A FIRST-PRINCIPLES THEORY OF SUSTAINABILITY BASED ON ENTROPY MANAGEMENT

Sustainability has been usually conceptualized as policy objectives, economic metrics, or resource accounting ina way that is not physically definite that are not subject to social or institutional contextualization. The currentpaper is a first-principles theory of sustainability based on thermodynamics that defines sustainability as the abilityof a system to be able to deal with entropy production over time whilst maintaining functional order. With basicideas of non-equilibrium thermodynamics and systems theory, the paper differentiates between sustainable andunsustainable evolutionary paths through the rate and structure of growth of entropy. Theoretical framework isconstructed where the unmanaged systems have superliner entropy accretion resulting in degradation or certaincollapse, and the sustainable systems actively dissipate or export entropy with limited entropy growth to nearlinear or bounded behavior. The dynamics is represented by the means of the computational models to quantifythe dependence between the accumulated entropy and resource efficiency. The findings illustrate thatsustainability cannot be equated to the concept of static efficiency or equilibrium but a continuous and adaptiveprocess of entropy regulation of open systems. This work offers a physically falsifiable definition of sustainabilitywhich connects the gaps between complex systems research and environmental science and materials design. Thesuggested definition provides a stringent starting point of assessing sustainability in the areas, both engineeredmaterials and energy infrastructures, ecological and socio-technical systems, and defines entropy management asthe fundamental physical idea of long-term system viability.