Entropy is just defined as a formula, which provides not enough elements for a conceptual interpretation. Pop wisdom about entropy in living beings is wrong, since entropy is not related to order. You are right: strictly, living beings have a high entropy, perhaps higher than the environment. So is the conventional wisdom wrong? Or am I wrong? Not only do they increase entropy of their environment (closed system) but their internal entropy (open system) is also much higher. So any way I see it, it seems to me like living organisms are very efficient entropy producing machines. It is in this sense that we can say that the energy is more dispersed or 'disorganized' in the cat than in the cat food. Another way to see it, there is much more 'unknown information' about the microstates of the energy, given the macrostate of the energy contained in the cat, as opposed to the energy in the food. Clearly the energy is much more dispersed between different energy modes, meaning much higher entropy. However, the energy in my cat is more widely distributed between heat energy (which is really molecular kinetic energy), kinetic and potential energy as it runs around, electrical energy in its nervous system, and chemical energy in its fat and tissues. The energy in the food is concentrated mostly in chemical energy. Therefore the matter that composes my cat comes completely from the matter contained in the dry food, water and air. In a living organism, the energy contained in its matter is highly distributed between many energy modes (translation, vibration, electricity, chemical, potential), while non-living matter this energy is more concentrated in less energy modes (mostly chemical).Īs an example, my cat eats only dry cat food and water. However, on closer inspection, I believe that this thought is completely wrong.Īlthough entropy is commonly linked with level of 'organization', a much more precise definition of entropy is a measure of how dispersed is the energy between the various possible energy modes of the molecules and atoms. On first thought this made sense to me living organisms are more 'organized' than non-living matter. For example, the Wikipedia article on "Entropy and Life" mentions that Schrödinger thought that this was the case. Common wisdom seems to suggest that living organisms have lower entropy that their environment.
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