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A Little Timeline on the Second Law Argument

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A little timeline on the second law argument, as applied to evolution (see my BioComplexity article for more detail):

1. Scientists observed that the temperature distribution in an object always tends toward more uniformity, as heat flows from hot to cold regions, and defined a quantity called “entropy” to measure this randomness, or uniformity. The first formulations of the second law of thermodynamics stated that thermal “entropy” must always increase, or at least remain constant, in an isolated system.

2. It was realized that the reason temperature tends to become more uniformly (more randomly) distributed was purely statistical: a uniform distribution is more probable than a highly non-uniform distribution. Exactly the same argument, and even the same equations, apply to the distribution of anything else, such as carbon, that diffuses. In fact, one can define a “carbon entropy” in the same way as thermal entropy, and show, using the same equations, that carbon entropy must always increase, or remain constant, in an isolated system.

3. Since the reason thermal and carbon (and chromium, etc) distributions become more uniform in an isolated system is that the laws of probability favor more random, more probable, states, some scientists generalized the second law with statements such as “In an isolated system, the direction of spontaneous change is from order to disorder.” For these more general statements, “entropy” was simply used as a synonym for “disorder” and many physics texts gave examples of irreversible “entropy” increases that had nothing to do with heat conduction or diffusion, such as tornados turning towns into rubble, explosions destroying buildings, or fires turning books into ashes.

4. Some people then said, what could be a more spectacular increase in order, or decrease in “entropy”, than civilizations arising on a once-barren planet, and said the claim that entirely natural causes could turn dust into computers was contrary to these more general statements of the second law.

5. The counter-argument offered by evolutionists was always: but the second law only says order cannot increase in an isolated system, and the Earth receives energy from the sun, so computers arising from dust here does not violate the second law, as long as the increases in order here are “compensated” by decreases outside our open system.

6. In several publications, beginning in a 2001 Mathematical Intelligencer letter, I showed that while it is true that thermal entropy can decrease in an open system, it cannot decrease faster than it is exported through the boundary, or stated in terms of “thermal order” (= the negative of thermal entropy), in an open system thermal order cannot increase faster than it is imported through the boundary, and likewise “carbon order” cannot increase faster than it is imported through the boundary, etc. (Though I was not the first to notice this, it seemed to be a very little known fact.) Then I argued that the more general statements of the second law could also be generalized to open systems, using the tautology that “if an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is isolated, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely improbable.” Thus the fact that order can increase in an open system does not mean that computers can appear on a barren planet as long as the planet receives solar energy, something must be entering which makes the appearance of computers not extremely improbable, for example: computers.

7. I’m sure that physics texts are still being written which apply the second law to tornados and explosions and fires, and still say evolution does not violate these more general statements of the second law because they only apply to isolated systems. But I have found that after reading my writings on the second law (for example, my withdrawn-at-the-last-minute Applied Mathematics Letters article) or my videos (see below) no one wants to talk about isolated and open systems, they ALL now say, the second law of thermodynamics should only be applied to thermodynamics, it is only about heat. “Entropy” never meant anything other than thermal entropy, and even when physics textbooks apply the second law to more general situations, they are really only talking about thermal entropy. Whether the second law still applies to carbon entropy, for example, where the equations are exactly the same, is not clear.

8. Of course you can still argue that the “second law of thermodynamics” should never have been generalized (by physics textbook writers; creationists were not the first to generalize it!) and so it has no relevance to evolution. But there is obviously SOME law of Nature that prevents tornados from turning rubble into houses and cars, and the same law prevents computers from arising on barren planets through unintelligent causes alone. And if it is not a generalization of the second law of thermodynamics, it is a law of Nature very closely related to the second law!

