“It [The Second Law of Thermodynamics] is the only physical theory of universal content, which I am convinced, that within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts will never be overthrown.”
-- Albert Einstein on Classical Thermodynamics
“Energy and life go hand in hand. If you stop breathing, you will not be able to generate the energy you need for staying alive and you’ll be dead in a few minutes. Keep breathing. Now the oxygen in your breath is being transported to virtually every one of the 15 trillion cells in your body, where it is used to burn glucose in cellular respiration. You are a fantastically energetic machine. Gram per gram, even when sitting comfortably, you are converting 10,000 times more energy than the sun every second.”
― Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life
“Life’s purposeful nature, broadly understood, has thermogenic origins.”
― Eric Schneider & Dorion Sagan: Into the Cool Energy Flow Thermodynamics and Life
The deepest part of what I’m trying to convey is a sort of pattern of unfolding built into the nature of our universe. I find it hard to ignore the ideas of emergence where initial rules and conditions of a system dictate wildly unpredictable and complex outcomes, yet still retain some intelligible patterns and constraints throughout the levels of organization. For an example of emergence of unique but recognizable form the growth of a snowflake comes to mind. Given the right temperature, moisture, and particulate, a snowflake will grow with both patterns of similarity as well as individual uniqueness. Snowflakes like galaxies, stars, planets, and living cells emerge out of the substructures and rules of the cosmos.
Looking into where physics becomes biology we find non-equilibrium thermodynamics, a field which describes natural structures, dissipative structures like hurricanes and biological cells. All far from equilibrium systems need a throughput of energy to maintain their structure and function. A hurricane's enormous energy comes from the temperature gradient between the sea and the cooler upper atmosphere. Biological non-equilibrium structures not only dissipate energy gradients but seek out gradients to further sustain themselves. Concretely, we animals and fungi seek out chemical gradients provided by other organisms, while plants grow and move toward the gradient of electromagnetic waves.
We biological structures also reproduce and thereby innovate to create more structures further and faster degrading evermore gradients. In this light, evolution is a special, living case of the second law of thermodynamics. Evolution is an algorithm to find and exploit gradients more effectively as well as to push dissipation into novel territory where new exploitable gradients lie.
“Living systems strive...to catch, store, and degrade gradients. Trends arise in both ecosystems and evolution, toward increasing number of species, more developed networks, increasing differentiation, increasing functional integration of thermodynamic flows, increasing abilities of organisms to adjust themselves to dwindling and changing gradients, and increasing capacity for dissipation”
Evolution is considered to be blind, but the laws of physics constrain the spaces for energetic niche exploitation, and it seems the overall “purpose” of evolution is to increase dissipation. Presuming this correct, then the great paradox of life is to have temporarily stable systems generated and living in order to ever more rapidly diffuse order into chaos.
When put metabolically into comparison with the sun as Nick Lane has: “Gram per gram, even when sitting comfortably, are converting 10,000 times more energy than the sun every second.” Did you imagine that? Maybe he picked a good metric to favor humankind, but it sounds to me like something special is going on right in the living world in terms of thermodynamics. Perhaps romanticizing, I find this a very aesthetic way to look at the dynamic cosmos. Below is a graph of the evolution over time of respiration intensity. It does not include humans or our techno-economic footprints of energy usage which no doubt continue, if not accelerate the trend.
Our cells are massively dissipating energy, and what cells are the most metabolically by unit of mass? Brain cells, along with gut and liver, are the most metabolically active cells in the body. Intelligence is significantly linked to metabolism. Brain metabolism affords intelligence. Paradoxically to all of mainstream medicine, if we assume we want more intelligence we are opposing well entrenched ideology towards “health” because intelligence also happens to be positively correlated with higher HDL, LDL, VLDL and triglycerides. Intelligence also happens to be inversely associated with bilirubin which I have excess amounts of, and which might make you wonder why you should keep reading this beyond pity or charity.
In regards aging and metabolism, it’s been known for over a hundred years that children have metabolisms much higher than adults per unit of body weight. Kids nine years and younger have nearly double the metabolism and therefore physiological CO2 than adults whose metabolism tends toward decline. While I couldn’t find the data I highly suspect the metabolic rate is likely highest in the womb where the warmth and the gas exchange process would keep the CO2, O2 and blood perfusion very high. After all, the fetus’s skin is not yet required to protect it or perform much in the way of insulation, so it can be fully perfused and stay in growth/repair mode. Relatedly, children’s severed fingertips can often grow back. Completely securing them in an airtight fixture allows the CO2 to build up and aids the process. Writing this, I find myself deeply curious if any epigenetic researchers are looking at the simple potential for CO2 concentrations to turn on further repair mechanisms at the gene or epi-genome level. When we are thinking about healing ourselves I suggest the womb as a good model for an ideal self healing environment, I imagine it looks a lot like the matrix pods, or perhaps float tank versions 10.0.
