When the energy available for the formation of complex systems is taken away, these systems revert to a more primitive level of function.

Eric D. Schneider & Dorion Sagan, Into the Cool: Energy Flow Thermodynamics and Life

The sensing selves of the biosphere were brought into being, and are maintained, by thermodynamic potential and the molecular informational complexity necessary to tap it....Organisms may be seen as connectable nodes that transform the environment as they mediate energetic flows....Quickly growing systems -- ones that through evolution, technology, or both. tap into previously unrecognized or untapped gradients -- may spread like wildfire. But like raging flames, they rob themselves of their own resources.

Eric D. Schneider & Dorion Sagan, Into the Cool: Energy Flow Thermodynamics and Life (pg. 158-59)

What we call life is neither a thing apart from matter, nor merely "living matter," but an informational and energetic process...

Eric D. Schneider & Dorion Sagan, Into the Cool: Energy Flow Thermodynamics and Life

Whenever a gradient is applied to a system, insofar as constraints allow, the gradient is spontaneously degraded as completely as possible. Constraints, of course, are not trivial. In life they entail extremely complex feedback loops as energy is channeled through chemical kinetics….Constraints regulate dynamic processes, but they don’t cause them.

Eric D. Schneider & Dorion Sagan, Into the Cool: Energy Flow Thermodynamics and Life (pg. 123)

Far-from-equilibrium systems pay for their reduced entropy by exporting a concomitant increase in entropy into the surrounding environment….All organisms, not just human technological ones, produce waste.

Eric D. Schneider & Dorion Sagan, Into the Cool: Energy Flow Thermodynamics and Life