Note added later: as clearly stated in the BioComplexity article, the statements about “X-entropy”, where X = heat, carbon, chromium,…, in an isolated or open system, are assuming nothing is going on except diffusion, in which case they illustrate nicely the common sense conclusion (tautology, actually) that “if an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is isolated, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely improbable.” Thus just showing that the statements about X-entropy are not always valid in more general situations does not negate the general, common sense, conclusion, and allow you to argue that just because the Earth is an open system, civilizations can arise from dust here without violating the second law (or at least the fundamental natural principle behind the second law). At some point you are going to have to argue that energy from the sun makes the spontaneous rearrangement of atoms into computers and spaceships and iPhones not astronomically improbable, all the popular easy ways to avoid the obvious conclusion are now gone. (see Why Evolution is Different, excerpted—and somewhat updated—from Chapter 5 of my Discovery Institute Press book. )

[youtube 259r-iDckjQ]

Comments
Further to my prior comment: Back to the question of whether the Second Law can be applied to something like the origin of life, we can conclude that either the Second Law is: (a) irrelevant to the origin of life, and therefore imposes no constraints; or (b) relevant to the origin of life, and therefore imposes constraints that need to be considered. Although (a) is likely incorrect, I can at least appreciate someone who argues that (a) is a reasonable position. However, if they argue (a), then we would expect them to have the intellectual integrity to also acknowledge that the claim that the “Earth is an open system” or any other form of the “compensation” argument is, by definition, irrelevant to the origin of life and can never serve as an explanation. Alternatively, if one argues (b), as a number of origin of life researchers have, then we would expect them to have the intellectual integrity to also acknowledge that: (1) arguments based on the Second Law are potentially legitimate if framed carefully and cannot be blithely dismissed as “creationist” distractions; and (2) the “Earth-is-an-open-system” argument and any similar "compensation" argument, although technically relevant is unhelpful, because having enough energy available on the Earth has never been an issue. In either case (a) or (b), we would expect an objective observer to acknowledge the following corollaries: (x) simply adding free energy to a system does not meaningfully increase the probabilities of forming an information-rich, integrated, complex functioning system and, indeed, without control mechanisms may even hinder such formation in particular cases; and (y) although perhaps it should not be articulated in terms of the Second Law or should be articulated more carefully, the key substantive problem of explaining the origin of such systems through purely natural processes remains. One might still take the strict view that the Second Law can only be discussed and understood purely in terms of thermal aspects. There seem to be decent arguments to the contrary, but I can appreciate such a restrictive view – as long as the individual also takes one of the approaches in (a) or (b) listed above and is honest about acknowledging the corollaries as well.Eric Anderson
March 7, 2016
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Dear Gordon: Thank you for taking time to provide a detailed and thoughtful response. As interesting and important as this may be, I realize it is but a hobby for most of us, so no need to apologize for the delay, and I appreciate you taking the time. I’ve been rather tied up myself and haven’t been able to respond sooner. (If I get time, I may put some of this up as a new head post, but we’ll see what my schedule looks like the next few days.) Also, before focusing on some potential areas of disagreement, let me take a stab at identifying perhaps a couple of areas of agreement with what you wrote. 1. Energy is needed for the processes we are interested in for present purposes, namely, processes giving rise to the origin of life and living organisms. For example, some chemical reactions might be expected to occur in an isolated system (however we define that), but it is true that other reactions will require an input of energy. It is also true that without an input of energy our system will eventually reach equilibrium, which for our purposes, would be the death-knell. Thus, energy is critical, not only in a general sense, but it must be available to the system in sufficient quantities. On that much I agree. The question remains how we define our system, how much energy is needed, and whether, for the origin of life, incoming solar radiation is necessary or whether more local energy sources would suffice (radioactive decay, volcanic vents, deep sea hydrothermal vents, etc.). 