Life, Thermodynamics and Relationship with the Energy of the Universe

Dear Friends,

An idea has been in my mind since the past few years. I have often mulled on a singular question; "What is Life ?" At the very outset I must caution you that this question is different from the more easily answered question, viz: "What does it mean to be alive or 'living' ?". While it is easy to answer the latter (the answer is given in every high-school science book ), the former question is deeper and demands great reflection. Moreover, it is intimately linked with the next question.."What is Death?". My education in science and my interest in philosophy-both have forced me to reflect upon these two related questions. It was a day-ordinary like any other day-when the answers to both these questions suddenly dawned upon me. Allow me to present to you my answers:

As I see it, 'Life' is a constant battle against increasing entropy. 

As all of us who have studied a little bit of science in high-school know that the energy of the universe is constant. The first law of Thermodynamics says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to the other. There are a plethora of examples that illustrate this concept. The petrol engine, for example, takes chemical energy from petrol and transforms it into mechanical energy. Similarly the electric motor takes electrical energy from the wires and transforms it into mechanical energy. The dynamo does quite the reverse. It takes mechanical energy (say from moving water) and transforms it into electrical energy which is then fed into wires and comes to our homes for use. It is important to note that none of these devices creates energy. All of them require a source of energy from which they can harness the same and transform it into some other usable form. Thus, if no machine exists that can create energy then it logically follows that the total energy of the universe must be constant. We must keep this concept in mind. It will have to be recalled later in this paper, when I discuss death and related concepts.

The second law of thermodynamics states that Entropy of a system always increases. 'Entropy' is a fanciful term used by scientists which means 'Disorder'. Thus, according to this law, any organized system  constantly moves towards a state of disorganization. Again, it is easy to see that this law holds true all around us. Let us take a new car as an example. A new car can be seen as a highly organized system. With time and use, however, the integrity of the system goes on degenerating. The nuts and bolts start coming loose, the engine starts giving trouble, the paint starts to fade and so on. All these problems show that entropy (disorder) has started affecting the system and it is no longer as organized as it was at the beginning (i.e when the car was new). Now, since we want to use the car for a number of years, we get it regularly serviced and repaired. The guy at the service station tightens the loose nuts, replaces the burnt oil, changes the oil filters and carries out other repairs and replacements as may be required. All this attention decreases the disorganization in the system and makes it perform almost as good as when it was new. However, there are two catches. One, the system never goes back to its original level of organization. I.e, no matter how well the service and repairs are done, some tiny bit of the entropy that has set into the system remains within the system. This means that once entropy starts to set into a system, it can never be completely removed. Second, there is thermodynamic cost of the removal of this entropy from the system. And that cost is Energy. The fellow who does the service and repairs of the vehicle has to invest a considerable amount of energy in his work. So this means that removal of entropy from any system is a costly affair as it needs precious energy to be expended in the process. At the same time, the removal of entropy is like fighting a losing battle. No matter how hard we try, some entropy always remains in the system and contributes towards making the system disorderly and less efficient. Over a period of time, this entropy builds up and a time comes when the no amount of input of energy can restore the system to a workable condition. It is at this stage that entropy wins and the system becomes so disorganized that it becomes essentially useless.

Till now I had been talking from the point of view of a car which, though highly organized, is still a very very primitive system when compared with the organization of any living organism. Even the simplest of living thing-say an amoeba-is millions of time more organized than the most modern car. What is even more important is that a living body-unicellular or multicellular-is a system. And like any other system, it depends upon the integrity of its organization to survive and function efficiently. However, any system, living or non-living-is equally subject and vulnerable to the second law of thermodynamics. That unfortunately means that we are also as vulnerable to the constant and unstoppable increase in entropy within our system-our body-as is the poor car that I mentioned in the example above. The only saving grace is that we do not have to go to a service center regularly to get the entropy from our systems removed. Our bodies, being a marvel of organization, have an inbuilt system of harnessing energy from natural sources and utilizing it for the purpose of reduction of entropy from the system. This process of harnessing energy is known as 'Eating' and 'Drinking'. We eat natural sources of energy (plants and animals) and drink water in order to obtain the energy from our environment that is required to reduce the entropy accumulating in our systems (bodies). However, there is a catch here also. As was the case with the car, the entropy that accumulates in our systems can never be completely removed. No matter what we eat and drink, some tiny bit of the entropy always remains in the body. Thus, over a period of time, despite thee best nutrition, the system of our body becomes progressively more disorganized and inefficient. For us humans it takes a fairly long period of 80 to 90 years (sometimes even longer) before a stage comes when no amount of input of energy from the environment will prevent the system from falling apart due to the immense build up of entropy. Finally a time comes when, no amount of energy input is able to reduce the entropy of the system sufficiently so as to enable it to function normally. At this point, the system simply stops functioning. In popular language, this point is known as 'Death'.

