Entropy, Individualism and the Collapse of Empires

Entropy, Individualism and the Collapse of Empires

We are slaves to our good nature but all things done have proven our undoing.

Shelley J. A. Hartman


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Entropy, Individualism and The Collapse of Empires.

Thucydides and Polybius in their Histories described the repetition of human behavior and the cycles of civilization. However, time was linearized around the 4th century such that, by the 1980s, Tainter dismissed as “mystical” life-cycle models for large cultural entities. He advanced a theory rooted in the Western economic primacy of infinite growth. Unfortunately growth is not infinite.

This paper focuses on the principal causal factor of collapse: population expansion and resultant resource depletion. Multiple disciplines have drilled research wells for sixty years; now is the time for synthesis and Archaeology is the single best field for knowledge consolidation. Humans are not special and complex human systems manifest characteristic elements. The function of telomeres demystifies mortality (A. Olovnikov 1973). The geometric principle of linear straightness explains human temporal myopia. Self-organizing criticality, pioneered by physicist Per Bak (1987), illustrates why civilizations emerge as managerial responses to population pressure. The work of chemist Ilya Prigogine (1957) suggests that individuality precedes collapse. The laws of thermodynamics make comprehensible Tainter’s use of the economic term “decreased marginal returns”. Correlating these with allied factors results in a collapse model which appears elastic, scalable and predictive, and which coincidentally revitalizes Mommsen’s “cycle of historical evolution” (1894). EAA Istanbul Abstract 2014

Nothing is random; non-linear events are predictable, and there is nothing arbitrary about

civilization or human behavior. Archaeologists and anthropologists have mapped out standard

sequences in the evolution of societies (Renfrew and Bahn, 2008). People have a maximum core

group with whom they can easily interact (Dunbar, 2010). Empires around the world are

structurally similar (Diamond, 1997). Humanity’s narratives are not infinitely variable, as Lord

Raglan, Otto Rank and Joseph Campbell have shown (Campbell, 2008, 1949). Neurobiologists

have identified trans-genetic memory and shown that fears, and therefore likely other complex

thoughts, are passed down genetically from generation to generation (Dias and Ressler, 2014).

Civilizations evolve as the organizational response to population pressure. This paper assembles

principles from a variety of fields1, which are indispensable for a thorough and complete

understanding of human history and the rise and collapse of empires.

Part 1. A Background on Humanity

Human beings are not special. Pliny the Elder was quite correct when he observed that

the difference between Homo sapiens and all other animals was monthly ovulation2 (Plin. Nat.

7.24). Ovulation is not as frequent, fertility not as high and lactation much longer among the

great apes, chimpanzees and, likely, other hominids. It has been suggested that these differences

may be linked to mutations of the TSHR gene, the Thyroid Stimulating Hormone Receptor,

(Ratliff, 2011).3 The optimal period for the accentuation of this new trait in humans was during a

1 For a list of useful terms, see Definitions page 15. 2 "solum autem animal menstruale mulier est; inde unius utero quas appellaverunt molas." 3 From interviews with animal geneticist Leif Andersson of Uppsala University, and biologist Richard Wrangham of Harvard. As of 2014, Dr. Wrangham has switched his focus to the roll of neural crest cells in domestication (pers. comm.)


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prolonged die-back and bottle-neck between 195,000 and 123,000 years ago in South Africa

(Marean, 2010). Evidence suggests human numbers collapsed from 10,000 breeding pairs to as

low as 200 (Marean, 2010). It is the view here that population crises drive all innovation4 (e.g.

improvements in stone tools, metal working, and the use of fossil fuels) thus explaining how

humans left Africa with a vastly improved tool kit. They could out-breed, out-hunt and out-kill

all other hominids on the planet at that time, with the result that all other hominids went extinct.5

Part 2. History Repeats Itself and Linear Straightness

The first person to say, "History repeats itself" was not George Santayana, although in

The Life of Reason he did say, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

(1905. 92). Classicists know that the concept goes much further back than the 1900s. In the fifth

century BC Plato wrote of the "cycle of constitutions". Thucydides, from the fourth century BC,

in The Peloponnesian War wrote, "It will be enough for me, however, if these words of mine are

judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and

which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be

repeated in the future" (Thuc. intro. 2). It has been observed that in ancient Rome "There was

fair evidence at hand to confirm the deeply-rooted belief, held among the learned and the vulgar

alike, that history repeated itself in cyclical revolutions" (Syme, 1939). Cornelius Nepos (c. 50