2. On a related note, you highlight the fact that incoming free energy creates the possibility for a system to be out of equilibrium. This is true enough. Indeed, if we isolate any system we would expect equilibrium to eventually attain over some period of time and we would be left with a dead, lifeless system that is both rather simple to describe (from a macrostate perspective) and, for most purposes, rather uninteresting. As a result, it is true that an influx of free energy can move a system out of equilibrium and provide the possibility that certain macrostates will attain that would not have been possible with a system stuck at equilibrium. This is almost a truism, but I agree with you that it is worth pointing out. Stated in layman’s terms: given a system stuck at equilibrium, it is more likely that something interesting will happen if free energy enters the system than if nothing enters the system. On that much I agree. The question remains as to what “interesting” thing we need to have happen and what the realistic probability of such an event is. ----- Despite agreement on these basic facts, however, there are a couple of fundamental problems with the idea that free energy, in and of itself, has much to say about the topic at hand: namely, the origin of life and living organisms. First, the key questions that have been raised by many origin of life critics, most of them not intelligent design proponents to be sure, have never been about the sheer quantity of energy. Receiving more energy has never been the concern. Furthermore, even having the availability of energy has been noted, but is not of particularly deep concern. Yes, abiogenesis researchers recognize the need for energy generally, as discussed in (1) above. Yet there are plenty of sources of energy on the Earth and many possibilities have been proposed, including volcanic vents, radioactive decay, lightning, deep sea hydrothermal vents and the like. Thus, the “Earth-is-an-open-system” argument, and the related "compensation" claim, is simply irrelevant to the issues at hand. Abiogenesis researchers have, to my knowledge, rarely been concerned that abiogenesis is implausible due to a lack of energy and that “if only we could figure out how to get more free energy into our system, then the issues would be solved.” And they certainly have not been missing the point that the Earth receives energy from the Sun. It does; but that fact just doesn’t help address the issues. Thus the question of having enough free energy or available free energy has rarely been on the table – certainly not as a major fixture of abiogenesis critiques. Second, you have made a good argument that incoming free energy can help move a system formerly at equilibrium into a far from equilibrium state. You have even provided some nice calculations showing a huge difference between the probability of a far from equilibrium state occurring with incoming free energy contrasted with the absence of such incoming energy. Yet this too does not address the issues at hand. While “far from equilibrium” is a characteristic of most living systems, it is not the most important characteristic and definitely not the only characteristic – certainly not the characteristic that determines, in and of itself, whether something is alive. Indeed, most natural systems that are far from equilibrium (at least on a temporary basis) are not living organisms at all. You have shown that adding free energy to a system makes a far from equilibrium macrostate more probable. Agreed. And contrasting that with an equilibrium baseline (in which there is almost no practical chance for a far from equilibrium macrostate) does make the increased probability look impressive. Based on your calculations we can also conclude that adding more energy to the system would correspondingly increase the probability of a far from equilibrium macrostate. Again, true enough. And even more energy would further increase it. Yet as we note this “more energy => higher probability of a far from equilibrium macrostate” formulation, we should start to feel a sense of unease that perhaps we have simplistically misunderstood or misstated the problem. Again, capable origin of life researchers have never taken the approach of thinking that the answer lies in pouring more energy into a system. Ironically, too much energy can even be a problem, which means our formulation is, by definition, heading down the wrong track. You have been discussing probability in a way that relates to a system being far from equilibrium. But for the origin of life and living systems, being far from equilibrium is not the only or even the key issue. Much more relevant are our observations that life is characterized by integrated functional complexity and by information-rich, coded systems. What is the difference in the probability of an integrated, functional bacterial flagellum versus a random jumble of parts? What is difference in probability between a meaningful nucleotide or amino acid sequence and a random string of molecules? Calculations that focus on the strict thermodynamic “probability” of having a far from equilibrium macrostate do not address those key probabilities. Indeed, they cannot, as they are simply incapable of distinguishing between such macrostates.* We would be making a category error to think that they can. Nor can we claim that the only “probabilities” worth calculating are thermodynamic ones, when the key issues we are dealing with are not primarily thermal issues in the first place. ----- In conclusion, when we carefully analyze what free energy brings to the table, we can conclude that while, yes, energy is important, having adequate quantity and availability of energy is really a bit player among the larger problems besetting the abiogenesis story. And it does not even address the more fundamental issues. The bottom line is that talking about open systems and the availability of free energy does not bring anything meaningful to the table to help the abiogenesis story. The abiogenesis proponent is thus required to fall back on the general claim: that some incredibly lucky coincidence occurred that, against all expectation and probability, somehow in some unknown way resulted in first life. ----- * Note, as I have mentioned previously, thermodynamic constraints may come into play when analyzing a particular chemical reaction or the likelihood of a specific molecular complex arising. But at the macrostate level, the thermodynamic calculations are simply blind to the key, fundamental difference between an integrated, functioning, information-rich system and a random assemblage of useless parts.Eric Anderson
March 7, 2016
