Structuredness As A Measure of the Complexity of the Structure and the Role of Post-dissipative Structures and Ratchet Processes in Evolution - Structuredness As A Measure of the Complexity of the Structure and the Role of Post-dissipative Structures and Ratchet Processes in Evolution - Open Access Pub

As shown earlier, the algorithmic complexity, like Shannon information and Boltzmann entropy, tends to increase in accordance with the general law of complification. However, the algorithmic complexity of most material systems does not reach its maximum, i.e. chaotic state, due to the various laws of nature that create certain structures. The complexity of such structures is very different from the algorithmic complexity, and we intuitively feel that its maximal value should be somewhere between order and chaos. I propose a formula for calculation such structural complexity, which can be called - structuredness. The structuredness of any material system is determined by structures of three main types: stable, dissipative, and post-dissipative. The latter are defined as stable structures created by dissipative ones, directly or indirectly. Post-dissipative structures, as well as stable, can exist for an unlimited time, but at the micro level only, without energy influx. The appearance of such structures leads to the “ratchet” process, which determines the structure genesis in non-living and, especially, in living systems. This process allows systems with post-dissipative structures to develop in the direction of maximum structuring due to the gradual accumulation of these structures, even when such structuring contradicts the general law of complification. DOI10.14302/issn.2689-4602.jes-19-3155 In the one of the previous articles 1, Alexander Levich and I demonstrated that the Boltzmann entropy, the Shannon information, and the Kolmogorov, or algorithmic, complexity are essentially the same quantity measured in the different ways. Such quantity always increases on average with time in any physical, informational, or algorithmic system. This fact allowed us to formulate the general law of complification which is a generalization of the second law of thermodynamics. It was also shown that the constant increase in algorithmic complexity is limited only by various laws of nature. Let me explain this with examples. Our universe during the Dark Ages between about 380 thousand and 175 million years after the Big Bang, can be considered as an almost ideal gas consisted of rarefied hydrogen with a small admixture of helium. According the second law of thermodynamics as a special case of the general law of complification, this gas would become more and more rarefied, atoms would cease to collide, and the universe as a whole would reach “the thermal (or heat) death”, as promised by William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) 2. Fortunately for us, this did not happen due to the