DNAunion: I have the book SEJones quoted from a lot recently (The Mystery of
Life's Origin) and decided to skim over the chapters on thermodynamics
(SEJones presented a lot of good material I had forgotten was in there). I
found the following "one-liner" that fairly-explicitly states the negative
effects of entropy that life must overcome.
"Peter Molton has defined life as "regions of order which use energy to
maintain their organization *against the disruptive force of entropy*"".
That is from, (Charles B. Thaxton [Ph.D. in Chemistry], Walter L. Bradley
[Ph.D. in Materials Science], Roger L. Olsen [BS in Chemistry, Ph.D. in
Geochemistry], The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories,
Lewis and Stanley, 1984, p127). They give the reference for the quote as:
"Peter M. Molton, 1978. J. Brit. Interplanet. Soc. 31, 147."
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