Entropy, Said the Devil

Appearing to channel the Devil himself, writer Dorion Sagan reports on a deep Earth conference where the former, with technical and philosophical rigor, expands upon Bernard Stiegler’s notion of the Entropocene, the “generalised anthropogenic acceleration in the rate of terrestrial entropization” from which “[m]any of the world’s current politico-ecological crises derive” (White and Moore, 2022). The apparently possessed writer, whose stenography of the deep Earth demon appears to be for self-aggrandizement as part of a suspected Mephistophelean pact, argues that Stiegler’s Entropocene is in fact a specific form of thermodynamic planetary dysfunction. Unlike some other global concerns analyzed by philosophers—e.g., Immanuel Kant’s inquiries into the possibilities of world peace, and speculations, following Fontenelle, on the existence of life on other planets—the analysis of Earth’s planetary condition, is not unique: it is an example of thermodynamic dysfunction in general, which has important and investigable precursors: forest ecosystems exposed to heat and radiation from nuclear runoff,  nonliving complex systems (e.g., Bénard cells, Taylor vortices, “multiplying” typhoons, and long-lived autocatalytic Belousov-Zhabotinski chemical reactions) that exhibit physiological malaise, and ultimately “death,” when the temperature, pressure, or electron potential gradients upon which their organization depends become too steep or insufficient. Among the many interwoven themes discussed in one of the Devil’s “outer dens” are senescence, the checkered history and thermodynamic reality of entropy as a measure of the spread of energy, Nietzschean eternal recurrence, life on other planets, and the mythical heat death of the universe

Bostonia: v. 61, no. 1-2, 4

Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs

Gaia versus the Anthropocene: Untimely Thoughts on the Current Eco-Catastrophe

Embracing science but suggesting an alternate explanation for global warming, the essay provides a thermodynamic and historical perspective on eco-destruction. From a long-term evolutionary perspective, caution is raised about the repetition of human exceptionalism implied by the popular term “Anthropocene,” which hyperbolically frames humankind as the first organism in evolutionary history, and uniquely dangerous at that, to threaten global life. In fact, cyanobacteria preceded technological humanity, altering Earth's atmospheric composition orders of magnitude more than humanity has. The extreme resilience of Gaia, planetary life taken as an open thermodynamic system with environmentally regulative tendencies, has undergone dramatic changes in the past, such as the production of an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Genetically nimble life, recycling matter on a planetary level, has evolved means of tempering the tendency of organisms to exponentially reproduce. Ironically, these means, some which appear to have evolved to titrate hypergrowth in animal clades via senescence, have so far escaped ecologically rapacious humans. Thermodynamically, modern technological humanity, for all its self-regard as an intelligent life form, resembles a ravaging fire or intrinsically short-lived storm system. Lon

biospheres : metamorphosis of planet earth

vii, 198 p.; 20 cm

Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution

Microcosmos brings together the remarkable discoveries of microbiology in the later decades of the 20th century and the pioneering research of Dr. Margulis to create a vivid new picture of the world that is crucial to our understanding of the future of the planet. Addressed to general readers, the book provides a beautifully written view of evolution as a process based on interdependency and their interconnectedness of all life on the planet.https://scholar.dominican.edu/cynthia-stokes-brown-books-personal-research/1114/thumbnail.jp

L\u27origine des cellules eucaryotes

Au contraire des bactéries, les cellules des plantes et des animaux ont un noyau. Elles contiennent aussi des organites, comme les mitochondries et les plastes, dont les lointains ancêtres étaient des bactéries. Quels sont les arguments en faveur de cette théorie

Into the Cool : Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life

Into the Cool : Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Lif

Considering Killability: Experiments in Unsettling Life and Death

Curated by Astrid Schrader and Elizabeth Johnso