What Science Teaches

The observable Universe and everything in it moves in one direction: from birth to death, from hot to cold, from creative energy to useless energy, from order to disorder. Everything comes from what preceded it. Nothing is reversible. This is the Arrow of Time.

The arrow of time applies to all closed systems in the known Universe, but the new sciences revealed that it is not the predetermined fate of living systems. A living system has permeable boundaries and sense-making capacities. It is an open system, capable of exchanging energy with its environment rather than using up a finite amount. If it opens to its environment, it takes in information, a form of energy. It notices changes and disturbances that it then processes, free to choose its response.

This is life’s essential process—using cognition and self-organization to adapt and change. A living system can reorganize itself to become more fit, in the evolutionary sense, to survive. Through its exchanges of information, it creates newness and diversity, sustaining itself through shifts, crises, and catastrophes. All of this is possible and commonplace as long as the system remains open, willing to learn and adapt.

However, if a living system closes itself off, there is no possibility for change and growth. Closed systems have no potential for life’s adaptive capacity. They work like machines, passive travelers on the arrow of time, deteriorating and losing capacity, predetermined to waste away because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics—the trajectory of heat energy from useful to useless. (The First Law of Thermodynamics states that the quantity of energy is always conserved, neither created nor destroyed as it changes form. The Second Law describes how the quality of energy deteriorates in a closed system.) In a closed system, every interaction has an energy cost; some amount of its energy becomes useless through its activities. This is entropy, the measure of disordered energy. More entropy describes greater levels of disorder.

What distinguishes living systems from machines is their ability to learn. They resist the arrow of time and the Universe’s movement to increasing disorder by using their cognition to adapt. They stay alert to what’s going on in their internal and external environments and respond intelligently.

A healthy living system is a good learner and can thrive even though its environment is moving toward increasing disorder. But to do so it must be actively engaged and aware.

If living systems close down, they wear down and death is assured.

A civilization is a large, complex society based on the domestication of plants, animals and human beings. They vary in their makeup but typically have towns, cities, governments, social classes and specialized roles and professions.

Ronald Wright