The Many Faces of Irreversibility

The British Society for the Philosophy of Science
The Many Faces of Irreversibility

Author(s): K. G. Denbigh
Source: The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec., 1989), pp. 501518
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Society for the Philosophy of
Science
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/687738 .

Accessed: 11/09/2014 06:41
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Oxford University Press and The British Society for the Philosophy of Science are collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 212.128.155.21 on Thu, 11 Sep 2014 06:41:39 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Brit. i. Phil. Sci. 40 (1989),
501-518
Printedin Great Britain

K. G. DENBIGH
ABSTRACT
it is claimed,is a muchbroaderconceptthanis entropyincrease,as

Irreversibility,
is shown by the occurrenceof certainprocesseswhichare irreversible
without
seemingto involveany intrinsicentropychange.Theseprocessesincludethe
spreadingoutwardsintospaceof particles,or of radiation,andthey alsoinclude
certainbiologicaland mental phenomena.For instance,the irreversibleand
of naturalevolutionis not entropic
treelikebranchingwhich is characteristic
in itself-i.e. in abstraction
fromaccompanying
whenit is considered
biochemical
andphysiological
activity.Whatappearsto be the commonfeatureof allformsof
irreversibilityis the fanning out of trajectories,new entities or new states, in the
temporaldirectiontowards the future.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Introduction
Classesof IrreversibleProcesses
IrreversibilityDefined
T-invarianttheories
TheTemporalReferenceDirection
Irreversibilityhas no SpatialAnalogue
Does IrreversibilityNecessarilyInvolveEntropy?
FanningOut TowardsTheFuture
INTRODUCTION
In the Timaeus,
Platospokeof timeas 'revolving'andit may be that he believed
that 'timeitself'is cyclicin some sense. Evenso he didnot supposethat most
To be sure 'lifecycle'
sequencesof eventsare anythingotherthan irreversible.
is a commonlyused expression;but clearlyit does not mean either that the
eventsof a person'slifecan occuragain in the reverseorder,or that a person
can be reborn and then lead exactly the same life over again. Plato's view, if I
have understood it correctly, was that there are cyclic motions in the heavens
but irreversible sequences on Earth.
So too in Asiatic cultures, even in those which have been widely regarded as

K. G. Denbigh
502
having adopted the notion of cyclic time. For example Schipper and Wang
Hsiu-Huei [1987] have pointed out that, although Taoist ritual used a concept
of 'cycles' nested within each other, this nesting was in a 'time' which, in itself,
was taken as linear. Similarly in Indian thought; Anindita Balslev [19871
recently pointed out that the supposed recurrence of 'world cycles' does not
involve 'any idea of exact repetition of the particular, and that instead the
emphasis is on the similarity of the generic features'.
As we know, Judeo-Christian thought uses the notion of a linear and
progressivetime. But 'progressive'in what sense? Science has been widely seen
as indicating a universe-wide process of 'running down', an approach to the
'heat death'. However, I have argued elsewhere [Denbigh, 1989] that the
entropy law is a good deal less restrictive than is commonly supposed.
Something quite distinct from a running down may also be taking place if we
can but get a lead on it.
Towards this end it is useful to give consideration to the concept of
irreversibility.This has a much wider field of application than has the concept
of entropy increase, as may be seen from the fact that there exists a wide
variety of processes which are undoubtedly irreversiblewhilst seemingly not
giving rise to any closely correlated entropy change.
Thus the object of this paper is not at all concerned with the current theories
either of entropy increase or of 'chaos', but rather to consider 'one way
temporal development in a much broader context, one which will include the
irreversibilityof biological and mental processes. This essay will therefore not
attempt the mathematical sophistication of Harold Grad'sfamous paper 'The
Many Faces of Entropy' [1961] but instead will be entirely qualitative and
phenomenological.
Beforeproceeding let me repeat the truism that one cannot talk about either
time or irreversibilitywithout using temporal words. If one were to say, for
example, that some particular sequence of events does not occur in the reverse
order, the understanding of 'sequence', 'events' and 'occur' depends on a prior
acceptance of certain temporal presuppositionswhich are deeply embeddedin
language. Even the using of the present tense in a 'tenseless' (i.e. timelessly
true) manner does not always eliminate the presupposing of 'time's arrow'.
The same applies to the use of many substantives. For instance to speak of 'an
expansion' or of a 'light source' is tacitly to adopt a particulardirection of time
and not its reverse. The question how that direction is chosen will be deferred
to Section 5.
2
CLASSES OF IRREVERSIBLE
PROCESSES
The class which comes first to the thoughts of most scientists is that group of
processes, occurring in physico-chemical systems, which may be called the
class.Typicalexamples are the flow of heat from hotter to cooler
thermodynamic

