eric Schneider and Dorion Sagan have created a book that is as much concerned with philosophy of science as it is about science. The book seamlessly presents the historical and philosophical evolution of a fundamental principle (the second law of thermodynamics as applied to open systems) and develops the implications of the principle in a staggeringly wide range of contexts. In doing so, the authors have avoided the gratuitous descent into the intentionally obscure that mars so much of "popular" scientific writing, and have given us a work that is engaging, lucid and supremely approachable. Their approach risks repetition of material, and the book is not immune to that criticism. In the book's finest moments, however, the authors are able to exploit that repetition by presenting their material in a variety of contexts that collectively support the validity of their argument. In the section on economics, for example (economics in a work on thermodynamics!), the authors make a persuasive case for viewing markets as organically derived from, rather than merely analogical to, the implications of the second law. The authors' treatment of this argument requires less in the way of philosophical gymnastics than might be imagined, and their exposition makes the unfolding of the logic seem almost inevitable. Because of the richness of the material, this is a work that demands more than one reading. Fortunately, the warmth and sincerity of the writing make this book a joy, rather than the heavy going that might easily have otherwise resulted. Highly recommended.