In the inaugural issue of the new journal, Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy vol.1, no.1 (2005), Stanley Salthe wrote the article "Energy and Semiotics: The Second Law and The Origin of Life."

He starts (p.128) by "deconstructing the thermodynamic concepts of work and waste." He then identifies "meaning" in Nature with energy dissipation processes, which Ilya Prigogine claimed bring "order out of chaos."

ABSTRACT: After deconstructing the thermodynamic concepts of work and waste, I take up Howard Odum’s idea of energy quality, which tallies the overall amount of energy needed to be dissipated in order to accomplish some work of interest. This was developed from economic considerations that give obvious meaning to the work accomplished. But the energy quality idea can be used to import meaning more generally into Nature. It could be viewed as projecting meaning back from any marked work into preceding energy gradient dissipations that immediately paved the way for it. But any work done by an abiotic dissipative structure, since it would be without positive economic significance, would also be difficult to mark as a starting point for the energy quality calculation. Furthermore, any (for humans) destructive work as by hurricanes or floods, with negative economic significance, would not seem to merit the quality calculation either. But there has been abiotic work of keen interest to us—that which mediated the origin of life. Some kind(s) of abiotic dissipative structures had to have been the framework(s) that fostered this process, regardless of how it might come to be understood in detail. Since all dissipative structures have the same thermodynamic and informational organization in common, any of them might provide the material context for the origin of something. So we can pick any starting point we wish, and calculate backward what sequence of energy usages would have been necessary to set it up. Given such an open ended project, we could not find an obvious place in any sequence to stop and start the forward the calculation, and so we would need to take it right back to an ultimate beginning, like the insolation of some area, or the outpouring of Earth’s thermal energy. Any energy dissipation might be the beginning of something of importance, and so Nature is as replete with potential meanings as it is with energy gradients.

KEYWORDS: Dissipative structures; Energy dissipation; Energy quality; Entropy production; Final cause; Meaning; Origin of life; Scale; Semiotics

Here we need to confront a common objection to this theoretical orientation—that if a system were to maximize its entropy production rate it would thereby likely disrupt its own organization. The critical point is to distinguish energy supplies making up a system’s own material embodiment from the external energy gradients that it is capable of consuming. If a system increases the entropy production of its locale, this does not necessarily mean that it will consume or disrupt itself. The basic thermodynamic fact about living systems is that they consume external energy gradients, thereby (because of generic poor energy efficiency) producing entropy into their immediate environment, and, as well, that they ship outside any entropy produced internally, thereby preserving their own form (Schroedinger, 1956).

Energy and Semiotics, p.128

In his final summary, Salthe says...

Potential energy exists in orderly forms of many sizes, and work takes place at all scales, but thermodynamic order is calculated at the molecular level. Odum’s energy quality can be used to scale energy dissipation. The thermodynamic need to specify work implies semiotics, and energy quality is inherently semiotic. Work requires information, which varies with kinds of energy consumers. The meaning of high quality energy dissipation is the support of particular systems, and this meaning is reflected back to all prior energy dissipations (including abiotic ones) from the same basic gradient that helped to raise its quality. These considerations lead us to final causality. The major physical effect of evolutionary / semiosic processes is delay in the reradiation of solar energy from the earth by its being captured in configurations that impose friction on its dissipation. These frictional activities dissipate energy gradients not otherwise accessible to derogation. A plenitude of exergy extractions have evolved on Earth to dissipate a plethora of energy gradients, thereby furthering the equilibration of the Universe.

The problem of the origin of life requires the pansemiotic view that meaning is present throughout Nature. Life, fostered by macroscopic dissipative structures, was interpolated into prior abiotic ecologies. Since this could occur only under certain conditions, it is premature to conclude that only entropy production in the service of the Second Law can be the final cause of abiotic dissipation. This view allows meaning to be present, however vaguely, in prebiotic systems, and so can be allocated to abiotic systems generally. The origin of life is viewed as having been a way to increase the entropy production of the earth’s surface. Since natural systems actively strive for survival, their entropy production tends to be maximized by way of maximizing the rates of dissipation of their energy supplies. We can postulate a protobiotic dissipative system that could accept the interpolation of, and takeover by, a genetic system. As microscopic, this latter would become a locus of meaning, with associated macro and mega levels deriving their meanings from there by way of Odum’s energy quality concept. Meaning at these larger scales would have eventually been codified and sharpened by the evolution of biofilms, organisms and populations.

Energy and Semiotics, p.142