503
bodies, frictional and viscous phenomena, inelastic collisions, processes of

mixing and diffusion, and the immense number of chemical and nuclear
reactions. They can all be brought together under the umbrella of the Second
Law since they are characterized by the non-decrease of entropy, so long as all
consequential changes in the environment are allowed for as well as the
changes in the system in question.
There is also a group of physical processes which are irreversible without
being entropic-or at least not with any certainty. As long ago as 1932, E. A.
Milne pointed out (Whitrow [1980], p. 10) that a swarm of noncolliding
particles tend, in due course, to move further and further apart in space, and
continue to do so forever, even if initially their vector velocities were such that
they were moving towards each other. A similar irreversibilitymanifests itself
in the case of radiation, for the wave fronts tend to expand rather than to
contract.' In terms of Maxwell's theory one speaks of using retarded,and not of
advanced, potentials in the solution of the equations.
This theme was developed further by Popper [1956, 1957, 1958] in a series
of short papers where he discussed the example of circular waves moving
outwards on the surface of a pond, due to a disturbance at its centre; a cine film
of this process run backwards would show an entirely 'unphysical' process of
waves being generated at the pond's peripheryand subsequently convergingto
the central point. Popper argued that the normal tendency of the waves to
move outwards is a non-entropicform of irreversibility.For although it is true
that the water waves are damped by viscosity, this is an adventitious factor
since the same phenomenon of an exclusively outwards motion would occur
in the idealized situation of a non-viscous liquid. It can also be argued that
Milne's example of particles becoming more and more separated from each
other in free space is probablynon-entropic. There are two opposing effects. On
the one hand there is the familiar fact that the adiabatic expansion of a perfect
gas from one closedvolume to another gives rise to an entropy increase in the
gas which goes up linearly with the logarithm of its volume. On the other
hand, in the situation where the same gas expands freely into unconfinedspace
then, as it becomes more dilute, there occurs a progressive separation of the
fastest moving molecules from the slowest moving molecules. This separation
effect would seem to imply a reduction of entropy, thereby reducing, or
completely cancelling, the entropy increase due to the expansion. Current
theory does not provide the means for settling the matter, due to uncertainty
about whether or not a statistical entropy can properly be attributed to
particles within an unbounded space.
For further discussion on these forms of irreversibilitythe reader is referred
Ofcourse under special conditions, e.g. by use of spherical mirrors,one can obtain a contraction
of wave fronts. Similarly if a large circular hoop were dropped on to the surface of a pond, it
would result, at least for a short time, in inwards moving waves.

504
K. G. Denbigh
to papers by Hill and Grtinbaum [195 7] and by Penrose and Percival [1962].
For my present purposes it is sufficient to notice that there are physical
phenomena which are irreversible without necessarily being entropic.
Another very important kind of irreversibilityis displayedin biology where it
is familiar enough that the evolutions of the various species of organisms do
not normally occur in reverse. The featheredbirdsdo not return to being scaly
reptiles, nor do the reptiles revert to their own parent genera. To be sure there
are individual instances of regression2 or of simplificationof function. Simpson
[1950] pointed out that the notion that evolution is invariably accompanied
by increase of 'complexity' is very difficult to substantiate. What does seem
certain, however, is that, in the temporal direction we call 'future', there
occurs a branching-what Darwin called a divergence.Throughout the period
since life first appeared on Earth new species have branched off from existing
species,3 with the consequence that the overall evolutionary scheme has a
temporal structure resembling the above-ground structure of a tree. Biologists
would find it quite unacceptable, I think, to suppose that at some future date
this structure would start to regress, resulting in all the 'advanced' organisms
returning to their ancestral states, and leading eventually to all life being
in the form of unicellular organisms, before these too vanish into a lifeless
Earth.
A somewhat similar 'branching towards the future' occurs in each
individual organism. Ontogeny, it was said by Ernest Haeckel, recapitulates
phylogeny! No doubt this is an oversimplification,but nevertheless it is true, in
the present context, that the bodily development of each individual traces out
an irreversiblepath, just as does the development of the biosphere as a whole.
The cells of an embryo have the capacity to divide and to differentiate,giving
rise to a large number of differentsorts of cells which go to form the tissues and
organs of the adult organism; it would appearcontranaturato suppose that this
branching process could ever occur in the opposite direction whereby an adult
organism would gradually lose the differentiationof its cells and tissues, and
would eventually revert to a single ovum and a spermatozoon.
To be sure, the specifically biological kinds of irreversibilityare necessarily
accompanied by the ordinary physiological and biochemical processes of the
living body.These are processes of fluid flow, of heat transfer and of chemical
reaction, and, as such, they are entropy producing in the normal way. What I
have argued is that living things display their own distinctive kinds of
2 It is known that minor formsof
adaptivechange, such as the colouring of moths, can be reversed
3
if all ancestral environments are retraced. See, for example, Harvey and Partridge [198 7].
The number of species among the animals and plants alone is now believed to exceed 107. Of
course it is not to be supposed that the increase in the number of species goes on without
interruption. Indeed it appearsthat, at very big intervals of time, there may occur considerable
extinctions of species. However, the fossil record indicates that the 'niches' made vacant are
quickly filled, and thereafter the normal increase in the number of species is resumed.

TheMany Faces of Irreversibility
505
irreversibilityover and above the entropic kind. The question of independence

will be taken up in Section 7.
Ofcourse there was 'evolution', in a broad sense, long before there was life.
The universe itself has evolved and its primitive material has gone into the
formation of a large number of different kinds of cosmic and stellar objects,
most notably perhaps a great increase, as the universe cooled, in the number of
stable molecule types. This chemicalevolution[Blum, 1968] was accelerated, as
soon as life appeared, by a further expansion of molecular variety. As new
species of plants and animals appeared they synthesized a truly immense
number of differentsorts of organic molecules. The chemical 'tree' thus has a
diverging structure oriented towards the future in much the same way as in
the case of the biological tree already referredto; the process involved is, of
course, physico-chemical and not biological.
In higher animals there is also the irreversibilityof mental processes which,
as experienced in ourselves at least, is a branching of one thought into another,
a branching into a blooming, buzzing array of new beliefs and intentions, new
desires and emotions. Many of these mental items remain with us as an
accumulation in the memory. Perception and cognition thus appear as an
addingon to what is already in our minds, and not as a subtraction; for once we
have seen or known something we never undergo the hypothetical reverse
process of unseeing or unknowing that thing. This point was nicely illustrated
by Costa de Beauregard [1963, p. 11511when he remarkedon the absurdity of
supposing that, having read some book, we could delete from our minds
everything said in the book by the act of reading it backwards, from end to
beginning!
The branching which occurs in mental activity is often the making of
connections-it is the putting together of clues to form some new and
meaningful whole in the mind. As Polanyi in particular has emphasized, once
the new whole has been grasped its clues take on a differentcharacter. A nice
example is providedby problem pictures such as the one shown in the Tractatus
where we see an animal's head facing to the left, and then we quickly realize
that the picture also shows a differentanimal's head facing to the right. Once
that double meaning has been grasped we cannot withdraw that understanding and see the picture as representing one animal only. The cognition is
irreversible.
In short it seems ridiculous to suppose that mental processes could possibly
occur in reverse. We would find ourselves losing wisdom and experience; also
action would precede intention, thus (it would appear) making nonsense of
morality!
So much for this distinguishing of several classes. What is very remarkableis
that they are entirely consistent with each other as regards the temporal
ordering of events. There is but the one 'arrow of time'! For example, if a
number of events are placed in an order of 'before'and 'after' by the criterion

