174 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



" Dissipation " as a " Third ' Principle 



Besides the aprioristic principle of becoming there is a 

 purely empirical statement concerned in almost all of the 

 formulations of the so-called " second * principle : " dissipa- 

 tion " or " augmentation of entropy," as it is called. This 

 is a mere fact that is encountered in almost all fields of 

 physics. Its importance may be realised by trying to think 

 of a case where it is not found. In abstract mechanics a 

 pendulum may go on possessing kinetic energy and potential 

 energy alternately ad infinitum, it may swing for ever. 

 But a real pendulum will soon cease to swing, on account 

 of friction. "Dissipation," in the form of heat-conduction, 

 here occurs by friction. "We speak of the law of dissipation 

 as the third or " empirical ' : ' principle of energetics. 



It is clear from our statement that what really gives a 

 certain sense to natural phenomena is not the true aprioristic 

 second principle dealing with the necessity of diversities of 

 intensity for becoming, but the empirical principle of dis- 

 sipation. Without dissipation all events in nature might 

 behave like the ideal pendulum, there would be a permanent 

 change of diversities, but diversities would never disappear. 

 Experience shows that that is not the case. Of course, it is 

 not meant by this doctrine of dissipation that all becoming 

 which results from different intensities leads immediately to 

 an average value of intensity, and thus to an end of becoming, 

 as all purely thermic becoming does. In all cases where 

 transformations of energy occur, where one kind of energy 

 appears at the cost of another, on account of another energy 

 work," there is an increase with regard to the 