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Gordon Davisson: But if things are highly nonuniform and/or you’re trying to get more precise results, you’re going to need a more complicated analysis. Or a detailed simulation, such as with weather forecasting.Zachriel
March 6, 2016
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Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to this. Since Mung and Eric both asked about the connection between adding free energy and decreasing probability, let me concentrate on that. Mung @ 86: "What does an influx of free energy do to change that?" Eric Anderson @ 89: "Indeed. A most excellent question." Short answer: for an open system with equilibrium boundary conditions fluctuating around its own equilibrium, the probabability it'll be in any particular macroscopic state is directly related to that state's free energy. Specifically, each state's probability is porportional to e^(-F/(k_B*T)), where k_B is the Boltzmann constant, T is the temperature, and F is whatever free energy measure is appropriate for the system's boundary conditions (e.g. it might be the Helmholtz free energy, the Gibbs free energy, or something more obscure). Note the munus sign -- that means that increases in free energy directly correspond to decreases in probability. That's rather glib and uninformative, though, so I'll take a stab at explaining why this is and what it means. A warning, though: I'm going to be doing actual thermodynamics (and statistical mechanics), so it's going to be a bit technical. I'll try not to get too deep in the physics, but there will be at least a bit of math, and I'll need to get some relevant concepts clear before getting to the real point. Also, definitions. In particular, we need to be very careful what we mean by probable and improbable. Probabilities are defined by probability distributions. Whether something is probable or improbable depends entirely on what probability distribution governed its choice, so calling something probable or improbable is meaningless unless you specify what the relevant probability distribution is. When we talk about the probability of states in stat mech, we're (generally) talking about the probability that the state will arise as a result of a fluctuation around equilibrium. If it didn't actually arise this way, these probabilities will not correspond to actual probabilities. Sewell gets this part mostly right: "if an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is isolated, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely improbable." He uses probabilities from an isolated system (rather than a system at equilibrium) as his reference, but he's at least in the ballpark. Here's a simple example of the difference between these hypothetical equilibrium probabilities and actual probabilities. Take a rock that's just been sitting in the sun (and as a result is warmer on top than at the bottom) and isolate it. What's the most probable state for it to be in? If it were at equilibrium the most probable state would be that the thermal energy would be spread evenly throughout it, so its temperature was uniform. But just after you isolate it, the actual probabilities say it's most likely to still be warmer at the top. As time goes on the temperature will gradually even out, and so the actual probabilities gradually shift until they match up with the equilibrium probabilities. That is what thermodynamicists really mean when they talk about things moving to more and more probable states; they're talking about the (hypothetical) equilibrium probabilities of the states, not their actual probabilities. It also doesn't have anything to do with what seems intuitively probable and improbable, so don't make the mistake of using your intuition to judge probabilities; use equilibrium probabilities and do the math. Ok, now let's apply this to a simple example: an isolated system that's (like the rock) initially in a nonequilibrium state. For an isolated system at equilibrium, every microscopically distinct state ("microstate") is equally probable at any given time. But most of these states look a lot alike at the macroscopic level -- for instance, there is a huge number of ways the system's energy can be scattered through all of its various atoms, molecules, etc, but in most of them the energy is pretty evenly dirtributed. We can we group these microstates into groups that "look alike" at the macro level (called "macrostates"). Since each microstate is equally probable, each macrostate's probability will be proportional to the number of microstates that correspond to it. We're not to the relevant part yet, but let's get our feet wet with a little math. Start with the Boltzmann formula for entropy: S = k_B * ln(w) (where S is the entropy of a particular macrostate, k_B is Boltzmann's constant, and w is the number of microstates corresponding to that macrostate). We can solve that for w, giving w = e^(S/k_B). The probability of that macrostate is proportional to w, so we can write that as P ~ w = e^(S/k_B). This means that higher-entropy states have higher probability (at equilibrium), and by a huge amount: k_B is only 1.38e-23 J/K, so a difference of only one J/K in entropy corresponds to a factor of 10^(10^22.5) in probability. And since entropy only increases (or stauys constant) in an isolated system, so does the probability. But we're not really interested in isolated systems here. Let's take a look at an open system that can exchange heat with its surroundings; but to keep things simple let's assume that's the only way it interacts with its surroundings and that it's at a constant temperature T. In this case, the equilibrium distribution is a bit more complicated, because it turns out that lower-energy microstates are more probable than higher-energy microstates. Specifically, they'll follow the Boltzmann probability distribution, where the probability of a particular microstate is proportional to e^(E/(k_B*T)) (where