50o6
K. G. Denbigh
provided by human consciousness, the same orderingis achieved by using an

'entropy clock' (involving some chosen physico-chemical process), or by
judging the order relative to the outwards flow of radiation or of particles from
a source, or again by judging the order relative to some biological growth
process of the type of rings in a tree trunk. Ofcourse there will occur exceptions
to this statement if fluctuation phenomena are significant, but this is very
unlikely except in very small systems.
3 IRREVERSIBILITY DEFINED
has been takenso faras tactilyunderstood,but it

Thenotionof irreversibility
is a matterof
needs now to be expressedmore exactly.In fact irreversibility
of
is
as
and
this
reason
it
best
defined
the
for
negation reversibility
degree
which is an idealizedand limitingkindof process,not capableof being fully
realized.
Reversibilityand its negation are characteristicsneitherof 'things'nor of
theories, but only of the processeswhich can occur in 'things'. Let us
concentrate attention, at least for the present, on those macroscopic and
inanimate 'things' which can be specified in terms of their temperature,
volume and chemical composition, together with the intensities of any
prevailing fields. Such specifications are sufficient to fix the momentary
macroscopicstate of the entity ('system') in question; a process is a temporal
succession of such states due to the changing of one state into another.4
A process is said to be reversible if, and only if, the system which undergoes
that process, together with all parts of its environmentwhichare affected,can be
restored reproducibly5to their original states. For example, let the system go
from an initial state A, through states B, C, etc., to a final state X. The
corresponding simultaneous states of the affected environment are oc, fl, y,
etc., up to a final state w. There is reversibilityif it is possible not only for the
system to be restored from X to A, but for this reversal to be accompanied by a
simultaneous reversal of the affectedparts of the environment from(wto oc. In
short all relevant parts of the universe must be capable of being put back to
how they were!
Although the foregoing definition of reversibility can be applied to all the
classes of Section 2, it is easiest to apply, in a precise and mathematical sense,
to the thermodynamic class. Some of the authors of textbooks dealing only
with that class use an alternative definition;namely that a process is said to be
4 Quantum theory shows that the states of an ideally isolated physico-chemical system constitute
a discreteset. And of course the notion of 'state' tacitly supposes that physical entities cannot be
in two or more states simultaneously.
s The condition of reproducibility-i.e. the attainability of reversal whenever it is desired-is
necessary because a momentary restoration of an original state can occur, in principle, by
spontaneous fluctuation. This is discussed in Section 4.

507
reversible if it can be made to proceed in the opposite direction by an

infinitesimal change in the system's environment. Yet a third definition says
that a process is reversible if it passes through a continuous sequence of states
none of which departs more than infinitesimally from an equilibrium state. In
most physico-chemical situations there are no important differencesbetween
the three definitions.6
Completereversibilityis not actually attainable in the real world. Irreversibility is the natural state of affairs,although the concept of reversibilityremains a
useful idealization for purposes of theory. In the case of physico-chemical
systems the matter is, of course, closely related to the Second Law of
thermodynamics: the overall entropy change is zero only in the limiting case of
a reversible process; in all real situations the entropy of system plus
environment increases. Thus in the former case the application of theory
results in mathematical equalities; in the latter case it yields only inequalities.
Irreversibility can, of course, be minimized under carefully controlled
laboratory conditions; for example by using mechanical systems which are
almost frictionless, or, in the case of electrical processes, by using superconductors. A familiar example is the vaporization of a liquid by means of a piston and
cylinder together with a heat reservoir. The liquid is vaporizedby drawing out
the piston so slowly that the pressure above the liquid is only very slightly
lower than the equilibrium vapour pressure. The liquid takes in heat from the
reservoir which is at a temperature only very slightly higher. Subsequent
recompression at a pressure minimally greater than the vapour pressure
results in recondensation, and the amount of heat restored to the reservoir is
then only minimally greater than the amount withdrawn during the original
vaporization. Thus a cycle has been completed on the substance in question
and, at the same time, the 'external world', namely the heat reservoir,has been
put back almost to what it was.
4
T-INVARIANT
THEORIES
The consideration of irreversibilitydoes not arise in those theories of science

which are concerned solely with structure (whether this be the structure
of atoms or of living creatures), but it does arise as soon as theory seeks to
deal with motion, or with other processes of change. It is of great importance
that all existing theories of the latter kind are 'time-invariant'. That is to
say the replacement of t by - t in the theory's equations makes no alteration
to any of its predictions. This applies as strongly to relativity and to
'
Remaining close to equilibrium is a necessarycondition for reversibility in the first sense, but is
not a sufficientcondition. This is nicely shown by an example due to Allis and Herlin [1952]
concerning gas expansion into a vacuum when it is made to occur by the successive breaking of
an infinite sequence of membranes.

