ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to sketch the physical nature of flow processes involving atomisms that interact through mass-dominated conservations (i.e., energy and momentum). These flow processes identify global tendencies toward uniform distributions of energy and momentum. Once the equipartitioning of conservations is achieved, the field is globally stable, and all flow processes disappear. This state is defined as equilibrium. A concentration of a conserved entity in any portion of a field identifies a potential, that is, a local storage depot. Potentials are assembled and disassembled by changing the distributional characteristics—the geometrical "layout" of the conservation. A layout or distribution of a conservation constitutes a thermodynamic field. In closed systems, flow processes identify global tendencies toward the stable, equipartitioned state. The second law of thermodynamics associates these tendencies with the "breaking of constraints"—the annihilation of organizational states. In open systems, however, flow processes can develop that are associated with tendencies toward nonequipartitioned states. The result is stable states exhibiting macroscopic distributional inhomogeneities. Under these conditions new macroscopic cooperative units can emerge. The breaking of constraints is referred to as entropy production, and the making of constraints is called negentropy production.
32The second law of thermodynamics identifies the fact that constraints, regardless of their material nature, have a limited "lifetime." One interpretation of the second law is the prediction that the number of constraints in the universe decreases with time, ultimately converging on an equilibrium state, defined by no constraints and exhibiting no flows (e.g., "heat death"). The causal dynamics associated with the second law, however, can lead to a dramatically different interpretation if the system of interest is sufficiently complex to define a stratified (macro/micro) field structure. Under these conditions the role of the second law in dictating organizational constraints can vary, depending on which level of organization (macro or micro) is observed.
The physical principles that fashion states within and between upper and lower, macro and micro, frames of reference have to do with the flow of conserved quantities (mass, energy, momentum, etc.). Particular attention is given to the fact that kinetic descriptions (mass-related, e.g., MV0 , MV1 , MV2 ) provide the connections among different levels of a system composed of simple atomisms. In a stratified field the couplings that relate the micro force structures to the macro flow structures can evolve physical nonlinearities that serve as sources for "new" constraints. These constraints restrict or classify both the macroscopic and microscopic trajectories of the system. Brownian motion is typical of how such a nonlinear force/flow structure evolves.
