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Table 3 The evolution of life is a sort of “evolution in form” which has nothing to do with thermodynamics

From: The essence of life

In people’s efforts to understand life phenomenon, there has long been a puzzle: “why can life evolve towards higher order and complexity, seeming to run against the second law of thermodynamics?” Certainly, the evolution of an individual living entity cannot disobey the second law of thermodynamics – for example, to be able to keep its own order (i.e., self-sustain), a living entity must be an open system, as mentioned already. However, rather than the evolution of individual entities themselves, the evolution of life means the evolution of their life forms, having nothing to do with the thermodynamic law. Indeed, as interpreted in the text, when a living entity reproduces, it transfers its life form to its offspring; the life form evolves over generations, through Darwinian selection, tending towards higher order and complexity. As a contrast, a non-life matter cannot reproduce, and thus its form cannot be separated from the entity – the form’s evolution is just identical to the entity’s evolution, which cannot escape the thermodynamic law.