508
K. G. Denbigh
quantum mechanics7 as it does to Newtonian mechanics and to electromagnetism.8

The question arises: How can these t-invariant theories describe the
irreversible processes of the real world? The answer, of course, is that they
don't! What they can be used to describe is the idealized limiting case which
was discussed in Section 3. For instance, in the case of Newtonian mechanics
the theory can be applied to the motions of bodies (such as the planets and
stars) which are not surrounded by a resisting medium, and which do not
undergo inelastic collisions between themselves. Otherwise corrections or ad
hocadditions to the theory have to be made in order to achieve agreement with
experiment. To be sure there are a number of philosophers who seem to
suppose that the term 'theories' means the same thing as 'laws of nature', and
who are thus led to the notion that, because the putative 'laws' are t-invariant,
the two directions along the t-coordinate are entirely equivalent. '. .. the only
plausible way', wrote Mehlberg [1961], 'of accounting for the fact that so
many well-established and comprehensive laws of nature somehow conceal
time's arrow from us is simply to admit that there is nothing to conceal. Time
has no arrow.'
The effect of such a claim is to make the notion of irreversibility appear
entirely foreign to physical science. Yet this is not only contrary to the reality of
irreversibilityin human experience but it is also entirely contrary to what is
accepted about the objective world in those sciences-notably biology, geology
and astrophysics-which deal with evolving systems.9
Let us brieflyconsider the logic of the matter. It is true that if a process can be
7 In the case of quantum mechanics the basic Schridinger equation for the state vector 0 does
not contain dt as a square but only as a first power. However, it is the square of 0 which is
significant in regard to what is observable and, after allowing for this, it remains the case (as in
the other theories mentioned) that the replacement of t by - t makes no difference to the
predictions. Nevertheless there continues to be lively discussion in the literature on the
questions whether QM is fully t-invariant, and on whether it ought not to be. Phenomena
which are effectively irreversiblecertainly occur at the single-particle level--e.g. the decay of
nuclei, the absorptionof particlesin photographic emulsion, etc. Then again the 'measurement
problem' remains very puzzling and seems to involve irreversibility at the micro-level.
Furthermorethe decay of neutral K mesons provides apparently good evidence that there are
instances of failure of t-invariance at the atomic level. It may be that QM is 'incomplete'
precisely in regard to irreversibility.
8 It should be added that t-invariance requires not only the replacement of t by - t but also the
inversion of those vector quantities which relate to the entities in question; forexample, particle
velocities and spins must be reversed in direction and, if a magnetic field is present, this too
must be reversed. One then speaks of the system in question as being in its 'time-inverted'state,
and these inversions and replacements result in the predicted motions or changes being the
same for 'time towards the past' as for 'time towards the future'.
9 Prigogine and his colleagues are prominent among those scientists who reject Mehlberg'sview.
Prigogine accepts irreversibility,and the reality of 'time's arrow', from the start and he aims at
embedding the existing t-invariant theories within a much wider framework.

509
made to occur with close approximation to reversibility then it requires a tinvariant theory for its description. (Equivalently a t-noninvariant theory
describesirreversibleprocesses.) On the other hand if a theory is t-invariant the
processes it describes may or may not be capable of occurring reversibly;for the
t-invariance of a theory is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the
"
reversibility of a process it purports to describe. Other factors which are
important relate to the proneness of a system's internal dynamics to develop
instabilities, and to the effects of quite minute disturbances originating in the
environment. For example, it is a commonplace that t-invarient laws may
apply quite accurately to processes occurring at the molecular level, and yet
that macroscopic systems containing vast numbers of molecules may behave
irreversibly, at least during periods of time much shorter than the Poincare
recurrence period. And of course showing that this is so provides much of the
content of statistical mechanics. The 'laws' describing the behaviour of such
systems become probabilistic in character, and also-because of the significance of acts of 'preparing'the system in question-the probabilitiesprojected
'towards the past' may not be symmetric with the probabilities projected
'towards the future'.
No doubt those who support Mehlberg'sview can claim quite correctly that
Poincare's famous theorem shows that a system containing only a finite
number of particles must eventually return to a state arbitrarily close to its
initial state.'1 The expected 'recurrence time' is, of course, immensely longtypically it is of the order 101025years for a system consisting of the Avogadro
number of molecules. When one speaks, as I have done, of the reality of
irreversible processes one is saying that processes occurring in macroscopic
systems are effectivelyirreversible;and indeed they are, during all periods of the
order of the age of the universe-say a mere 101" years!
Of much greater significance are the fluctuation phenomena which
represent small (and usually exceedinglysmall) deviations from the most
probable state of a system. These too are very infrequent. For instance, a
diminution of the entropy of a gram mole of helium by only a millionth part is
not to be expected more than once, on the average, in each 10'109 years
(Denbigh [1981], p. 106). Even so the reality of fluctuations is confirmed
experimentally by such phenomena as the Brownian motion and the blueness
of the day sky.12
1o
See also Bunge [1968] and Hobson [1971].
1 Poincare's theorem was based on the classical mechanics but a somewhat
similar theorem
holds in quantum mechanics (Ono [1949]; Percival [1961, 1962]; Hobson [1971]).
12 In the light of fluctuation
phenomena the Second Law must be regarded as being probabilistic
rather than absolute in character. Nevertheless its status as an 'impossibilitytheorem' can be
recovered by reformulating the 'law' in such a way as to imply the impossibility of knowing
whenrecurrence will occur. With this in view, Jaynes [1963] reformulated the Second Law as
follows: Spontaneous decreases in the entropy, although not absolutely prohibited, cannot
occur in an experimentally reproducible process.

