On local enhancement and its cost

In crystallization, assembly of initially unordered molecules is paid for by a transfer of thermal energy from the crystalline phase to the solution. To demonstrate a similar compliance with the 2^nd law of thermodynamics in the reproduction of highly ordered structures an experiment closely comparable to crystallization for living organisms can be considered.

Jacques Monod, 1970, Chance and Necessity:

“We take a milliliter of water having in it a few milligrams of simple sugar, such as glucose, as well as some mineral salts containing the essential elements that enter into the chemical constituents of living organisms (nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, etc.). In this medium we grow a bacterium, for example Escherichia coli (length, 2 microns; weigh approximately 5×10^-13 grams) inside thirty six hours the solution will contain several billion bacteria. We shall find about 40 per cent of the sugar has been converted into cellular constituents, while the remainder has been oxidized into carbon dioxide and water. By carrying out the entire experiment in calorimeter, one can draw up the thermodynamic balance sheet for the operation and determine that, as in the case of crystallization, the entropy of the system as a whole (bacteria plus medium) has increased a little more than the minimum prescribed by the 2^nd law. Thus while the extremely complex system represented by the bacterial cell has not only been conserved but has multiplied several billion times, the thermodynamic debt corresponding to the operation has been duly settled.”

Monod meditates further on this phenomenon in the following lines:

“Nonetheless, something unfailingly upsets our physical intuition…Why? Because we see clearly that this process is bent or oriented in one exclusive direction: the multiplication of cells. These to be sure do not violate the laws of thermodynamics, quite the contrary.  They not only obey them; they utilize them as a good engineer would, with maximum efficiency to carry out the project and bring about the “dream” (as Francois Jacob has put it) of every cell: to become two cells”

Now, recovering from that metaphor (i.e. the dream) one is left with two thoughts. The first has to do with, the cost of order or the transfer of thermal energy to the periphery. The other a bit less sound has to do with the possibilities of a transplant; as any analogy may be described as one.

Let us take a short story "The Quantity Theory of Insanity" by Will Self which I haven’t read but whose plot is relevant to the operation (transplant). A theory is put forward in the story that there is "only a fixed proportion of sanity to go round in any given society" so it follows; if you cure an asylum full of schizophrenics in Turku, a group of perfectly sane people will go crazy in Saarbrucken. Not quite the 2^nd law as the system does not evolve towards a degradation of order, the sanity remains constant.  

However it leads one to think of the cost of sanity/intelligence, and its relative growth in terms similar to any system of invariant replication and its energy demands. Can such metaphors be applied to information processing or the memeosphere? If codification and copying of knowledge comes at a cost is there a loss in the sum total of codified exchange and apprehension? If so where do we draw the boundaries? Which apprehending systems should we consider?

Reduction in biodiversity is also coupled by an increase in the scale and power of computing or sensory systems produced by mankind that are to measure, record, analyse, warn etc. These do not yet have the apprehending power or complexity of many life forms in tracing phenomenon and reacting. So the question is how much loss has accompanied this local increase in apprehending power or sanity in some components of the biosphere. 

To further define sanity as any processing power for a purpose, I am tempted to use Gregory Bateson's definition of “information” as “a difference which makes a difference”. With a slight difference between the first difference and the second, the first implying any pattern in the universe which can be discerned or sensed the second being the significance as in “what difference does it make to …my life, survival or whatever aims a component of a system can have”.

Here it becomes a bit more tricky, as the metaphors start to distract the “…dream of every cell to become two cells” is no more conscious or deliberate than say the dream of the water pouring down a waterfall or that of a river reaching the sea. So the differences that make a difference to cellular multiplication are not objectively different than the differences in topography which create a waterfall, or are they? How much more does it matter to a cell to multiply, than it does to water under the influence of gravity to fall off some edge? This makes the earlier definition of sanity or apprehending power as the processing of a difference that makes a difference less natural or purposeful even at higher levels. I have a feeling that this line of thought can only conclude in a variety of reverse panpsychism, which will invalidate the attempted transplant.