Thus, we can now appreciate how 'Life' is a constant struggle against increase in entropy and how 'Death' is a point where entropy eventually wins and shuts down the functioning of the system.

Having thus defined and explained the phenomenon called 'Life' and 'Death' in scientific (Thermodynamic) terms, we can now turn our attention to mythological concepts and the probable scientific explanations for them. Across cultures and religions we find concepts such as 'Soul' (Aatman), 'Rebirth', 'Telepathy', 'Extra Sensory Perception (ESP)', 'Faith Healing' etc. Modern science mostly dismisses such concepts and beliefs as  bunkum without any scientific basis and rational explanation. However, the ubiquitousness of these concepts across the entire humanity and the commonality of their presence in cultures, religions and beliefs far removed from each other forces the rational mind to ponder on the probability that these concepts are not entirely mythical and they may have some sort of scientific explanation. To my mind, the underlying scientific explanation for such concepts stems from two theories: Thermodynamics and the most famous equation of all time-E=MC2. 

In the preceding discussion we have already seen how the total energy of the universe is constant and how all the processes in the universe only transform the energy from one form to the other. We have also discussed that the total disorder (entropy) in the universe is constantly rising and that decrease in entropy has an energy cost attached to it. Moreover, we are aware that no matter how much energy we expend, we can never hope to completely reverse the entropy in any system. This means that if we treat the entire universe as a system, then the total entropy of the universe is also increasing. Eventually a stage will come when the universe will reach a stage of maximum entropy and order will cease to exist in the universe.

Having thus understood the concepts of 'Energy' and its 'Constancy' in the universe, we have to now look at the other aspect---transformation of energy. 

Before Albert Einstein it was understood that mass and energy were two different entities. Poetically said, mass was mass and energy was energy and never the twain could meet !! But Albert Einstein took an eraser and erased the distinction between mass and energy. He did it by formulating a deceptively simple looking equation E=MC(square). As any person who has studied elementary physics in high school will realize, this equation means that mass and energy are not different entities in the universe, but are actually different manifestations of the same entity, i.e Energy. Thus, mass can be visualized as a highly dense form of energy.  To help you in this visualization, let me give you an example. Suppose you were to make a carpet. You would require wool to do so. Individual fibers of wool would then be intricately woven to create a dense, soft and luxurious carpet. Seen from a distance by an observer who does not know that the carpet is made of wool, a cartload of wool and the finished carpet would appear as two different things-Entities-to him. But once we allow this observer to examine the wool and the carpet from very close quarters he would be able to see that the carpet is in fact, made of very densely packed strands of wool which are lying loose in the cart. Thus, the observer would now be able to appreciate that the wool and the carpet are actually different manifestations of the same entity, i.e wool. If we imagine that simple, unordered and loose energy is like wool, then mass is like the carpet woven out of that energy. Thus, all mass is actually pure energy at the subatomic level. (This fact has been proven by experiments which show that an electron can behave as a particle-mass-in some situations while it behaves as a wave-energy-in other situations. The most obvious example of mass-energy equivalence is the atom bomb in which part of the energy stored as mass in the nuclei of atoms is released by the process of nuclear fission). Thus, if all the mass in the universe is actually energy packed incredibly densely, then it logically follows that all living beings, including us humans, are also packets of energy. The one important point here is that living things are different from non living things-both being dense packets of energy-because living things are highly organized systems, which non-living things are not. A non-living thing may be thousands of times more dense when compared with a living thing, but the distinguishing characteristic of a living thing is not its density but its organization. We can, therefore, visualize living things as knots in the energy field of the universe with a capability to transform energy from one form to the other. Thus, while non-living things are like inactive knots in the energy field which do not interact actively with it, living beings are like active knots which constantly and actively interact with the energy field of the universe. At the most superficial level (and common to all animals) are activities like eating and drinking by which animals consume packets of energy in the form of mass from their environment and use their internal machinery (metabolism) to release the energy from the mass and use it in their own life sustaining processes. Plants on the other hand have the ability to utilize radiation (light) energy from the sun directly in order to prepare their own food by combining simple compounds like carbon dioxide and water in a process known as photosynthesis. For all the  living things on the planet, this is the level of interaction with the energy of the universe. But there is one notable exception..Man. 

