Control Systems in the Living World - Building the Most Complex Structure on Earth - page 9

Figure 1.5 A complex termite mound in Cape York, Australia.

arise naturally. Termites build mounds, which clearly are structures that cannot occur
spontaneously ( Figure 1.5 ). They build their mounds above their subterranean mul-
tichambered nests, and the mounds may be of different sizes, shapes, and heights,
with complex mazes of tunnels and shafts used for ventilation. But whether a bird's
nest, a beaver dam, or a termite mound, left under natural conditions, sooner or later
all of them are doomed to lose their order and break down.
Over centuries, human civilizations around the globe have added order and created
naturally highly ordered structures by investing work and information. Yet observe
what remains of Athens's ancient Acropolis, or of thousands of remnants of ancient
and prehistoric works of art, inhabited centers, fortifications, and castles. No one could
expect that under natural conditions, the heads of the US presidents carved in granite on
Mount Rushmore will remain as originally sculpted by Gutzon and Lincoln Borglum
( Figure 1.6 ) 60 years ago. In fact, fractures in the granite have already occurred. No
spontaneous process or event can improve the structure or function of a Porsche; only
the opposite is possible. Since the probability of occurrence of less-ordered states is
infinitely greater than the ordered state, less-ordered states are more probable, and
hence statistically more stable. This explains the observation that all objects in nature
tend to reach stabler states: stabler states are statistically more likely to occur.
Such observations of the natural trend of the loss of order in nature, which goes
as far back as the origins of humanity, found a theoretical explanation only around
the second half of the nineteenth century with the discovery of the second law of