Is the quote yours? It's excellent

Thermodynamics is a broad discipline. It has been explored from many different points of view, from the particulate to the energy entities. It is quite definitely a 20th century Science.

But is was born out of necessity, through developments in business technology such as the internal combustion engine and the jet engine. It is has been applied to heating systems, air-conditioning systems, atmospheric phenomena, including meteorological uses – it is legion.

There is no doubt in my mind that its principles have wide application, perhaps to things yet unexplored.

Ka kite

As with business, in thermodynamics there are many instances where the energy used to establish the differenctials is less than the energy obtained from them. It all depends on where you are in the system. A good example of thermodynamics showing this is in the use of so-called heat pumps to heat a home.

Pumping heat from one part of the system (outside) to another (inside) in some circumstances actually takes less energy than the required direct energy input. That is to say, an electric bar heater uses MORE energy than the energy required to pump the same quantity of heat from one spot to another. That's thermodynamics.

Now if you think that this is far removed from business, that would be quite falacious.

I am not a practicing network marketer – never have been – but I've studied the 'dynamics' of it. Tell you what, the efficiency of network marketing (no matter what one's point of view about it as a business) is sweet.

That's because it works like an efficient thermodynamic system, where the maximum gain (profit) is obtained throughout a series of differentials. The more diverse the market spread, the greater the gain (profit) by the exponent of that spread. When there is simply one direct input (differential) the least profit is obtained for the same amount of product shifted. That's business.

Ka kite
from Middle-earth

Change can take place in a number of ways. You said that you see it everywhere, “but always at the expenditure of energy”. I think it depends on what you mean by “expenditure of energy”.

I don’t know how much you know of thermodynamics, but in that discipline, change always involves energy. It’s a rule of thumb, but not entirely exclusive, that when energy is put into part of a system it becomes more disordered. When energy moves out of part of a system it becomes more ordered.

Within any two differing parts of a system, there is usually a differential that causes energy to flow naturally. The flow drops to near zero when most of the energy is dissipated. In that state, the system is incapable of doing any more ‘work’. That is to say no more energy can be drawn from it. The system has stagnated if you like.

To put it back to how it was requires energy, which funny enough, has to come from other parts of the same system.

The strange thing about all this is that useful energy is the energy that has the potential to flow from high to low energy. Simply the presence of high energy within a system can be quite useless when trying to get it to do something. This is the thermodynamic paradox if you like, because a differential between high and low energies is always needed for the change to be possible (so that it is useful).

It’s these other parts of the system that can benefit from differentials when useful energy is needed. To establish differentials where there was none draws energy form elsewhere in the system. In other words, you have to put energy in.

I suspect that it’s this energy that you are referring to when you say “always at the expenditure of energy”.

Ka kite