BC) wrote in Eumenes 8.3, "And if any one reads the acts of those veterans, he will find the

proceedings of ours like theirs, and be of opinion that there is no other difference between them

but that of time".6 Polybius, also writing in the middle of the First Century BC, described the

same pattern (Plb. 6.4, 6.9.10). In his Histories, Polybius wrote of ανακύκλησις, "anakyklosis",

or α. ταν πολιτειαν, "cycle of constitutions" (Plb 6.4)(s.v. LSJ9). He observed that monarchy

was followed by despotism, then aristocracy and oligarchy, then democracy and mob-rule. After

that, there was generally a period of chaos and civil war, which eventually settled down and

4 The pressure to innovate is generated by crises. Agriculture, for example, was invented to feed a growing population that had over-exploited wild animals and plants. A few of the unforeseen consequences that have resulted include deforestation, erosion, soil salination, species extinction and, according to Piers Mitchell of the University of Cambridge, the expansion of schistosomiasis as a human parasite, due to the invention of irrigation. Another disease that emerged with the advent of agriculture, according to Ewen Callaway, was tuberculosis (Nature 2013). The presence of M. tuberculosis has been found as early as 4,600 BC in the northeastern region of China, at the same time as agriculture, in this case rice farming, began (Callaway 2015). All innovation creates unforeseen problems, downstream. 5 Neanderthals, Denisovans, and "Flores Man", Homo floresiensis. 6 “quodsi quis illorum veteranorum legat facta, paria horum cognescat neque rem ullan nisi tempus interesse iudicet”.


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resulted in monarchy again. However, between the fall of the Roman Empire and the

Renaissance the Greek and Roman concepts of revolving systems of government and of cyclical

time itself were eradicated under the crush of Christianity and its dominant linear cosmogony

(Palti, 1997). As Palti explained, there was "a Christian theological reaction against the classical

cyclical view of history" (Palti, 1997). In modern western literature the first early references to

cycles of historical change began once more with Machiavelli in the 1500s (Machiavelli, 1517.)

and later political theorists such as Marx and Engels, in the mid-1800s (Marx & Engels, 1848.).

Long human concensus, save for those peoples of the Abrahamic tradition, is that history

repeats itself – the question is why does no one ever learn from the past? That problem, in part,

has much to do with perspective and this becomes clear by

considering linear straightness. All curves visible on

television or on a computer exist because of this phenomenon

(Chassery et al., 2006). Microscopically, images are created

by assembling coloured squares (pixels) together, which are

themselves flat-sided. Pulling away a great distance the eye

loses sight of the flat sides and sees the squares blurred

together as a curve. The reverse is the same.

Presented with an actual curve like the green one pictured

left, (think of a graph of growth rate over time), the

magnification of any tiny part of that curve, for example

as defined by line segment CD, will result in what looks

like a straight line, when the amount of curve relative to

its length is so small it approaches zero. Picture the large

green curve as all of Roman history and then imagine the

tiny green curve defined by segment CD as the span of a

human life. The tiny curve, when magnified, appears

locally straight and this phenomenon is called "linear" or "local" straightness. It is hard to see,

plan, care or worry about the big curve, when all you perceive is a straight line.

Human life is fairly brief and this too affects behavior. Decisions are made on the basis of

immediate needs: food, water, shelter, and reproduction. Humans are slaves to biological

imperatives bookended by time, the same as all life on this planet (Dawkins, 1976).


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Part 3. Death

After a relatively short life comes death. Death is a prime motivator for short-term

thinking. Humans take death badly, because they cannot figure out why it should happen to

them. It might be easier if humans understood why there is death, in the first place. Complex

organisms have a “best-before date” governed by telomeres at the end of chromosomes; imagine

them stacked one on top of another like a tower of single blocks. At specific times a telomere

disappears and the tower gets shorter, then later another disappears, then another until they are

all gone and death follows. Death is an elegant solution to a practical problem. Cell division is

not always perfect, mutations occur and accumulate in a body over time until eventually there are

too many. By then, one might say fortunately, all the telomeres are gone and the creature has

expired, preventing it from passing along its defective genetic material through procreation. The

role of telomeres in death was first discovered by Alexey Olovnikov (Calder, 2003).

