Sustainability Assessment: The Role of Entropy‐Based Indicators for Reconnecting Human' Subjectivity and Civilization With Natural Tendency of Ecosystems

Sustainability represents a complex issue in which scientific knowledge inevitably coexists with the subjective perception of humans in its turn influenced by civilization, cultural but also unconscious aspects. These results emerge with evidence from a critical analysis of the main definitions of sustainability delivered by credited entities (e.g., UN, US-EPA) in which, on one side some general and not only ecological principles were stated, on the other side lack’s objective (i.e., hard science) definition. In any case a common question appears as central in all these definitions, that is life preservation and, specifically, human life. Without life the world resulted in just being constituted by a plethora of inanimate materials, elements and substances purely subjected to physical laws. But differently from the natural tendency of inanimate systems to reaching a minimum energy status, an equilibrium, status from which no more reactions and transformation are possible, that is, maximum entropy, living organism act in opposite direction. According to Nobel Prize for Physics, Schrodinger, living organism dissipate free energy by rejecting in the surrounding environment high entropy flows (e.g., low temperature heat). In doing this they gather negative entropy accumulating exergy. Such peculiar property of life was used for analyzing the role that entropy-based indicators can play in an objective assessment, free from subjectivism, of sustainability from a natural, ecological, perspective.