E is the state's energy). To get the probability of a particular macrostate, we multiply that by the number of microstated w = e^(S/k_B), giving P ~ e^(S/k_B) * e^(E/(k_B*T)) = e^((S-E/T)/k_B). We can simplify this a bit using the Helmholtz free energy (abbreviated A for some reason), A = E - T*S. Rewriting the probability formula using that gives P ~ e^(-A/(k_B*T)). (Compare with the formula in my "short answer".) This means that in our open system, probability is directly related to Helmholtz free energy in much the same way it was related to entropy in the isolated system, but in the opposite direction (lower free energy = higher probability) because of the minus sign. Also, the relation depends on the temperature; at 1 Kelvin (very very cold), 1 Joule of free energy increase corresponds to a factor of 10^(10^22.5) decrease in probability; but at 300 Kelvin (about room temperature), 1 Joule of free energy "only" corresponds to an probability decrease of 10^(10^20.0). That's the basic punch line here: adding just 1 Joule of free energy to a system at 300 Kelvin pushes it into a state that would be 10^100000000000000000000 times less probable at equilibrium. But that's still oversimplistic and glib; let me go a little more into what that actually means. For one thing, what does "adding free energy" really mean? Let's take a simple example: we add some heat to the system. Heat flows carry entropy inversely proportional to their temperature, so a flow of heat dQ at temperature T will carry entropy dQ/T with it. So if we add heat at the ambient temperature T, adding heat dQ to the system will also add entropy dQ/T to the system, so E goes up by dQ, T*S goes up by T*(dQ/T)=dQ, so the net change in free energy is dQ - dQ = 0. Well, that was pointless. Ok, suppose we added heat at a higher temperature, T_hot. In that case, we're adding energy dQ, and entropy dQ/T_hot, so the free energy goes up by dA = dQ - T*(dQ/T_hot) = dQ * (1 - T/T_hot). So if we add the heat at twice the ambient temperature, dA would be dQ/2 ("half free"); at three times the ambient temp it'll be 2*dQ/3 (2/3 free), at four times it'd be 3*dq/4 (3/4 free), etc. (There are lots of other ways of adding free energy to a system, but let's not get too complicated here.) But that's not the whole story either, because we're only looking a the entropy change directly due to the heat being added; usually there'll also be entropy generated inside the system. Call the internal entropy production dS_i. Including that gets us dA = dQ * (1 - T/T_hot) - dS_i/T. The second law doesn't say anything about what the entropy production rate will be (other than it won't be negative). All we can really say is that the system's free energy might be increased by up to dQ * (1 - T/T_hot), and thus it might be pushed into a state that's up to e^(dQ * (1 - T/T_hot) / (k_B*T)) = e^(dQ * (1/T - 1/T_hot) / k_B) less probable. (It may bother you that the second law can't actually tell us exactly what's going to happen here; sorry, but that's just the nature of the second law. When you test something against the second law, there are pretty much two possible verdicts: forbidden (i.e. not gonna happen) or not forbidden (but might not happen anyway). That's just the way the law works.) There are a bunch more complications I should touch on, but first let me give a quick sense of the scales we're talking about here. The Earth receives about 1.7e17 Joules/second of energy (sunlight) from the sun. That's near-blockbody radiation at a temperature of about 6000 Kelvin, which has an entropy of about S = 4E/3T = 3.8e13 J/K per second. Its free energy (at Earth's ~300 K temperature) is thus 1.7e17 J - (3.8e13 J/K * 300 K) per second = 1.6e17 J per second. This corresponds to a probability decrease of up to a factor of 10^1.6e37 per second. Which is inconcievably huge. And that's just in a single second. Ok, I'll finish with a sketch of some of the ways things might be more complicated. If the system in question has other near-equilibrium interactions with its surroundings (like expanding/contracting at constant pressure, exchanging chemicals at constant chemical potential, etc), you can add terms to the free energy to take these into account. The most common example is the Gibbs free energy, G = E - T*S + pV, which handles the expansion/contraction case. That's why I used "F" as free energy in my "short answer" -- depending on the interactions between the system and its surroundings, the relevant free energy function might be A or G or even something even more complicated. The situations where the free energy approach really into trouble is where the temperature (or pressure or chemical potentials or...) is changing or nonuniform. If they're close to constant, you can still use free energy as an approximation (e.g. I'm treating the Earth as having a uniform temp of 300 K, but that's only approxamately correct) and maybe add correction terms where needed. But if things are highly nonuniform and/or you're trying to get more precise results, you're going to need a more complicated analysis. But these more complicated situations are where the "increasing probability" formulation of the second law breaks down as well. The "increasing probability" and "decreasing free energy" formulations of the second law are really just slightly different ways of describing the same thing; they both work for the same resons, and they'll both break down for the same reasons.Gordon Davisson
March 3, 2016
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Incidentally, the Jeremy England claim was mentioned here, a little over two years ago: https://uncommondescent.com/origin-of-life/new-theory-sees-origin-of-life-as-inevitable-and-darwinian-evolution-a-special-case/Eric Anderson
March 1, 2016
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Mung:
That life is probable seems to me to be a very ID-friendly idea.