K. G. Denbigh
51o
Similar phenomena occur very commonly in the domains of biology and

neurology, although they are known by names differentfrom 'fluctuations'.In
biology they are the randommutations which provide the basis for natural
selection. In the field of mental phenomena there is, I think, no single word
which is used to denote those showers of disconnected thoughts, those random
clusters of events in the brain, which, after conscious selection, provides the
material for novel reasoning. As I put it elsewhere (Denbigh [1981], p. 161)
'...
human mental activity involves the processes of picking out, and of
amplifying, from what the chance processes produce, whatever may be useful,
say, for a plan of action, or for the creation of a new musical composition or a
new theory.'
5 THE TEMPORAL REFERENCE DIRECTION
When it is said that some process, say A -~ Z, is very unlikely to occur in

reverse (with all its environmental effects also reversed) this is to say that the
moment at which Z occurs is later than the moment when A occurs and that
this is always the case-i.e. on every repetition of the process. For it is an
important empirical fact that macroscopic processes are not normally (i.e.
apart from the exceedingly infrequent recurrence phenomena) observed as
spontaneously proceeding in one direction on some occasions and then as
spontaneously proceeding in the reverse direction on other occasions, relative
to a temporal reference direction to be defined below. If this were not the case
the world would certainly seem much more wayward and incomprehensible
than it does!
Thus irreversibilityseems to presuppose 'time's arrow'? Or is it perhaps the
other way round-i.e. that time's arrow is based on, and thus presupposes,
irreversibility?
It is, of course, another, although closely related, empirical fact that all
sequences of events at a given location can be accomodated (as was said
already in Section 2) within a single temporal order. Only one 'time' is needed
at each location. That is to say, an orderingaccording to 'laterthan' sufficesfor
everysequence of events of which we can be aware and this includes the events
which are the receivingsof signals from distant events such as super-novae. As
is well known the relation 'later than', as appliedto instants, has the properties
of asymmetry, transitivity and connectivity which are requiredforthe creation
of a serial order. From this point of view the notion of an order of events
logically precedes the notion of 'time'.
In the physics text books this order is often represented as a straight line, a
representation which goes back to Aristotle, if not earlier. But of course the
temporal order has the important attribute which has just been discussed and
which is not possessed by a straight line. A line, as such, has no intrinsic
direction-there
is nothing 'within' the line to distinguish 'leftwards' from

511
'rightwards'.'3 This lack of the quality of directedness in a line may be

compared with the evident directedness of the sequence of real numbers since
this sequence exhibits the relation of 'greater than', and this is intrinsicto the
numbers. Thus if x and y are any two real numbers, negative, zero or positive,
there exists the property which may be expressed:
y > x = DF (y # x) (3 z) (x + z2= y).
How does the matter stand in the case of the temporal order? In all that
concerns our own consciousness we do indeed endow this order with a clear
direction, for we are aware (presumably through the action of short-term
memory) of events as being 'earlierthan' or 'later than' each other. (To be sure
we are also aware of events as being fleetingly 'now' or 'present', and whether
or not this aspect of 'time' is objective, in the sense of being independent of
consciousness, has been the subject of much controversy. However, the only
relevant issue here is the bearing of irreversibility on the directedness, or
'arrow', of the temporal order; 'nowness' is irrelevant.)
Notice that if some particular process A -- X can be reversed, together with
all consequential changes in the environment, this would obviously not be
taken to mean that 'time itself' had been reversed. Thus if the process A -+ X
begins at time tAand if the reverse process X -- A is made to complete itself in
the same physico-chemical system at time tA,we would certainly not wish to
equate tA to tA, as if time had indeed 'gone back' on itself in some sense. The
good reason why we reject such a possibility is, of course, that the world is full
of innumerable other spontaneous and distinguishable physico-chemical
processes which continue to proceed unidirectionally during the period when
the reversal of any one of them is made to occur.
What is very significant, although very familiar, is that these multitudinous
physico-chemical processes share a common attribute, namely that their
overall entropy changes occurin parallel,as is asserted by the Second Law."4
Thus
(xSi - xSk) (fSi- PS) >,0,
where , S and p S refer respectively to the entropies of any pair, oc and P, of

systems plus their environments, and i and k refer to any pair of instants
irrespective of which of the instants is chosen by conventionas having the
character of being later than the other. It is notable that in this version of the
Second Law, Schridinger's version, the subjective aspect of the judgment
about 'later than' is by-passed. Even so it is convenient in science to adopt the
13 Orderingalong a line requires either the use of an external viewpoint, or that the line has an
extreme element, a terminus.
14 Ofcourse it is assumed that the
processes in question occur on the macroscopic scale. Otherwise
fluctuation phenomena could not be neglected.

