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CHAPTER XVII

GENERAL SUMMARY OF THE THEORY

         According to our theory of the reversibility of the universe, the second law of thermodynamics represents one of two opposite tendencies found in the universe in equal proportions. These tendencies we have named the positive and the negative tendency. The positive tendency is that which follows the second law of thermodynamics, while the negative tendency reverses it. The phenomena of the two tendencies correspond to each other to the smallest detail, each being the reverse of the other with respect to the time-element. Thus, a moving picture of the negative phenomena could be obtained by taking a moving picture of ordinary, that is, positive, phenomena, and running the reel backwards when the reel is being projected onto the screen.

        The ordinary physical bodies obey the second law of thermodynamics, that is, they belong to the positive tendency; while living bodies, on the contrary, follow the negative tendency, and therefore reverse the second law of thermodynamics. If we reverse ordinary events with respect to time, as, for instance, with the device of running a motion-picture wheel backwards, the living and the lifeless would change places, though, indeed, the shapes and the structures of everything would remain unchanged. So, also, would every physical law not derived from the second law of thermodynamics, so that everything in such a reversal could be explained on the basis of physical laws. The reverse of the ordinary physical body is an organic form of life; while the reverse of an ordinary living body is what we have called a pseudo-living organism, having the organic structure of life but not its vital activity.

        Occasionally, in moving pictures, in order to get an effect which cannot be obtained in actuality, such as a man going up a smooth vertical wall, the device of reversing the reel is used. In watching the picture produced by such a reversed reel, an apparently unnatural effect is noticed, though it is difficult to say what is so unusual about it. For instance, in one case, a motion picture represented a number of persons diving into the ocean from a high springboard and finding under the water something that frightened them. They were then represented as immediately jumping backwards out of the water on to the springboard. This last part of the film was obviously a reversal of the part representing the diving; but it was noticeable that there were circular water waves converging towards a center before anyone came to the surface, and, just as the waves came to the center to produce a big splash, the undercurrents brought the people to the surface while, instead of jumping, the picture represented them as being splashed by the water into the air. The people themselves, on the other hand, lost in this reversal all appearance of activity; around them the water and everything else was jumping and moving, they were being moved in a passive way, as though the water and springboard were living and they were dead.

        Another way of expressing the distinction between the two tendencies is by drawing the distinction between available energy, energy which can be used under the second law of thermodynamics, on the one hand, and reserve energy, energy below the level required by that law, on the other hand. Of the energy of the universe, part comes under one heading and part under the other. The positive tendency uses up available energy and builds it up into a store of reserve energy, while the negative tendency, on the contrary, utilizes that store of reserve energy that the positive tendency has built up and creates available energy out of it once more. In other words, lifeless objects build up the energy of the universe into a reserve store, which they themselves cannot use; for them, the energy is running down into an unavailable form. But there are always present living bodies which utilize the reserve energy and again build it up into an available form.

        Our section of the universe is one in which the positive tendency prevails; but this is true for a finite section of space; in general, there are certain places and times in which one tendency prevails. Taking a given amount of time, this division between the two tendencies divides space into an infinite number of approximately brick-shaped sections, alternatively positive and negative. When we are in a positive section, we can see only the particular section we are in, though we may have other evidence (e. g., gravitational) of matter beyond that section. A stellar system, as it moves from one section into another, gradually evolves from a set of lifeless bodies with life on them, through a living stage where there are some pseudo-living organisms, into a nebular stage, then finally, on entering a positive section, becoming a "temporary star" and going through the reverse process, from the nebula back to the cooler stages.

        One tendency is as universal as its opposite. Life must be found everywhere, under all conditions, precisely as lifeless bodies are. There is no spontaneous generation of life, and therefore life can be traced back as far as we can trace back the matter of which the solar system is made, that is, to an eternity past.

        But the basis of the distinction is that living bodies are sensitive towards the past, and lifeless bodies are sensitive only towards the future. If a lifeless body can develop a sufficiently complicated organic structure to manifest mental phenomena, or anything analogous, this sensitiveness towards the future involves a memory of the future only, and, as a result, an illusion of a flow of time from the future towards the past, instead of the reverse as we suppose it to be. The sensitiveness of living bodies toward the past and of lifeless bodies toward the future is due to the fact that, under the second law of thermodynamics, large causes are likely to produce small effects, while, under the reversal of that law, it is small causes that are likely to produce larger effects. Another consequence of the same fact is, that lifeless phenomena are more easily explained by their causes, while living phenomena, on the contrary, though equally the rigid result of causality, are to be more easily explained by the future chains of the causal relation, or as that which is to produce certain effects. That is, living phenomena, phenomena which follow the negative tendency, are characterized by an apparent teleology or functionality that is absent (or at least, apparently so) in lifeless phenomena.

            There are also the properties of both tendencies as majority or as minority tendencies. For instance, in one part of the universe, the positive tendency is a majority tendency, and the negative tendency is a minority tendency. In other parts of the universe, on the contrary, the reverse is the case: the majority tendency is the negative, or life, while the lifeless phenomena constitute the minority tendency. We may note that there are various characteristics of the minority tendency such as the formation of complex endothermic compounds and of an organic structure; while the majority tendency, whether positive or negative, is characterized by an inorganic structure and the formation of exothermic compounds. The minority tendency, again, whether positive or negative, is characterized by a metabolic process wherever there is not too much heat to permit of such chemical reactions going on.

        We may use the diagram in Chapter XVI to illustrate the alternation in any part of the universe between the positive and negative tendency, remembering that the lower parts of the curve represent a condition where there is less available and more reserve energy. We may make an additional remark on the curve in that diagram, that atoms integrate where the curve is concave towards the left, and dissociate where the curve is concave towards the right; in other words, the concave side of the curve always faces that direction in time toward which we find smaller atoms.

        Besides the positive and negative tendency, there is also a bordering tendency, which we have called the neutral tendency. This is comparatively rare, and it suffices to say that it has no tendency even to form compound particles, but remains decomposed into the separate ultimate particles. It therefore is not to be found (unless maybe for a single moment in time) in any known substance, for no substances will be formed under the neutral tendency. But the neutral tendency is probably to be found in the spaces between the heavenly bodies, where it represents the phenomenon of a substance with impenetrability but with no resistance to the passage of a body through it.

        We may tabulate as follows the similarities and differences between the positive and the negative tendency:

AS A MAJORITY TENDENCY

AS A MINORITY TENDENCY

OTHER MISCELLANEOUS PROPERTIES

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