Tag: SecondLawOfThermodynamics

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Your processes versus entropy

Regular readers of this blog will know all about the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the universe will tend toward disorder over time. 

Thus any organised system will drift towards disorder unless energy is provided to maintain it. In other words, any project process or workflow that we set up will naturally start to fall apart unless the value it creates is worth the energy it takes to maintain it. 

That means, folks, that when we set up a project process or a system it had better deliver some benefit.

My post yesterday was about effective communication systems. With the right design, we can create communication protocols that add value to how we communicate, making everyone’s work easier, perhaps even joyful!

But this process design is an art. 

Make a process too complicated and no one will use it, and the thing falls apart. Mandate people to use it anyway and you will deplete their energy for other valuable thinking.

And processes need love. Fail to show them care and attention, bits will stop working, or no longer be relevant, or worse, people will default to easier-in-the-short-run processes that will cause headaches in the long run.

The pull towards disorder is never far away. The processes we design must supply enough benefit to hold things together. 

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Why everything falls apart — and what to do about it

The second law of thermodynamics says that the universe is heading towards disorder. 

Life is the daily channelling of the flow — temporarily creating new structures: life forms, habitats culture.  

Life on Earth gets a daily boost of energy from the sun, and the movement of the planet and the moon. As long as there is energy available, we can work against the force of entropy to carry on creating complexity and richness. 

But when the energy stops, dismantling begins. And when what we have becomes too expensive to maintain with the energy do we have, the system breaks down too.

This is planning as governed by the second law of thermodynamics.

For millennia, humans have lived within this flux of energy and entropy, working with the available energy and resources. And when civilisations have overreached, they have declined.

Fossil fuels changed all of this. This concentrated energy source allowed us to escape the limits of the solar cycle and unlock extraordinary complexity. 

But again we have overreached. 

While fossil fuels have not peaked as quickly as expected, the climate breakdown caused by greenhouse gas emissions will shake civilisations apart. What have built has become too expensive to maintain – energetically, socially and ecologically. 

Sustainability asked us to think about doing less harm. Regenerative design is a fundamentally different approach.

How can we create life, habitats, homes, culture using the available energy that we have — creating things that are just complex in enough to thrive, but not so complex that  maintaining them uses the entire energy budget?

This requires much more acute awareness of the systems around us. 

  • What is connected to what — how could better connections create better conditions, and where is connection unhelpful? 
  • What is in flow, surplus and abundance – and what could we harness? 
  • What is the system trying to do?  — how could small interventions unlock something much bigger*

Left to their own devices, all systems will fall into decline. That’s the second law of thermodynamics. 

But every day we get an energy boost from the sun and the moon. THat’s our budget – the energy to resist the entropy. 

The question of regenerative design is simply this: 

How do we use that energy to create the conditions for thriving for humans and the rest of the living world?

*These three bullets map directly to the Living Systems Blueprint. See below.

Regenerative Design Lab
Living Systems Blueprint
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The annoying things about hammocks — three design principles from the second law of thermodynamics

The annoying thing about hammocks is that they obey the second law of thermodynamics. However big an initial shove you give them, they always come to a standstill. The swing’s energy is dissipated through air resistance and friction in the ropes.

That’s irritating if, like me, you enjoy a nap in a gently rocking hammock. But it’s also instructive: the hammock is a perfect metaphor for the second law.

The law says that a system will naturally move to its lowest free energy state. You already know this from the hammock: it comes to rest when all the energy available to keep it moving has been used up. If there were energy left, it would still be swinging.

Since this law is the way the universe goes, it is helpful to try to design with it rather than against it. 

Three modes of design from the second law of thermodynamics

1 – Design for resting equilibrium — no energy cost

  • Design the system’s natural resting state so that it is also the useful one. 
  • For example, put the pond at the bottom of the hill so that it fills itself.

2 – Intercept the flows — medium energy cost

  • Catch free energy while it’s on the move. This takes some organisational effort but can be minimal. 
  • For example, run the water through a turbine on its way downhill to the pond. The water is heading that way anyway, so can we use it?

3 – Fight the flow — high energy cost

  • Push the system in the opposite direction of free energy dispersal. This takes work to create and maintain, creating fragility. 
  • For example, pumping the water uphill, and storing it there for later use. 

The further down this list we go, the more energy we need. 

Life as the free energy interceptor

In the living world, physical processes, powered by the sun, the motion of the planet and moon, and heat from the earth, put the work into raise the energy level of the systems that surround us: evaporating water to create rain, driving tides in and out of our shores, heating the air to drive winds and raining radiation on the Earth’s surface. 

Life intercepts this free energy on its way down hill; on its journey from concentrated to spread out. This is the principle upon which whole cascade of life depend, from the processes driven by ion imbalances across cell membranes, to the multitude of species supported on a wooded slope as the intercepted water slowly makes its way downhill.

Where is regenerative design in all of this?

The goal of regenerative design for is for humans and the living world to survive, thrive and co-evolve. The living world thrives by catching energy as flows downhill, cycling it through a multitude of interlocking systems and lifeforms. To co-evolve and thrive we need to get involved with this dance. Rather than burning energy to fight the flow, we should be looking for where we can lean into, and even strengthen this life-giving process of harnessing these energy gradients. 

Where to hang the hammock

All of that thus resolved,  the only remaining question is where to hang the hammock. 

I would say, halfway down the hill, where the sound of the waterfall would send me to sleep. And I could dream about creating an ingenious mechanism for rocking the hammock powered by the falling water. 

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This post was inspired in part by a working diagram Chris Wise showed me how should be designing for equilibrium. I’ll share more when Chris publishes it. And also by lectures on thermodynamics from Peter Atkins, many lunar cycles ago.