Part 4. Complexity and Systems

So, life appears linear and it is finite. And then it happens all over again. The repetition

of a pattern is systematic. Increase the scale of the system, adding lots of people, and a culture

will result, sui generis7. Belgian physicist Per Bak was the first to label the analogous

phenomena “self-organizing criticality” in the physical world (Bak, 1996). The mechanism

responsible resembles that which was described by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 as "quantum

entanglement".8 Similarly, on the atomic level, charged particles are attracted by other charged

particles into stable proximities, and release energy thereby increasing entropy.

It is not fanciful to apply this principle, to scale it up, to include all life as we know it.

Several recent developments in physics and biology appear to confirm that self-organizing

criticality is consistent on any range, from the most infinitesimal to our visible world. New

research has confirmed that non-organic particles self-organize into clusters and reproduce

further identical clusters given the right temperature and environment (Zeravcic and Brenner,

2014). Jeremy England has detailed in his current studies that certain particles will cluster into

organic arrangements that better dissipate energy and increase entropy, exemplifying the second

law of thermodynamics (England, 2013). Structurally, nucleic acids such as RNA fall into this

7 Of its own group. 8 "Verschränkung." The particles are in a relation such that their individual properties cannot be measured, and actions on one will have an effect on the others.


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category. England has observed that RNA and bacteria dissipate energy especially well because

they have developed the ability to replicate their forms, from available particles or nutrients, so

that more bits of RNA and more bacteria are then able to use more available resources and

dissipate more energy. England's experiments imply that, as life obeys the second law of

thermodynamics, life, at its most simple level, evolved in response to it. Life emerged as a direct

by-product of the second law of thermodynamics. Analogous design in larger organic entities

likewise maximizes resource use, which reduces available energy and increases the level of

entropy in the system. This, the “Maximum Power Principle”, was first described by ecosystems

ecologist Howard T. Odum in the 1950s (Odum, 1995) (Odum and Pinkerton, 1955).

Intensification of complexity has been referred to as “hyper-integration”. Hyper-

integration was first articulated by economist Luigi Pasinetti in 1988. The term is now also

employed by chemists designing next generation computer chip technology, which features

micro-thin layers connected laterally as well as deeply. In biological systems hyper-integration

of mutations is the driver of punctuated equilibrium, or evolution by sudden change, as outlined

by Eldridge & Gould (1977). In yet another analogous system to classical economic theories of

labour and supply, that of cultural hierarchy, hyper-integration refers to the tightly packed and

vertically as well as horizontally organized system of power, governance, religion and trade. In

every field, hyper-integration proves more dangerous over time. In a mature complex society, all

sections are so interdependent that perturbation in the smallest part of the system ripples outward

in all directions. Hyper-integration likewise creates unintended vulnerabilities in complex

economic landscapes, biology and in 3-D chip technology. This position of vibrant development,

densification, non-equilibrium and potential catastrophe has been described in physics as the

“poised state” (Bak, 1996).

The poised state is a constant in complex systems as well as societies. It becomes more

precarious as the culture moves from young, featuring the standard model of a power pyramid, to

mature, where the model changes from pyramidal to hour-glass shape as the elite expands its

numbers through marriage and offspring with the corresponding requirement for greater numbers

of retainers, cooks, attendants, bodyguards, and accountants. To provide for the growing

increasingly top-heavy hierarchical framework, population, food production, exploitation of

marginal land, innovation, territory and resources must increase. The poised state continues but

the potential for cascading failure and catastrophic collapse increases.


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Here is an example of that potential being realized, and it is taken from the world of

economics. A research team at the University of Ottawa, led by Jonathan Calof, spent 3 years

analyzing the business history of Nortel, one of Canada’s leading companies in the 90s, with an

enormous global presence and at one time 85,000 employees. In 2009 Nortel collapsed and

became Canada's greatest corporate immolation. The team examined the company’s products,

policies, direction, and changes over time; as well they interviewed former executives and

employees. In brief, the conclusions concerning the collapse were: Nortel had overextended its

boundaries, had a ballooning elite totally removed from and ignorant of the business and how its

products worked, it had neglected its “allies”, was cut off from the workers on the ground, had

lost the confidence of its most staunch supporters and had insufficient capital reserved for the

unexpected (Calof et al., 2014).