Studies showing deficiency, even mild deficiency of thyroid are very clear. Low maternal thyroid and low child thyroid are significant risk factors for very low intelligence. and the association of intelligence with cholesterol would also be consistent as thyroid is required for cholesterol synthesis, and cholesterol is integral to brain development, structure and function. Unfortunately for most of us modern people the fluoride in the water does have a significant effect on both thyroid and intelligence. Though the effect is contested, the chemistry is rather straightforward as fluoride or chloride readily replace the iodine required for thyroid production. And more unfortunately, using levothyroxine prior to and during pregnancy has not yet been shown to remedy the risk. Somehow doctors still call it benign hypothyroidism. I would also suggest that studies would do better if they used active thyroid instead of levothyroxine. Levothyroxine needs conversion by the liver which is dictated by...protein and thyroid levels. Often this is why some women will have no benefit from t4, levothyroxine.
Increasing maternal thyroid is only beneficial to a point. Women with both too high and too low of thyroid have less desirable outcomes in terms of IQ for their children. That is, increased IQ relates to higher metabolism. In an evolutionary sense I imagine that a high IQ requires a bigger more demanding brain and like a change in any physical characteristic poses evolutionary tradeoffs or risks. I think the maternal thyroid curve of effects makes sense considering that it is probably nutrient availability, especially glucose and temperature that are driving conditions for brain development. A mother with too high of a thyroid level will be using up her glucose on her own processes. To that effect it is likely that progesterone is a critical hormone for fetal cognitive development. For starters, it’s associated with very positive cognitive and neurological effects in adults, and secondly it increases blood glucose. The supply level of glucose to the fetus is dependent on maternal progesterone levels. Progesterone levels will decrease with increasing maternal stress and reduced stress will allow for more progesterone. IQ happens to be associated will all markers of health later in life, and as such a reasonable indicator of overall brain health.
Through gestation, birth and childhood the energy state of both the person and the people around are important for the development of personality and sense of morality. The security of maternal warmth and nurturance as described in The Heat of Attachment will drive the organism's brain development and its initial expectation of the environment. This will set the stage for whether the child sees a world of threats or a world rich with resources and connection. I suggest that this imprint on the nervous system is key to understanding the emergence of both open societies and authoritarian eras and regimes.
A critical component of an individual’s stress is the pathogenic load of the child and its kith and kin in community. To tie them together one has to make the realization that central and peripheral body heat and metabolism are critical for keeping the immune system healthy and pathogens at bay. A higher metabolism allows the immune system to more quickly respond to threats and to better access tissues as perfusion is increased with warmer body temperature. When metabolism decreases or pathogenic load increases the organism will become more energetically conservative. The lower the metabolism, or the lower the energetic balance, the more the organism will act to avoid further pathogen exposure and the less energy it will have for cognition. This is called pathogen avoidance and it's been verified in a variety of species and contextualized in humans as part of a behavioral immune system.
The behavioral immune system is a suite of psychological tendencies that aim to protect us from disease spread. The behavioral immune system under load is behind many non-liberal values like xenophobia. As I’ve argued elsewhere the immune system is a critical, but only partial subcomponent of allostatic load or the body budget. Evidence seems to support that any increase in metabolic cost will drive similar psychological shifts from openness and curiosity towards fear and anxiety. This can be recognized in simple daily life: when we are injured, sick or stressed from external social or economic factors our curiosity shrinks and ideas become more rigid. From whatever norm we have, we feel less creative and less extroverted. If we feel bad enough internally we are much more liable to express that externally. To say the same thing from the opposite perspective, as our disease and metabolic loads decrease we will find ourselves expressing our personalities with more energy, more positivity, more openness and more tolerance for outsiders.
What I’ve tried to demonstrate is that there seems to be a sort of law of the universe from the big bang, into the origin of living cells and through evolution finding ever increasing metabolisms. Along with metabolism and respiration, cognitive capacity has increased. We use that cognitive capacity to both solve problems and just be or create beauty, but in either case to ever increase our energy throughput. While I expect that trend to continue over the longer run, it’s a bit of a drag to feel like we are living through the depths of a cognitive and metabolic depression. Here’s to hoping it resolves within our lives and most importantly that the negative trend does not positively feedback upon itself.
Selected References:
Into-Cool-Energy-Flow-Thermodynamics
Power-Sex-Suicide-Mitochondria-Meaning
The Expensive-Tissue Hypothesis: The Brain and the Digestive System in Human and Primate Evolution
Brain metabolism predicts fluid intelligence in young adults -- ScienceDaily
Mild-thyroid-disorder-could-hurt-brainpower
Intelligence quotient in children with congenital hypothyroidism
Hypothyroidism During Pregnancy Linked to Lower IQ for Child Early Diagnosis & Treatment May Help
Relationship of the Thyroid with Intelligence and Personality
Levothyroxine Fails to Increase Iq In Offspring of Women With Subclinical Thyroid Disease
Treatment of Subclinical Hypothyroidism or Hypothyroxinemia in Pregnancy | NEJM
The interplay between thyroid and liver: implications for clinical practice
IQ in childhood and the metabolic syndrome in middle age
Metabolism as a guiding force for immunity | Nature Cell Biology