Revisiting the Gaia Hypothesis: Maximum Entropy, Kauffman's 'Fourth Law' and Physiosemeiosis

TL;DR

This paper integrates thermodynamics, Kauffman's Fourth Law, and physiosemeiosis to argue that Gaia and biological systems are fundamentally about information processing and entropy production, unifying energy and information as physical phenomena.

Contribution

It proposes a novel theoretical framework combining maximum entropy, Kauffman's Fourth Law, and physiosemeiosis to interpret Gaia as an information-generating, processing, and storing system.

Findings

Gaia is equivalent to an information processing system.

Biological and economic systems are continuous in their information and entropy dynamics.

Energy and information are two aspects of the same physical process.

Abstract

Recently, Kleidon suggested to analyze Gaia as a non-equilibrium thermodynamic system that continuously moves away from equilibrium, driven by maximum entropy production which materializes in hierarchically coupled mechanisms of energetic flows via dissipation and physical work. I relate this view with Kauffman's 'Fourth Law of Thermodynamics', which I interprete as a proposition about the accumulation of information in evolutionary processes. The concept of physical work is expanded to including work directed at the capacity to work: I offer a twofold specification of Kauffman's concept of an 'autonomous agent', one as a 'self-referential heat engine', and the other in terms of physiosemeiosis, which is a naturalized application of Peirce's theory of signs. The conjunction of these three theoretical sources, Maximum Entropy, Kauffman's Fourth Law, and physiosemeiosis, shows that the Kleidon restatement of the Gaia hypothesis is equivalent to the proposition that the biosphere is generating, processing and storing information, thus directly treating information as a physical phenomenon. There is a fundamental ontological continuity between the biological processes and the human economy, as both are seen as information processing and entropy producing systems. Knowledge and energy are not substitutes, with energy and information being two aspects of the same underlying physical process.