Fractal geometry plays a foundational role in system design at all levels. The term

"fractal" originated with mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, one of the most important figures in

science in the last century (Bak, 1996). He noted, in 1975, that virtually all of nature exhibits

repetitive mathematical shapes, which are identical whether scaled up or down (Bak, 1996). That

is, the initial complex shape, when tiny, can be described mathematically, and is expressed in an

identical pattern when expanded into a numerically larger version. This Mandelbrot called “self-

similarity” and suggested that all of nature possessed an underlying system or order (Mandelbrot,

1982). The order is visible in trees, ocean waves, crystals, geophysical features such as

coastlines, mountains and rivers, clouds, smoke, sea shells, sunflowers, etc. Fractals also appear

in mammalian cardiovascular and pulmonary systems (Bak, 1996) (Mandelbrot, 1982).

Certain actions are also at play. With biological systems from single celled creatures, to

ant colonies to mammals, the secrets of success are always the same; purpose, division of labor,

and organization (independent of resources, predation and disease). In addition, this is true of

clans, tribes and civilizations. Humans are social animals dependent on one another whose

social units work best when everyone is pulling in the same direction. When population size

increases, there is a requirement for increased organizational complexity, which leads to

hierarchies, constitutions and bureaucracies. Without a relative growth in complexity with size,

the cultural or living entity will not survive. Civilization is the managerial, organizational

response to population pressure.


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Expressions of self-organizing criticality and fractals in the physical world on left (top to bottom: sand, waves,

bromide crystals, frost) and the organic on right (bronchial tree, tree, fan coral, and Tokyo at night from the International Space Station).

Part 5. Over-population and Individuality

But unchecked, unlimited growth of population is not advisable. The early Christian

author, Tertullian, made, some might think, a harsh but practical observation when he wrote,

"The scourges of pestilence, famine, wars, and earthquakes have come to be regarded as a

blessing to overcrowded nations, since they serve to prune away the luxuriant growth of the

human race." (Tertullian, 1950).9 Over-population can be expressed as any population that uses

up resources that cannot be replaced in time for the next generation. The law of diminishing

returns, which Joseph Tainter identified as the cause of collapse (1988), is a term borrowed from

economics10 and describes the condition that develops after all the easily accessed resources have

9 “Revera lues et fames et bella et voragines civitatum pro remedio deputanda, tamquam tonsura insolescentis generis humani:" Tert. de an. 30.15-20. 10 Tainter uses the term, “declining marginal returns”.


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been extracted or harvested. It is not the cause of collapse. The law of diminishing returns is

itself driven by over-population. The increasing requirements of a growing population at a

certain point can only be met by spending extra effort (e.g. labor, money) to access more of the

same resources, which are becoming more difficult to obtain. Commercial enterprises benefit

from population increase as it drives down labor costs and provides growing markets. Over-

population brings on resource exhaustion, which defines the limits of growth and which

precipitates the collapse of empires (Meadows et al., 2004, 1972) (Harden, 1991, 1968, 1963)

(Catton, 1982). When there are too many people, major “trigger” disasters, events that disrupt the

poised state of an empire – flood, famine, climate change, war, earthquakes, plagues – produce

situations from which there is no recovery. The World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society

of London released their Living Planet Report 2014, on September 30th of that year. In

summary, there has been a global decline of species by 50%, in the last 40 years. The animals

did not "disappear"; they were either eaten or their habitats destroyed for mining and food

production. Ultimately, the cause is too many people.

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar has determined that a maximum of 150 people can

function well together without a hierarchy (Dunbar, 2010). Called by some, Dunbar’s Number, it

has been so rigorously tested and proven correct that it is employed in every social networking

program on the planet including LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

On the left, Dunbar's number showing an individual's friends and associates. On the right, Montreal Canada, from the ISS at night showing the population core and outlying towns.

Dunbar’s Number explains how charter families become the elite, and is essential for

understanding the construction of hierarchies. Dunbar's Number combined with fractal geometry

even underpins the political system democracy, and explains its failings.


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But, when a population far exceeds the functional limits of multipliers of 150 (e.g. when

there are too many people for anyone to at least know someone near the top of the hierarchy),

and a major crisis arises, people stop thinking of the greater collective good, and start thinking

only of the individual. Individualism always results in a true crisis for a reaction, an organism, a

colony or a country. In thermodynamics, "If atoms of this material are all moving in unison in

the same direction, minimal energy is lost. However, the energy dissipates rapidly if the units

move in uncoordinated random directions "(Hutchinson, 1962). Individualism is the early sign

of system collapse. In a Roman example, after the Social Wars during which individuals

struggled over power for decades, Augustus destroyed all individual factions and forcibly re-

focused attention on the state and Roman values (Syme, 1939).

