# Gibbs landscape

 An annotated version Mirza Beg's 1987 conception of physicochemical sociology, showing an activation energy barrier, equation overlay, depiction of a society going from say a gas or "slum" phase, at an initial value of Gibbs energy Gi, to a liquid or "city" phase, and a final value of Gibbs energy Gf, an hmolscience conceptual type of "Gibbs landscape", so to say. [4]
In hmolscience, Gibbs landscape is the thermodynamic potential of isothermal-isobaric system in the form of a two or three dimensional energy landscape.

Etymology
In 1931, Mexican-born American theoretical chemist Henry Eyring and Hungarian-born English physical chemist Michael Polanyi, in their "On Simple Gas Reactions", developed the graphical model of the "potential energy surface", wherein they used the London equation (1927) to described the journey of the nuclei from reactant state of the system to the product state of the system, passing through the crucial intermediate state of activated complex. The reaction they dealt with was:

$H + H_2 \rightarrow H_2 + H \,$

The development of these types of diagrams led to the conception of transition state theory in 1935. The potential energy graphical work of Eyring and Polanyi eventually evolved into the concept of three-dimensional "energy landscape" constructions. By mid 1980s, energy landscape models were being employed in the study of protein folding; and in 1993, with the rise of protein thermodynamics, the theory of RNA free energy landscapes was being utilized. The term “Gibbs landscape” has been in use in physical chemistry since at least 2005. [1]

Blum
In 1934, Harold Blum introduced the chemical peneplanation model of non-chance based evolution, described in terms of thermodynamic potentials.

Lindsay
In 1983, Bruce Lindsay introduced a posited thermodynamic potential model upgrade to teleology.

De Lange
In 2001, South African physical chemist Adriaan de Lange developed a Gibbs free energy theory of human evolution, mixed in with energy landscape theory and fitness arguments:

“All fitness functions, how imaginative we may create them, depend on free energy as the mother of them all. No change is possible without free energy changing somewhere in the universe, whether in the system SY or in the surroundings SU. The free energy F is not merely a theoretical concept of the imagination. It is a quantity based on innumerous measurements and calculations in the realm of physical chemistry. It is a quantity of bewildering consequences, the nemesis of many a student in physical chemistry.”

Hand
In 2011, American planetary scientist Kevin Hand asserted that the “Gibbs energy” concept, applied ecologically and to civilizations, in the form of energy landscape models, i.e. as “Gibbs landscapes” constructions, is one of the top 100 concepts of the 21st century that will make you smarter. [2]

“When you start to view the world around you with Gibbsian eyes [compare: molecular goggles] you see the untapped potential in so many of our modern technological and industrial ecosystems.”
— Kevin Hand (2011), concept that would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit

Hand's conception of "Gibbs landscape" here, to note, is that conceptualized along the lines of a renew, recycle, and green movement ecosystem conception, in the sense of "waste not free energy", as English physiologist William Bayliss (1915) translated Wilhelm Ostwald's thermodynamic imperative; and not that of a Gibbs landscape conception of reactions between humans, as in human chemical reaction theory, themselves conceptualized as molecules, akin to the way Mirza Beg illustrates the cover of his New Dimensions with activation energy diagrams, shown adjacent, or the way de Lange makes his evolution-conceptualized Gibbs landscapes, or the way Thomas Wallace makes his rise and fall of civilization free energy diagrams.

Hand's suggestion was selected as one of Sean Carroll's favorites. [3]