Louisville Process Theology Network

Lee Smolin on the Evolution of the Whole Universe

Jul 20, 2009

From Page 159 of ?“The Life of the Cosmos?” by Lee Smolin.


?“Is there a sense in which we can say that the biosphere (on Earth) is situated in a larger self-organized system? In the (preceding chapters) we found that there are good reasons for why the galaxy in which we find ourselves might be considered a self-organized system. We are now asking whether this relationship might be essential to the existence of life of Earth. Strange as it may seem, the answer to this question may be yes.

In a spiral galaxy there are a lot of organic elements around; carbon and oxygen are common elements in the interstellar dust. That the Earth has generous quantities of these elements reflects the fact that our Sun and its planets were formed from a medium that contained them. To the extent to which the process of star formation is part of the process of self-organization of the disk of the spiral galaxy, the Earth inherited the organic elements necessary for its own self-organization from the larger self-organized system that formed it.

It then seems that our life is situated inside a nested hierarchy of self-organized systems that begin with our local ecologies and extend upwards at least to the galaxy. Each of these levels are non-equilibrium systems (open and active) that owe their existence to processes of self-organization, that are in turn driven by cycles of energy and materials in the level about them.

It is then tempting to ask if this relationship extends further than the galaxy. ?… Must there be a non-equilibrium system (open and active) in which sits our galaxy? Is there a sense in which the universe as a whole could be a non-equilibrium, self-organized system?

We see that there are, essentially, two choices. Either the universe evolves after some long time to a uniform equilibrium distribution (closed and inactive), or it does not. If it does, we must at some point in the hierarchy encounter a system at equilibrium (closed and inactive), in which case the time scale over which life can exist is limited ?….. heat death must eventually come.

On the other hand, if there is no time at which the universe will come to equilibrium (therefore, closed and inactive), then it might be useful to view it permanently as a self-organized non-equilibrium system (open and active). We might want to say that life may exist in the universe over its whole lifetime, because the universe, by being itself a non-equilibrium system (open and active), creates through its own processes self-organization conditions that are hospitable to the evolution of life.

The question why there is life in the universe takes on a very different light in such a postulated non-equilibrium (open and always active) than it did in the old picture of an equilibrium universe (closed and eventually inactive). In the old picture, the existence of life is an anomaly, or at least an enormous improbability, which thus can only be the result of a statistical fluke.

In the postulated equilibrium picture, the universe remains permanently in a non-equilibrium state (open and active). Such a state is a necessary condition for life to exist indefinitely in the universe. We see that in this picture living things share in some ways, and extend in other ways, the basic properties of non-equilibrium self-organized systems (open and active) that seem to characterize the universe on every scale, from the cosmos as a whole to the surface of planets.

?… The evidence is presently inconclusive. But still, it is important to begin to investigate the question, as a great deal is at stake. To put it more simply, if it is possible to construct a new picture of cosmology based on non-equilibrium (open and active) rather than equilibrium thermodynamics (closed and inactive), it will give us a picture of a universe in which the existence of life might be comprehensible and natural.

But even more than this, the possibility of conceiving a universe, as a whole, as self-organized system, in which a variety of improbable structures ?– and indeed life itself ?– exist permanently, without the need of a pilot or other external agent, offers us the possibility of constructing a scientific cosmology that is finally liberated from the crippling duality that lies behind Plato?’s myth (of supernatural control of the processes in the universe).?”