Part 6. Malthus, Thermodynamics and Entropy

The laws of thermodynamics are elegantly expressed in human cultures by applying the

work of Thomas Malthus, economist and demographer from the early 1800s. Dismissed and

derided by capitalists for decades, the past forty years have confirmed that Malthus has always

been right.11 Concerning populations, things are predictable. If one has 2 adults and they have 4

children, and then those 4 children have 4 children, over time there will be 44 multiplied by t (for

time) children, an exponential progression which looks like the blue curve in the following

graph.

Malthus’ equation is P(t+1) = (1+r)P(t) where P is population, (t) is time and (r) is the

rate of change. This graph just takes off. When deaths and other limiting factors such as disease

and food scarcity are added to the equation the yellow curve is arrived at.

11 Malthus identified the constraints of a finite world; economists reject limits to growth.


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The same graphs are found in biology and predator/prey population density modelling

(Colinvaux, 1986). If a population increases, exceeds its maximum carrying capacity and then

things go horribly wrong as a result of losing a war, or experiencing famine or severe weather

event, the red curve rises and then falls to an extinction level (Colinvaux, 1986). The best

illustrations in human history were the population collapse on Easter Island, of the Anisazi, the

Indus Valley Civilization, or the abandonment of Gobekli Tepe. This curve also resembles the

birth-life-death cycle of every living organism, of civilizations as Theodore Mommsen rightly

observed (1854) and matches the curves produced during exothermic thermodynamic chemical

reactions of closed systems.

Essentially, the two graphs are analogous and describe the same thing. At the start of

population growth or an exothermic reaction both absorb energy or natural recourses so the

graph goes up. At a critical point, the curve crests at the top as population exceeds capacity by

some means, and, as resources are used up and exhausted the curve goes down and finally halts.

Both systems stop producing heat/work as, in the chemical reaction, all the reactive agents are

gone, and in the population, all the people have dispersed and resources used up. The analogy

applies to human metabolism or that of any biological organism. When young, the metabolic

rate is high; it crests during middle age, declines substantially with years, and ceases entirely at

death.

As growth declines entropy increases. In the human context, think of entropy as

unemployment. When the above chemical reaction stops, it has reached a state of high entropy;

in a culture, there are too many people for the resources that remain, there is no work, social

bonds break, the underlying faith in the system erodes, militarism grows and people start to act

more and more as individuals, until the system itself falls apart. This is the case with chemical


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reactions, organisms, and societies. Unless new energy and resources are constantly introduced

into the system, the reaction will come to a halt. As an example, Augustus brought the wealth of

Egypt and Trajan the wealth of Dacia home to Rome extending its golden age (Boatwright et al.,

2004). These events are exactly paralleled in thermodynamics. Ilya Prigogine won the 1977

Nobel Prize for chemistry because of his discovery of dissipative structures (Prigogine, 1977).

He observed that reactions can continue, and entropy avoided, if new energy is introduced into

the system. This was a clever work-around for the entropy rule in the second law, and the same

principle prolonged the Roman Empire. This does not always happen. The desertion of Orkney,

the Bronze Age Collapse in the Mediterranean, the decline of the Kushite Empire in Sudan, the

destruction of Arslantepe and the disintegration of the Mayan Empire can all be linked to

overpopulation, resource depletion and a trigger crisis. It is regrettable for the present era that

there are no new lands to conquer, continents to discover, or worlds to explore.

Part 7. Epigenetic Inheritance or Trans-genetic Memory

Given the advances in social and hard sciences over the past 2 centuries, some of which

have been touched on above, it might appear safe to assume that humanity can now arm itself

with new strategies for dealing with dangerous potentials that are strikingly similar to onerous

events of the past. Unfortunately human actions continue to indicate that is not the case. There

seems to be more at play here, some underlying governing structure, the consideration of which

has never before been permitted by the conceits of humanity.

Groundbreaking research by neurobiologist Brian Dias and Kerry Ressler, published in

Nature Neuroscience in January 2014, supports the principle of trans-genetic memory by

showing that the experience of fear by a father mouse is inherited by his progeny and their

progeny. This discovery is the first solid evidence indicating that knowledge can be genetically

encoded into individuals and then telegraphed onward through generations. The implications are

nothing less than revolutionary, and throw into question whether humans are capable of novel

responses to critical situations beyond a predictable set, which may have been determined

centuries or even millennia ago. Experiments such as the one above cast doubt as to whether the

human species can ever learn anything from history at all.