K. G. Denbigh
512
convention that moment k is 'later than' moment i if the entropies increase

from i to k. For in that way we avoid what would otherwise be a silly clash
between 'scientific time' and 'human time'.
Returning to the title of this section, it will be seen that the reference
direction can be chosen as based either on a consensus of all macroscopic
processes or on some one long-lived process, such as the decay of a radio-active
element, which is used as a standard. Neither of these procedures would have
the effectof relegating the status of the Second Law to that of a tautology since
the empirical content of the law is the near-universality of the parallelism of
entropy changes, as expressed by the foregoing inequality.
Finally a few words about whether irreversibilityimplies that 'time itself'
has a direction. In my view time cannot be regarded as an existent;it is not a
real 'something' (although it is based on a real relationship).For the essential
characteristic of 'things' is their persistence in time and it would clearly be
vacuous to say that time persists in time. Although it would be out of place in
this article to discuss absolute v. relational views of time, I believe that 'time', at
any one location, is nothing more than a metric based on the relationship of
'later than' as it pertains to events at that location.15 This Aristotelian view is,
of course, entirely consistent with special relativity whose function is to relate
the temporal orders at different locations, using an assumption about the
maximum speed of signalling. It may be noted too that it is a bad linguistic
usage to speak of events (as distinct from 'things') as being in time, since it is
events which are constitutive of time.16
6
IRREVERSIBILITY
HAS NO SPATIAL
ANALOGUE
Before dealing with this issue one must first ask: In terms of what items of
language should the issue be expressed?Clearlynot by saying that one can 'go
along' time in one direction only, and that an analogous restriction does not
apply to space. For 'going along' is itself a temporal notion and therefore the
correct spatial analogue could not be 'going along' space.
What is required,I think, is the making of a comparison between a sequence
of events, E1,E2,.., and a series of locations L1,L2,. .. along a straight line. We
have to inquire what propertyis conferredon the event sequence by the fact of
its irreversibilitywhich has no analogue in the case of the location series. Of
course the ordering relation for the one is 'later than' and for the other it is 'to
the right of', but this is not the relevant distinction. What is relevant is the
1S
16
As noted by Bohm [1987] 'the concept of time must involve both irreversible process and
recurrent (cyclical) process', for it is the latter which provides a reliable measure.
The issues discussed in this section are dealt with more thoroughly in my book ThreeConceptsof
Time[1981].

513
existence of entropy, and the fact that entropy is a function of a body's state, but
is not dependent on its location. (That state is, of course, an eventin the body's
history.) What is also very important is the Second Law which, as was seen in
the previous Section, establishes a parallelism between the entropy change of
any one body and the entropy change of any other. (The term 'body' is here
intended to include all relevant parts of the environment.) In short the event
sequence El, E2, . ... relating to the body can be re-expressed as an entropy
sequence S1, S2,..., and one then obtains the relationship, as already quoted
in Section 5, between the entropy changes of any two bodies.
The significant point in the present context is that there is no analogous
parallelism involving the locations of two or more bodies. Thus there is no
irreversibilityin space and there is no spatial counterpart of entropy.
Thermodynamics thus goes far beyond special relativity in pointing up the
distinction between time and space. (Rememberthat Einstein himself accepted
that one cannot telegraph into the past!) Whiteheadian philosophy makes
the same claim, although in very differentterms. The world is seen as creative,
and the temporal process of producing what is new is the fundamental
reality.
7 DOES IRREVERSIBILITY
NECESSARILY
INVOLVE ENTROPY?
As was seen in Section 2 there is uncertainty about whether or not the

irreversibleoutwards flow of radiation, or of particles, into space is characterized by entropy increase, as are the other familiar physico-chemical processes.
Below I raise the same question about phylogeny, ontogeny and mental
activities-i.e. the question about whether the irreversibility of these processes, considered in themselves and in abstraction from metabolism and other
physiological action, is an entropic kind. This issue is, of course, closely bound
up with the projectof reductionism, and it is also bound up with the mind/body
problem.
Leaving these latter questions aside, it needs first to be said that, because
entropy is a physico-chemical quantity, it requires the attribution to it of a
spatiallocation.For example, if it were claimed that biological evolution is, in
itself, an entropic process it would need to be asked whether the entropy
increase in question is held to be located in the total mass of all living
organisms, or in the whole eco-system or in the Earth's biosphere. Clearly the
answer cannot be obtained by experiment, but it is conceivable that it might be
obtained by theoretical argument.
However, this proves to be a mirage. For one reason because living creatures
are 'open' systems, in the sense that they exchange material, as well as energy,
with their environment. An estimation of their rate of entropy production
would therefore have to take account of all consequential changes in their

514
K. G. Denbigh
surroundings, and this would be exceedingly difficult. For another reason

because they are such complicated systems anyway, and this defeats the
possibilities of calculation which might otherwise be achievable by the
methods of statistical mechanics. Faced with these difficulties, a number of
biologists have leaned rather heavily on information theory but, in my view,
the value of what they have claimed is vitiated by the confusion which exists
concerning the significance of the familiar expression p1iInpi. As I have
argued elsewhere [Denbigh and Denbigh, 1985], this measure does not mean
at all the same thing in Shannon's information theory as it does in statistical
thermodynamics. Identity of mathematical form is not sufficient for this to be
the case, for it is a matter of what the pi, and the summation, refer to. Thus
what Shannon dubbed 'entropy' is not the established entropy of thermodynamics!
Yet another difficulty in answering the question raised in the section
heading lies in the matter of whether it is indeed legitimate to consider
processes such as phylogeny, ontogeny, and also the mental processes, in
abstraction from the biochemical and physiological processes which necessarily accompany them. These latter processes can be identified and studied
separately in the laboratory, and they are undoubtedly entropy producing when they occur spontaneously. To suppose that phylogeny,
etc., are something distinct is uncertain-and yet that is clearly what we have
in mind when we regard, say, evolution as being its own kind of natural
process!
Perhaps it is most reasonable to think of the processes of phylogeny, etc., as
being linked in no more than a contingentmannerto the underlying bodily
processes. By this I mean that there is no i :I relationship--e.g. in regard to
dependence on mass. For example a speciation event, occurring over a long
period, is just as much the coming into existence of a new species whether it
occurs in small creatures or in much larger ones having greater metabolism.
Ontogeny, too, remains the same distinctive process of cell differentiation,and
of the development of tissues and organs, quite irrespective of the size of the
particular organism, and is thus independent of the overall entropy production. Similarly again in the case of mental activity: different people differ
immensely in regard to the amount of profound new thought they can
produce, even though the amount of physical energy dissipatedin their brains
does not vary very much from one of them to another.
One is at least safe in saying that it is an entirely open question whether
these forms of irreversibilityare entropic or not. Forcertainly the occurrence of
entropy increase can be established with reliabilityonly in the case of what, in
Section 2, I called the thermodynamic class of processes--e.g. diffusion,
mixing, etc-since it is only the members of this class which can be made to
occur in closed laboratory systems.