Human beings are distinguished from all other life forms by the possession of two attributes: Intelligence and Self Awareness. The human brain is a miracle of evolution and the pinnacle of organization. The average human brain weighs about 1.5 kg and has a volume of around 1130 cubic centimeters. It has an average of 100 billion neurons ! Each neuron is connected to several others by means of permanent connections known as synapses. It may also form hundreds of temporary connections with other neurons. Thus the number of permanent and temporary connections in the human brain is in Trillions! One estimate puts the total number of these connections at more than the number of stars in the entire galaxy !! Simply put, the human brain is the most powerful organized structure in the universe (at least till we find another organism with a more advanced brain). However, at the subatomic level, the human brain is-like everything else having mass-pure energy. Thus our brains are highest level of organization that energy has yet reached in our universe. It is due to the possession of this incredible piece of machinery inside our cranium that we humans interact with the energy of the universe at a level entirely different from that of any other living being on this planet. My hypothesis is that the human brain is able to interact directly with the energy field pervading the universe. Penzias and Wilson in their famous experiment detected that there is indeed a field of energy which pervades the universe. They called this field 'Cosmic Rays'. This field is thought of as a remanent from the big-bang which was the starting point of our universe. The radiation from this field has no specific starting point. It is, in fact, like a blanket of uniform energy spread out through the universe. We can also picture this field as the surface of a vast lake which is absolutely still and undisturbed. This is, of course, the energy field that we know about. It is also hypothesized that the universe has a mysterious dark matter which is orders of magnitudes more than all the visible matter put together. Again, even though we can perceive only three dimensions, it is now established almost beyond all doubt that there are up to ten dimensions in the universe, of which we are able to perceive four (length, breadth, height and time) while the rest are beyond our sensory and perceptual capabilities. Simply put, the universe has attributes that we can perceive and understand and also those that we cannot perceive and/or understand. However, 'understanding' is only one level of the working of our brains. There are other levels of the functioning of the human brain which are much more complex and subtle when compared to 'understanding'. Collectively, these levels are recognized as the 'subconscious'. With sustained practice of activities like meditation and yoga, it is possible for the practitioner to bring the subconscious into the realm of 'understanding'. For the majority of us, however, 'understanding' is the level at which our brain functions. 

Most of the organs in the body are primarily sites of chemical activity. But our brain is different. No doubt, there is chemical activity in the brain. But more important is the electrical activity taking place in this organ. The brain is uncannily like a computer and its neurons like wires. Electrical signals buzz across the neurons at a blinding speed and massive data processing goes on in the brain at any given moment. All this activity can be easily detected by modern methods like EEG. The effect of billions of neurons working in unison and trillions of connections ticking on and off is more profound than we can imagine. This kind of activity can create ripples in the underlying energy field of the universe. For most of us, who use a tiny fraction of the total power of our brains, the ripples produced in the energy of the universe are very small. But the trained practitioner can utilize a major part of his/her brain power to generate much larger ripples. Since the underlying energy field of the universe connects every object in the universe with every other object, any ripples or waves created in this underlying energy field have the potential of affecting any other object near or far from the person creating these ripples or waves. It this modulation of the universal energy field that explains phenomenon like psychokinesis or 'mind over matter' as it is usually called. 

I discussed in the initial part of this paper that reduction in entropy of any system requires expenditure of energy. The usual process of gaining this energy is through metabolic processes going on inside our bodies. However, our brain has the capability of harnessing energy directly from the underlying energy field of the universe. Most of us are not even aware of this capability of the brain. But our sages and wise men across all cultures had recognized this seemingly miraculous property of the brain hundreds of years ago. Having recognized the same, they developed training methods by which an average human could learn to use this faculty. Yoga, Zen, Meditation..all are methods of training the mind to enable it to come in direct contact with the universal energy. Of course, it is not easy. This training require decades of hard work and dedication. But through sustained training, the true potential of the human brain can be unlocked. Once a person has learnt to harness the energy of the universe directly, he or she can then use his/her body as a conduit-a wire-to transmit this pure energy directly into the body of a diseased individual. Disease is nothing but accumulated entropy that the body finds difficult or impossible to remove by its own processes of harnessing energy. Such accumulated entropy can be reduced substantially by the infusion of pure energy directly into the body. This is the basis behind miraculous cures achieved by highly accomplished spiritual leaders and faith healers alike. 

To sum up, all living things are nothing but manifestations of the universal energy of the universe in the form of mass. Any life form, which reaches a certain level of organizational complexity and elegance can become intelligent and self aware. It is at this level, that it is able to tap into the universal energy field directly and harness the energy from this field to produce effects which seem miraculous. 

I hope that you would have found this discussion stimulating. I am open to questions and discussion.