Thermodynamic Energy-Laws Presuppose Time Orientation Subject to Principle of Least Action

Abstract

It is shown that time asymmetry is essential for deriving thermodynamic law and arises from the turnover of energy while reducing its information content and driving entropy increase. A dynamically interpreted principle of least action enables time asymmetry and time flow as a generation of action and redefines useful energy as an information system which implements a form of acting information. This is demonstrated using a basic formula, originally applied for time symmetry/energy conservation considerations, relating time asymmetry (which is conventionally denied but here expressly allowed), to energy behaviour. The results derived then explained that a dynamic energy is driving time asymmetry. It is doing it by decreasing the information content of useful energy, thus generating action and entropy increase, explaining action-time as an information phenomenon. Thermodynamic laws follow directly. The formalism derived readily explains what energy is, why it is conserved (1 st law of thermodynamics), why entropy increases (2 nd law) and that maximum entropy production within the restraints of the system controls self-organized processes of non-linear irreversible thermodynamics. The general significance of the principle of least action arises from its role of controlling the action generating oriented time of nature. These results contrast with present understanding of time neutrality and clock-time, which are here considered a source of paradoxes, intellectual contradictions and dead-end roads in models explaining nature and the universe.