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A closed system, in thermodynamics or biology or whatever, like the concept of infinity in mathematics, is an ideal or pure state, unreal when applied to the physical world. But although closed systems are probably never perfectly realized in practice, the pure concept serves as a useful anchor for theories in the study of material things. The same is true of the concept of system applied to the social world. Consider, for instance the "ideal" but incredible notion of a person as a closed system, completely insulated from other systems, from the rest of the community. Such insulation would take the form of never talking with anyone and never doing anything (doing, that is, in the sense of acting and choosing as non‑automatic, non‑habitual justified performance). Borrowing from the thermodynamics analogy, one of the properties of such a closed person‑system would be its increasing entropy; the gradual decline in the harness able energy, or differentiation, or information, within it.