The growing interest in epigenetic inheritance by neuroscientists and the results being

obtained by researchers such as Dias and Ressler will, it is to be expected, force a significant

alteration in the understanding of human cognition and causality. The veracity of philosophies


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which have at their core the principle of free will are now suspect, thereby putting that which

humanity longs for the most, order and control, once again beyond its grasp.

Conclusion

This analysis is value neutral; it is not anthropocentric. This paper has generated the

complaint that the hypothesis outlined here is too simple; that the factors involved in the

evolution and collapse of empires are complicated, that cultures are rich and varied and that

humans are intricate and nuanced. In response, it is wise to bear in mind that the profundity of

life began with a single-celled organism. Only six elements are essential for life; carbon,

hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. There are only 3 laws of thermodynamics.12

The periodic table has just ninety-eight elements found naturally on Earth. Humans are directly

descended from a mammalian ancestor the size and shape of a shrew and certain memories are

heritable. This paper does not focus on the tiny coloured squares but on overarching, repetitive

patterns. The designs on pots, clothing patterns and architectural styles are not the bones of an

empire, they are the decorations. Repeated analyses suggest that the systematic, organizational

structure of civilizations is predictable, follows the same patterns in a global context and the

patterns are fairly straightforward. Evidence also indicates that humans are not particularly

special nor are they exceptions to any biological rule.

By combining principles from multiple fields, it becomes apparent that analogous

systems are everywhere, including in all of humanity's thoughts and endeavors, by virtue of the

fact that everything in the entire physical world exists through the expression of ever-expanding

analogous systems. Everything manifests the laws of thermodynamics. Large complex

civilizations are without doubt impressive, but they all have the same weakness: the people

themselves. Humans have limiting factors – very troubling limiting factors – exceptional

fecundity, top predator status, habitual over-population of environments, short-term thinking,

epigenetic inheritance, little self-restraint, and, perhaps most dangerous of all, hubris. The result:

every empire has built within it already, the elements of its inevitable collapse.

12 Technically there are 4 but the 4th is very basic. It is called the Zeroth Law (Armitage, pers. comm.).


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Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Jeremy England, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Richard

Wrangham, the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology, Harvard University, John

Armitage, Physics Chair, Carleton University, Greg Fisher and Shane Hawkins, Greek and

Roman Studies, Carleton University, Ahmed Shalabi, Atomic Energy of Canada (ret.), and

Christophe Boesch, Director of Primatology, Max Planck Institute, for encouragement, advice,

corrections and observations.


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Definitions Conservation of matter: Matter cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change state. Conservation of energy: Energy is indestructible; it can only change form. Energy entering into a reaction must be totally accounted for, at the end of the reaction. Difference equation: reflects the change or difference as variables change. Entropy: a measurement of the energy that is not available for work during a thermodynamic process. Energy loss (e.g. unwanted heat generation in machines), -the dissipation or lack of availability of energy in a system or chemical reaction, disorder. Equilibrium: (a) common understanding is balance, (b) but it is in fact maximum entropy, the dissipation of all energy and not actually mentioned in the Laws of Thermodynamics. Exothermic: Giving off heat. General Systems Theory: from Greek meaning system, which is made up of parts or members. GST is, quite simply, an attempt to identify common systems in all disciplines. Laws of thermodynamics: 1. "the energy of the universe remains constant"*

2. "the entropy of the universe tends to increase" (energy becomes less available)*

3. "at absolute zero, entropy is zero".* (*Williams: 1962: 31-2) Linear or local straightness: a mathematical phenomenon whereby a tiny part of a curved line, when magnified, appears straight. Quantum entanglement: relational arrangements on a sub-atomic level. Self-organizing criticality: the point at which similar material arranges itself into an organized structure. Thermodynamic: Greek meaning hot, + Greek meaning force or power. Trans-genetic memory or epigenetic inheritance: Information that is passed from one generation to subsequent generations through a genetic mechanism. Work: from mechanical engineering, the realized physical and useful lift / turn of a machine, such as a locomotive or car engine. Work = energy - entropy.


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Entropy, Individualism and the Collapse of Empires