8
FANNING
515
OUT TOWARDS THE FUTURE
There is no really comprehensive theory of irreversibilityand it seems unlikely

that such a theory could ever be created in view of the great variety of
irreversibleprocesses. My own limited aim has been to argue that irreversibility is a broader concept than is entropy increase, and to suggest that the
common feature of irreversible processes is that they display divergence
towards the future."7
As will now be said, this divergent quality has three distinct forms:
(a) a branching towards a greater number of distinct kinds of entities;
(b) a divergence from each other of particle trajectories,or of sections of wave
fronts;
(c) a spreading over an increased number of states of the same entities.
As was seen in Section 2 the firstof these forms is exemplified in biology where
the evolutionary 'tree' continually broadens'8 due to the fact that each species
develops variants (arising from mutations and from natural selection acting in
differenthabitats) and these variants may eventually, over the course of many
generations, become so different as to constitute genuinely new species.
Simultaneously there is a corresponding 'chemical branching': the various
new species of organisms start to produce new sorts of organic molecules
according to what is of selective benefit to them. And again in ontogeny where
the cells of the embryo start to branch off into a great variety of new sorts of
cells which go to form the organs and tissues of the adult organism. In each of
these instances of branching there occurs a multiplication of types of entities,
of kinds of material 'things'.
Something similar is characteristic of mental irreversibility, although the
entities which branch and multiply are no longer material, except perhaps in
some neurological sense as brain imprints. For here it is a matter of a continual
increment (at least until senility) of new items in the mind, adding on to what is
already present. As has been said, once we have known something we can
never unknow it.
The second form is exemplified by the spreading outwards from a point
source, as was discussed in Section 2. Divergence in the form of the bifurcation
of dynamic pathways is familiar from the work of Prigogine [1980] and the
Brussels school. As is well known it is also displayed in the phenomenon of
'chaos', as is nicely illustrated in a recent paper by Thompson [1989].
'7 The phrase 'towards the future' is an abbreviation for 'towards times later than any arbitrary
instant t', and it does not imply a commitment to the well-known A-theory of time which
asserts the physical reality of 'past', 'present' and 'future'.
18 Ofcourse I am not here concerned with 'forever', but only with present trends as they occur on
our particular plant.

516
K. G. Denbigh
What I now want to show is that the ordinary thermodynamic irreversibility, entropic irreversibility,can also be understood as a divergence towards
the future; it is a branching towards an increased number of states of a given
macroscopic entity, and not a branching into differententities or trajectories.
It will help to clarify the significance of divergence in the thermodynamic
context by first posing the question: Why do spontaneous physico-chemical
processes ever occur? This involves two separate issues:
(i) Why is it possible to extract from the environment (or to prepare
artificially) a system which is capable of spontaneous change?
(ii) Having obtained such a system, and having isolated it as completely as
possible, why does it continue to change up to a final equilibriumstate, and
why do all such processes have an attribute in common, namely a very
high probability of entropy increase?
The answer to the first question must be referred back to the conditions
prevailing at the Big Bang. Perhaps this may sound a little pretentious! But
consider what may appear at first sight to be a trivial question, an instance of
(i) above: How is it possible to preparea laboratory system which is not at
equilibrium?For instance, let it be the system consisting of a block of hot metal
lying on top of another block which is cold. It will be clear that the preparation
of any system in which there is a temperature differerice requires the
availability of an energy input, and that the very possibilityof having this input
must be traced back to the Earth's resources of coal, oil or uranium, and that
these resources, in their turn, have their origins in the early history of the
universe as a whole. Even the trivial act of placing the one block on top of the
other requires muscular effort, and beyond that the intake of foodstuffs, the
occurrence of photosynthesis in plants and of nuclear reactions in the Sun, ...
Considerationsof this sort make it clear, I think, that all possibilityof physical
change is an inheritance,so to say, from the vast potentiality for change which
existed in the primitive universe. This view of the matter is well supported by
the existing Big Bang theory.19
The second issue above is very familiar. For present purposes it will be
sufficient to summarise how the answer to it relates to the concept of
irreversibilityas a divergence. Considersome macroscopic system, isolated as
well as can be achieved and thus of nearly constant energy, and let W be the
number of energy eigenstates accessible to the system when it has that energy
and is at equilibrium. All of the W states are assumed to be equally probablei.e. equally likely to be occupied by the system at any instant. Let SBPbe a
quantity related to W by the equation SBP= k InW where k is Boltzmann's
constant. This quantity was shown by Boltzmann and Planck to behave in a
manner closely similar to the thermodynamic entropy S. To the extent that
" For further discussion on the cosmological understanding of the Second Law, see for example
Gold [1958, 1967, 1974], Gal-Or[1974, 1975), and Davies [1974].

