Non Equilibrium Thermodynamics: a New Model for Teaching

Drink a cup of coffee and get into hyper-focus mode before you read this next piece. It is not for the casual reader. This is an excerpt from my thesis paper “Thriving on the Edge of Chaos: an Argument for a Complex Adaptive Theory of Education.”

The simple translation is this: students learn better from the bottom up.

As a teacher of high school social studies, I began experimenting with the idea of using an interactive game not as a side-unit of instruction nor as a supplement to the curriculum but as the curriculum itself. In doing this, I became more of a facilitator (creating a feedback loop) and switched from the use of lecture to an open-ended game format in order to deliver course content. I changed the structure of my classes to give students more opportunities for creative and critical thinking. As the classes changed in this way from the use of a traditional hierarchy to a lateral distribution of power, or heterarchy, I observed profound changes. The classes experienced a major increase in participation and, arguably, thinking as a result of complex, higher order behavior.

During the use of this game (called Global Challenge) I realized something interesting was taking place; a phenomenon of sorts. It remained an idea without a model for many years until two things happened:

1. I discovered a book by the famous biologist Edward O. Wilson entitled Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998). This book opened up the door on how one might merge ideas and subject areas in order to discover universal truths. There was occasional mention in the book about how physicists do not work enough with mathematicians and biologists, even though one might find answers for their area of study in a completely different discipline. The idea occurred that, by analogy and metaphor, professionals could find universal answers. One might even see the possibility for a “borderless,” 24-hour learning environment, uninhibited by pre-fabricated, school-imposed barriers on learning.

2. On a trip to England in early 2002, I discovered another book in the London Museum of Science called Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software (2001) by science writer Steven Johnson. This book exposed some other ideas, mainly the notion that the most productive and creative behavior seemed to happen from the ground up (Johnson, 2001). This book, and discussions with a long-time friend, led to the discovery of something more profound – chaos theory. Chaos theory disproved the second law of thermodynamics and offered hope that things do not have to disintegrate.

Since entropy and thermodynamics are important to the model or metaphor being presented in this paper, they are worthy of deeper analysis here. According to Gleick

(1987) the concept of entropy derives from thermodynamics and is a part of the Second Law (of thermodynamics). Thermodynamics, according to the Encarta World English Dictionary (1999), refers to a branch of physics dealing with the conversions of energy from one form to another “and how these affect temperature, pressure, volume, mechanical action and work.”

Gleick wrote that entropy was the tendency of systems in the universe to move towards a state of increasing disorder. Gleick also noted that this term has taken root in the non-scientific world and has woven itself into our culture. He gave as examples the non- scientific explanations for disintegrating societies and economic decay. People, it seems, use the term entropy to describe any system that is likely to fall apart.

In thermodynamics, certain things are true such as losing heat when transferring one form of energy to another. This would make perfect efficiency impossible. In addition, Gleick (1987) pointed out that the universe, because of this, was a “one way street.” A process tending towards disorder could not be reversed. These things may be true in the world of thermodynamics, he pointed out, but are not so true in complexity. He went on to say that thermodynamics did not explain the creating of amino acids, microorganisms, self-reproducing plants and animals, and the complexity, even, of the human brain. Systems such as these did not fall victim to entropy, but rose to a higher level.

When Johnson (2001) wrote about non-equilibrium thermodynamics, he spoke of the work done by Ilya Prigogine in the 1950s, and defined non-equilibrium thermodynamics as “environments where the laws of entropy are temporarily overcome, and higher-level order may spontaneously emerge out of underlying chaos” (p. 52).

Putting these things together, one might move in the direction of accepting complexity as a better system to use when defining and explaining the social system in use in education. Where thermodynamics refers to the transfer and conversion of energy, complexity is more of the working model, large enough to explain all systems. Entropy has become an excuse from which cynics can look to explain disintegration of social systems. When, in fact, such disintegration may be because of faulty design, imposition of too much order, lack of balance in the system and, most importantly, a model not suitable to handle random variables. At this point, these are suppositions but are worth considering.

