on 31/8/08 9:17 am, Nick Palmer at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Of course a cell does not defy entropy. It takes in a certain amount of > energy, uses that to reduce the entropy of the materials it takes in to make > what it "desires". The amount of increase of entropy (disorder) caused by > the use of the energy is larger than the amount of decrease in entropy > (increased order) of the products of the cells production. It's like running > up a downwards moving escalator - you get higher by expending a lot more > energy (increasing entropy) than you could recover by going down again once > you reached the top. > > Nick Palmer >
Built into your analysis is the assumption that the _cell_ is somehow interested in recovering the old-energy because going up down escalators is the long term mission of a cell. A cell does "defy" entropy in the sense that it invests some energy in searching for new-energy inaddition to producing the things its needs. Harry
