Statistical Physics of Evolving Systems

Abstract

Evolution is customarily perceived as a biological process. However, when formulated in terms of physics, evolution is understood to entail everything. Based on the axiom of everything comprising quanta of actions (e.g., quanta of light), statistical physics describes any system evolving toward thermodynamic balance with its surroundings systems. Fluxes of quanta naturally select those processes leveling out differences in energy as soon as possible. This least-time maxim results in ubiquitous patterns (i.e., power laws, approximating sigmoidal cumulative curves of skewed distributions, oscillations, and even the regularity of chaos). While the equation of evolution can be written exactly, it cannot be solved exactly. Variables are inseparable since motions consume driving forces that affect motions (and so on). Thus, evolution is inherently a non-deterministic process. Yet, the future is not all arbitrary but teleological, the final cause being the least-time free energy consumption itself. Eventually, trajectories are computable when the system has evolved into a state of balance where free energy is used up altogether.

Dark matter and dark energy denote the gravitation of the expanding universe

“…For a long time, scale-free data have been thought to present a universal law [22][23][24][25][26]; however, it was only recently related to thermodynamics [27][28][29][30], which, in turn, derives from statistical mechanics of evolving systems [31][32][33][34]. Hence, we draw insight from statistical mechanics into the cosmological-scale evolution and find dark matter and dark energy to be unnecessary hypotheses because the gravitation of all ordinary matter across the expanding universe accounts for the observations.…”