The question naturally emerged as to whether there was some way to make sense of all the disarray and confusion people found in their personal and professional lives. What if there was a larger order to things that humans simply were not seeing, one where order would arise out of seemingly meaningless interactions? What if chaos and confusion were part of a larger design and could lead to greater things?

From a psychological, emotional, and social viewpoint, this could revolutionize the way people think and interact, just knowing that everyday friction and random interactions might actually lead to something. In Consilience, Wilson (1998) argued that there may be a higher order, one that fuses or synthesizes many subjects at the same time; that there might be, in fact, some universal laws that underlie all knowledge. This made an excellent case for interdisciplinary studies. After reading Johnson, however, I became more interested in emergence and chaos theory, thinking that such ideas might make for an appropriate model for education. These two ideas, if synthesized, could form a model for a higher order of learning based on complexity.

What is Consilience?

Note: This is excerpted from a paper I wrote for EDTE 290 (Seminar for Culminating Experience, Dr. Kit Newman, California State University, Sacramento) Summary and Analysis of Consilience, by Edward O. Wilson.

In Chapter two of the book Consilience, biologist Edward O. Wilson explained the concept of the term “consilience” and proposed how we might begin to merge fields of study. According to Wilson, William Whewell first used the term in The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences in 1840 and explained it as a “ ‘ jumping together’ of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation.” Wilson went on to explain how we can make use of this philosophy to solve some of our current problems such as ethnic conflict, arms escalation, overpopulation, abortion, the environment and poverty. He proposed that we could better solve these problems by “integrating knowledge from the natural sciences with that of the social sciences and humanities.” By taking this approach Wilson said diversity and depth of knowledge will increase and that “order, not chaos, lies beyond the horizon.”

Wilson won the Pulitzer Prize twice for his books On Human Nature (1978) and The Ants (1990, with Bert Holldobler) and has been a teacher at Harvard University. Consilience was both praised and highly critiqued when it was published in 1999. Using Wilson and others as my guide, I propose that education can thrive on the “edge of chaos” (Wilson, p. 97). The classroom is, after all, an unpredictable environment, where agents of change and disruption threaten to overturn the imposing order at any given time. A student mood swing, an ADHD outburst, a students day dream, a drug problem, a recent fight at the school, overcoming peer pressure, distraction from noise, fluorescent lighting, confusion over subject matter, pressure to meet district and school standards all threaten to interrupt order, goals and academic progress.

My argument is that chaos theory, consilience and emergent behavior can be used in the creative problem solving process. We can tap into this energy, and acting as a catalyst, put this organism into motion. Like the sending of an e-mail message, we write and structure it, and with the push of a button, send it on its way. Though there is a lot of activity there – the working of the computer, the use of language, the Internet, electricity, binary code, web servers, URLs, etc., the e-mail is sent and finds its recipient in seconds – making its way through the maze of cyberspace in what seems to be a miracle.

Bloom, back in the 1950’s, would have probably agreed that the structured regurgitation of information may give us temporary order. But, in the long run, we end up producing automatons. Instead, I would argue, as Wilson does, that we begin to merge fields of study together, learn what we can from this new synthesis and apparent disorder, so that we can solve larger problems.

For example, we create a problem based class, and look to student creativity to solve seemingly complex problems. As I will submit later, Global Challenge – a game-based learning program for world history – is one such way to put these theories into action. This is to say that, whether Wilson realized this at the time or not, he is suggesting or supporting some concepts that are very relevant to primary and secondary education. Often in his book, he uses the terms “conceptual unity,” the “communal mind,” and “microcosm” to explain his view of how things should come together. Later, he tackles the difficult topic of complexity or chaos theory. Further on, I will show how these theories should be connected to educational design.

This is just a starting point and a way to get the discussion going. More to come on this topic later.

Wilson, Edward O. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 1999.

From the second introductory page to the book: (condensed and paraphrased) Wilson received his B.S. and M.S. in biology from the University of Alabama and , in 1955, his Ph.D. in biology from Harvard. He is the winner of the 1977 National Medal of Science, the Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1990), the International Prize for Biology from Japan (1993), the Gold Medal of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (1990) and the Audobon Medal of the National Audubon Society (1995).