Negentropy
How living systems maintain order in a universe tending toward disorder
What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy.
THE PARADOX
Second Law says entropy increases.
But life creates order from chaos.
How can this be?
THE RESOLUTION
Life is an open system.
It exports entropy to environment.
Total entropy still increases.
Illustrative simulation, not measured data. Internal S is the average displacement of the internal particles from their ordered positions; External S is the coarse-grained occupancy entropy of every particle outside the membrane; waste exported counts the packets the cell has pumped out. All three are read off the particles on screen, in arbitrary units rather than thermodynamic ones.
THE INSIGHT
Life doesn't violate the Second Law: it exploits it.
Structure emerges because dissipation requires channels. We are those channels.