517
this is true the change of entropy, S2- Si, between an equilibrium condition, 1,
and a later equilibrium condition, 2, due to the lifting of a constraint on the
system, is given by
S2 -S1 = k ln(W2/W1).
Now by the Second Law, for any isolated system the entropy change, S2- S1,
can only be positive or zero. The former case, where W2> W1, corresponds to
the situation where the transition from the equilibrium condition 1 to the new
equilibrium condition 2 can only occur irreversibly (i.e. they are different
equilibria).
Increase of entropy, due to irreversible passage from one equilibrium
condition to another, can thus be interpreted20 as an increase in the number of
quantum states accessible to that system at constant energy. Physicochemical irreversibilitythus shows itself as a branching into a larger number
of possible states of existence; it is a spreading or dispersal of the system over
those of its eigenstates which are available for occupation when the system's
energy has a fixed amount.21
This completes my phenomenological survey of the different kinds of
irreversibility,biological and mental as well as physico-chemical. If I am right
in thinking that their common feature is a branching or divergence towards
the future, this would seem to entail increasing richness and diversity in the
world. My view is thus not unrelated to Bohm's concept of an unfolding. It also
has an affinity with certain much older insights-notably that the future is
open and that whatever can possibly occur will occur.
I am greatly indebted to Dr Harmke Kamminga for many corrections to the
manuscript, and for valuable suggestions for its improvement.
Department of the History and Philosophy of Science
King's College
London
2()
21
There are other attempted interpretations of entropy, e.g. as disorder, disorganization, lack of
information, etc. but counter-examples can be brought against all of these. See, for example,
Denbigh, K. G. and Denbigh, J.S. [1985] and Denbigh [1989].
It will be appreciatedthat it has not been necessary for me to deal with the vast field known as
'non-equilibrium thermodynamics' which is concerned with giving a significance to entropy
during the temporal period when a physico-chemical system is actually undergoing a process
of change.
REFERENCES
and StatisticalMechanics.McGraw-Hill.
ALLIS,and HERLIN,
[1952]: Thermodynamics
A. [1987]: in J. T. Fraser et al. (eds.) Time,Scienceand Societyin Chinaand the
BALSLEV,
West. University of Massachusetts
Press.
BLUM,H. F. (1968): Time'sArrow and Evolution.Princeton University Press.

BOHM,D. [1980]: Wholenessand TheImplicateOrder.Routledge and Kegan Paul.

K. G. Denbigh
518
BOHM,D. [1987]: Foundationsof Physics, 17, 667.

BUNGE, M.
[1968]: Philosophyof Science,35, 355.

P. C. W. [1974]: ThePhysics of TimeAsymmetry.Surrey University Press.
DEBEAUREGARD,
O. C. [1963]: LeSecondPrincipede la Sciencedu Temps.Editionsdu Seuil.
DENBIGH, K. G. [1981]: ThreeConceptsof Time.Springer-Verlag.
DENBIGH, K. G. [1989]: 'Note on Entropy,Disorderand Disorganization', BritishJournal
for the Philosophyof Science,40, 323-332.
DENBIGH, K. G. and DENBIGH, J. S. [1985]: Entropyin Relationto IncompleteKnowledge.
CambridgeUniversity Press.
B. [1974]: ModernDevelopmentsin Thermodynamics.Wiley.
GAL-OR,
B. [1975]: in L. Kubat & J. Zeman, (eds.) Entropyand Information.Academia,
GAL-OR,
Prague.
T. [1958]: 11th InternationalSolvay Congress,Stoops, Brussels.
GOLD,
GOLD, T. [1967]: in T. Gold, (ed.) TheNature of Time.Cornell University Press.
GOLD,T. [1974]: in B. Gal-Or(ed.) ModernDevelopmentsin Thermodynamics.
Wiley.
GRAD, H. [1961]: 'The Many Faces of Entropy', Communicationsin Pure and Applied
Maths, 14, 323.
A. [1973]: PhilosophicalProblemof Spaceand Time.Reidel.
GRi)NBAIJM,
HARVEY, P. H. and PARTRIDGE, L. [1987]: Nature, 326, 128; ibid. 329, 397.
DAVIES,
HILL,E. L. and GRi4NBAUM, A. [1957]: Nature, 179, 1296.

HOBSON, A. [1971]: Concepts in Statistical Mechanics. Gordon & Breach.
JAYNES,E. T. [1963]: in K. W. Ford (ed.) InformationTheoryand Statistical Mechanics.
Benjamin, New York.

in H. Feigl and G. Maxwell (eds.)CurrentIssuesin the Philosophyof
MEHLBERG,H. [1961]:
Science. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
ONO,S. [1949]: Mem. Fac. Eng. Kyusho Univ., 11, 12 5.

PENROSE, O. & PERCIVAL, I. C. [1962]: Proceedingsof the Physics Society, 79, 605.
PERCIVAL, I. C. [1961, 1962]: J. Math. Phys., 2, 235; ibid. 3, 386.
K. R. [1956]: Nature, 177, 538; 178, 382.
POPPER,
K. R. [1957]: Nature, 179, 1297.
POPPER,
POPPER, K. R. [1958]: Nature, 181, 402.
PRIGOGINE, I. [1980]: From Being to Becoming.W. H. Freeman & Co.
SCHIPPER, K. & WANG HSlu-HUEI [1987] in J. T. Fraseret al. (eds.)Time,Science& Society
in China and the West. University of Massachusetts
Press.
[1950]: TheMeaningof Evolution.OxfordUniversity Press.

T. [1989]: Proceedingsof the Royal Society, A421, 195-22 5.
M.
THOMPSON, J.
WHITROW, G. J. [1980]: TheNaturalPhilosophyof time, p. 10, OxfordUniversity Press.
SIMPSON, G. G.


The Many Faces of Irreversibility

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originalbeschreibung:

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

The Many Faces of Irreversibility

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

The British Society for the Philosophy of Science