Makes sense to me. I'm a Believer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfuBREMXxtsGaryGaulin
March 1, 2016
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Eric, a tornado sweeping through a junkyard drives towards the assembly of a Boeing 747 :)Origenes
March 1, 2016
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Life being a probable state, flowing naturally from accidental particle collisions, is precisely the argument being made by some origin of life researchers. Well, perhaps not "researchers" in the sense of doing real experiments; but it has been proposed by people we might perhaps call origin of life "pundits" or "speculators." Gordon Davisson referred to one proposal by Jeremy England @58. Nick Matzke sent us down this rabbit hole in the past as well. This claim of living organisms somehow being a probable thermodynamic state -- and therefore we should expect life to arise by natural processes -- is indeed the source of my cryptic comment at the end of @90:
Note that some origin of life researchers explicitly attempt to address the thermodynamic problems by claiming — through a combination of circular definitions and faulty logic — that the Second Law actually drives toward the formation of living organisms. Laughable though it may be, we’ve seen that argument in these pages before.
Eric Anderson
March 1, 2016
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That life is probable seems to me to be a very ID-friendly idea.Mung
February 28, 2016
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Mung,
There has to be a countervailing factor at work in order to explain the fact that, with regard to the formation of life, the normal trajectory of the Second Law is not operational. [Origenes]
The tendency is towards the more probable state. If life is the more probable state that is what the tendency will be. There’s no violation of the 2nd law involved. [Mung]
Sure, if we accept arguendo your absurd proposition that life is “the more probable state” then there is no violation of the 2nd law. However, no one in his right mind would hold that life is “the more probable state”, so a violation of the 2nd law is on the table. — Why don’t you tell origin of life researchers that life is “the more probable state”, and see how they will react?
I don’t think anyone believes natural selection is beyond the grasp of the second law. Natural selection leads to more probable states being actualized. There’s no violation of the 2nd law involved. [Mung]
So your claim is that the trajectory driven by natural selection from simple replicators toward “human brains and spaceships and jet airplanes and nuclear power plants and libraries full of science texts and novels, and super computers running partial differential equation solving software” is one which can be characterized as a process during which “more probable states are being actualized”?? You seem to be willing to accept anything in order to hold on to your mantra that “there’s no violation of the 2nd law involved.” Sir, your argument is absurd.Origenes
February 28, 2016
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Mung: What is work and what is required for a system to perform work Work (thermodynamics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_(thermodynamics)Zachriel
February 28, 2016
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The materialist’s creation story essentially claims that through a long string of accidental particle collisions a system was formed that could do work — to wit, sustaining and maintaining and replicating itself. We should explore further the concept of work. I know Zachriel thinks a cyclone does work but I think he's just equivocating over the term work. What is work and what is required for a system to perform work?Mung
February 28, 2016
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Haha. But i did just come across this quote: "Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_FisherMung
February 28, 2016
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I fail to understand how natural selection, understood as a process involving nothing but matter, can be posited as something that is beyond the grasp of the Second Law, let alone a countervailing factor to the Second Law. I don't think anyone believes natural selection is beyond the grasp of the second law. Natural selection leads to more probable states being actualized. There’s no violation of the 2nd law involved.Mung
February 28, 2016
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There has to be a countervailing factor at work in order to explain the fact that, with regard to the formation of life, the normal trajectory of the Second Law is not operational. The tendency is towards the more probable state. If life is the more probable state that is what the tendency will be. There's no violation of the 2nd law involved.Mung
February 28, 2016
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Gordon Davisson @ 82,
There are examples of significant functional complexity coming about mindlessly, such as river systems ... You’ll probably object that this isn’t the same kind of functional complexity you’re talking about, but the fact that you’re going to have to adjust your definition to evade refutation weakens your case significantly.
