One of the things that keeps cutting into the time I have to get my book done by the deadline Wiley set for me is my uncontrollable urge to write diaries here. Tonight is no exception, but I hope to recover something by getting you folk to give me some feedback. I began a section devoted to a book that I actually reviewed here in an earlier diary. The book is Into the Cool: Energy Flow Thermodynamics and Life. by Eric D. Schneider and Dorian Sagan. Eric retired in 1993 from being Senior Research Scientist; National Ocean Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).Coordinated High Latitude Global Climate research. Dorion Sagan is the son of Carl Sagan and Lynn Margulis and is a well known science writer. I never met Dorion but Eric and I have worked together over the years. Their book speaks highly of me so I like to have people read it. Look below and I'll reveal my introduction to the section on this book.
My book, by the way, is entitled Introduction to Network Thermodynamics and Relational Systems Theory: Applications to Complex Systems. It is a follow up to an earlier book on the same subject. I probably should not have told you that, but my vanity has no bounds.
Here's the section introduction:
Life and thermodynamics
Many jokes are out there with these two words as part of their introduction. I’m afraid that this discussion will be a serious one. It will also be a controversial one. Since I said that I also need to explain that as we try to push back the frontiers of science the result of any effort is open to far more question than most people realize. There have been attempts to "solve" this showing of a pair of clay feet by covering them with rules and criteria for what is "scientific" and what is not. Such efforts fail and to many of us the reason for that failure is obvious.
I was warned not to use the word "philosophy" in this book, for example. As if a clear statement of the need for understanding why we do things is bad and a disjointed story about how to do things is the only way to do "science". I have more respect for my readers than that and I will just let it pour out for we need to know why these matters are important. I would even risk saying that it is even more important to know why we do things than to merely show how they are done.
When the issue of this word "life" comes up there is a clear red flag that pops up. The word has philosophical, political, and scientific interests buried in it. Were the Cartesian simplifications about life to have held up there would be no problem. As will be demonstrated unequivocally in the section devoted to relational biology, the living organism demands a categorical place apart from Cartesian reductionist machines. The present discussion will anticipate that result and go on as if it were already established.
This link between thermodynamics and life is one of the strongest ideas we can encounter in our quest to understand the real world. No surrogate, no model or set of models has the ability to abstract the essence of a living organism so that we can lay it out and say "here is how we define life". Cartesian reductionist machines have been assumed to be the answer yet no one has come even close using this kind of surrogate.
There is one idea that puts the defining quality of this thing called "life" in the forefront. Like all words, this one’s definition is context dependent. The context is one that can not be abstracted. Life exists on this planet and as far as we know no where else. People keep looking for it elsewhere, but they have not found it. Here’s something to chew on for a while: What if the reason we only have found living systems here on Earth is that the true nature of this process is an integral part of the larger system comprised by the planet and its atmosphere? What if the notion that living organisms are extractable from that whole is just pure hogwash?
I am going to follow up on this idea by discussing some ideas from the book by Eric D. Schneider and Dorian Sagan entitled Into the Cool: Energy Flow Thermodynamics and Life. Need I emphasize the importance of these ideas at a time when the largest problem facing mankind is a thermodynamic one involving the system that houses life? I hope not.
OK There you have it. Ready, take aim and fire! I already can write the comments that will come from science "fundamentalists" who have the same reaction to a question about what science is as an Evangelical Christian does when his/her faith is questioned.
What is especially funny about this are the know nothings who write comments about what science is and tell me I know nothing about science. This crew is really off the wall. My CV is on my web page which you can get to by clicking on my name. If that collection of 45+ years of experience in the best institutions with the best people is not enough then nothing is. One thing the right wing has as a legitimate target when they attack us is the fact that we have a significant number of people who put them down for behaving exactly the same as they do with impunity.
The thing that keeps us going, my colleagues and I, as we suffer this kind of know nothing attack in the name of science, is our knowledge. We are good scientists and have earned our right to examine it with care.
Let me end by asking why you think science has failed to convince the world that it was correct years ago when it warned about global warming? The answer seems obvious to me. It can be understood by understanding my introduction to this section of my book above.