EVOLUTION AND THERMODYNAMICS 



living things perform, there is never any infringement of the second 

 law of thermodynamics. 



A Paradox with Social Significance. 



At this point I wish to pause before pursuing the argument further 

 in order to meet the criticism that the whole question is of purely 

 academic interest. What difference does it make, one may ask, whether 

 the world is thought to be "running down" or not, or whether the 

 emergence of novelty in evolution is real ? The answer is that our 

 ideas on these questions have very marked and sometimes unrealised 

 effects on our social behaviour. 



The social significance of the first law of thermodynamics, i.e. the 

 law of the conservation of energy, has long been realised. It was 

 one of the basic pillars required for the development of industrial 

 civilisation, as the physicists of the last century themselves knew 

 very well. Crowther has summarised the matter: 



"The discovery of the conservation of energy is connected 

 with the notion of exchange value. Capitalist civilisation cannot 

 be operated without an exact knowledge of the equivalence of 

 different forms of energy. . . . When coal, electricity, gas and 

 labour are to be sold in exchange, they must be measured and a 

 common currency found for them. That currency is energy."^ 



And again; 



"All matter appeared to be made of electricity; industrial 

 civilisation had at length succeeded in interpreting the universe 

 in terms of one of its own concepts. The cosmos was conceived 

 as made of one universal world material, electricity."^ 



Thus the thought introduced by the pre-Socratic Ionian philo- 

 sophers 2500 years before, came to fruition. Thomson^ has reminded 

 us, in connection with the tyrant Midas and the first invention of 

 gold coinage, that Heraclitus said, "Fire is the primary substance of 

 which the world is made. Fire is exchanged for all things and all 

 things for fire, just as goods for gold and gold for goods." 



As with the first law, so with the second. Since it involves the time 



^ J. G. Crowther, The Social Relations of Science (London, 1941), p. 409. 



2 Loc. cit., p. 455. 



^ G. Thomson, Aeschylus and Athens (London, 1941), p. 85. 



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