Your being reduced to arguing that pointing how lame it is to use river systems as an example of significant functional complexity weakens the argument of the one pointing that out, demonstrates not just the weakness, but also the absurdity of your position. River systems are the inevitable result of the laws of physics applied to planet Earth. Stars, planets, asteroids and comets are also the inevitable result of the laws of physics applied to a given material environment. Life, like other technology, does not appear to be the inevitable result of the laws of physics applied to matter. If an intellect with a capacity similar to that of humanity's could have examined the pre-life Universe, it wouldn't have been able to say, "Hey! It's obvious that digital information-based nanotechnology is going to emerge eventually!" anymore than it could have said, "It sure looks like television sets will eventually be produced by the millions." It might have figured out how the laws of physics when applied to an appropriate material environment would inevitably produce a star, and when applied to another environment a river system, but it would have had no expectation at all of a laptop PC coming about -- unless it decided to produce one itself. What chance in combination with the laws of physics can accomplish appears to be very limited. See my post #6 here: https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/john-searle-on-the-two-big-mistakes-philosophers-make/ Significant functional complexity of any kind emerging mindlessly and accidentally isn't just not inevitable, it is also virtually impossible given the limited probabilistic resources the Universe provides.harry
February 28, 2016
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Origenes: I hear you, and there is much that I agree with you on. Yet at the heart of the matter is still a question that is somewhat different from the Second Law issue. Namely, can purely blind, material processes produce something that can countervail the normal trajectory of the Second Law? Materialists argue (without decent evidence, to be sure) that purely blind, material processes are in fact up to the task. So the rubber really hits the road with the question of whether such a situation can arise by chance. That is the crux of the matter and where most of the attention and energy (no pun intended) should be focused.
Returning to statements (a) and (b) which you formulated, if one holds that materialism cannot provide for a countervailing factor, then, for the materialist, saying (b) is the same as saying (a).
I hear you. But in debating, we need to focus the attention on this part: "that materialism cannot provide for a countervailing factor." The materialist believes in his heart of hearts that it can. So any discussion about the Second Law, or any other law of nature for that matter, is, to the materialist, very much beside the point.
In each cell countless processes are going on, and although we may expect each process to ‘go its own way’ according to the incalculable factors impinging on it from all directions, what we see is quite different. Instead of becoming increasingly disordered in their relations — as indeed happens after death, when coherence dissolves into disjoint fragments — the processes hold together in a larger unity.
The materialist's creation story essentially claims that through a long string of accidental particle collisions a system was formed that could do work -- to wit, sustaining and maintaining and replicating itself. This is utter nonsense, of course, and completely laughable. But the point for the current discussion is that if such a thing were possible in practice, then the materialistic creation story would have legs. In other words, logically there is no prohibition against the idea that particles could bump into each other over long periods of time and eventually, by happy coincidence, turn into something like a living organism. It isn't possible from a practical standpoint. It isn't going to happen within the resources of the known universe. As a theory for the origin of life it is a complete joke. But, as far as sheer logical possibility goes, such a thing could theoretically occur. And so the materialist, reposing blind faith as he does in such a vanishingly small possibility, has already convinced himself that the formation of a living organism -- or at least that never-before-seen, hypothetical, sacred cow of abiogenesis, the self-replicating molecule -- is possible. And once that happens . . . well, then all bets are off. Like Gordon Davisson @68, the materialist thinks that once reproduction is on the table, no miracle is too hard for the magical process of evolution. Driven of course by the incoming sunlight from the Sun . . . :)
The second reason I disagree, and more relevant to this thread, is that if evolution is regarded as a purely material process towards improbable states, from simple replicators towards humans, then (purely material) organisms and their purely material environment are responsible for a tendency conflicting with the normal trajectory of the Second Law. If evolution is real then bacteria are (or have been) involved in the trajectory towards even more improbable states (like bats and humans).
