Spontaneous Appearance of Life and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
David W. Snoke
Published Online: 12 Apr 2022
Page range: 1 - 11
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/biocosmos-2022-0006
© 2022 David W. Snoke, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.
Abstract
It is often argued both by scientists and the lay public that it is extremely unlikely for life or minds to arise spontaneously, but this argument is hard to quantify. In this paper I make this argument more rigorous, starting with a review of the concepts of information and entropy, and then examining the specific case of Maxwell's demon and how it relates to living systems. I argue that information and entropy are objective physical quantities, defined for systems as a whole, which allow general arguments in terms of physical law. In particular, I argue that living systems obey the same rules as Maxwell's demons.
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