You make a decent point. But it doesn't really address the materialist creation story. The materialist isn't arguing that this or that evolutionary event is probable, or that the Second Law wouldn't normally tend in a particular direction.* Rather, they are reposing their faith in a very simplistic claim: stuff happens; even improbable things occasionally occur; even things that have a vanishingly low likelihood of occurring under the Second Law (or any other law), might sometime, somewhere, in some circumstance, occur. Is it vanishingly unlikely that something like a self-replicating molecule could arise on the early Earth? Sure. But -- at least as a matter of sheer logical possibility -- such a thing could theoretically occur, even given the constraints of the Second Law. So, good enough. That is all the materialist needs. He doesn't need a good theory. He doesn't need a rational story. He doesn't need probabilities on his side. All he needs to help himself sleep well at night -- and more importantly, to keep those pesky skeptics at bay -- is a mental toehold: the sheer logical possibility that something unexpected could theoretically, somehow, somewhere occur. So, unfortunately, the bottom line is that the Second Law is not something that even concerns the materialist as far as the materialist creation story goes. He isn't interested in talking about what the Second Law drives toward. He isn't interested in considering whether the probabilities make sense. He doesn't countenance the question of whether the trajectory of expected natural processes leads toward evolution.* His is a theory that rests on the simple claim that, hey, strange stuff happens. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. At the end of the day when we strip away the fancy rhetoric and the philosophical gloss, it is really no more substantive than that: Stuff Happens. ----- * Note that some origin of life researchers explicitly attempt to address the thermodynamic problems by claiming -- through a combination of circular definitions and faulty logic -- that the Second Law actually drives toward the formation of living organisms. Laughable though it may be, we've seen that argument in these pages before.Eric Anderson
February 27, 2016
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Mung @86:
What does an influx of free energy do to change that?
Indeed. A most excellent question. I'm waiting with baited breath to find out . . .Eric Anderson
February 27, 2016
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Eric Anderson, thank you for the kind welcome.
So best to be careful with the wording from the outset. For example, there is a difference between saying: (a) “The formation of living organisms violates the Second Law.” and (b) “The normal trajectory of the Second Law tends against, not toward, the formation of something like living organisms under purely natural conditions — unless there is a countervailing factor at work.”
I agree with statement (b). There has to be a countervailing factor at work in order to explain the fact that, with regard to the formation of life, the normal trajectory of the Second Law is not operational. Obviously, what I would like to argue next is that materialism cannot provide for a sufficient countervailing factor. Earlier you wrote:
Obviously Granville is not saying that anything violates the Second Law. That is his whole point. Rather, he is claiming that the normal trajectory of the Second Law drives against, not toward, the formation of something like living organisms — unless there is a countervailing factor, such as intelligence.
In other words, absent such a countervailing factor, the formation of living organisms does indeed violate the Second Law. And this is exactly what Granville points out when he writes that “spontaneous rearrangement of matter on a rocky, barren, planet into human brains and spaceships” represent a violation of the second law.
(…) the point seems lost on materialists who imagine that they have discovered some other force that can operate as an intelligence substitute: either a specific claim about that favorite non-force, “natural selection”; or vague claims about things like the Earth being an “open system”.
I fail to understand how natural selection, understood as a process involving nothing but matter, can be posited as something that is beyond the grasp of the Second Law, let alone a countervailing factor to the Second Law. The Second Law operates on matter and therefor it is incoherent to posit a material process as a countervailing factor. Returning to statements (a) and (b) which you formulated, if one holds that materialism cannot provide for a countervailing factor, then, for the materialist, saying (b) is the same as saying (a).
(...) living organisms clearly do not violate the Second Law. They exist, they perform work, they are all around us. None of them are violating the Second Law.
From a materialistic perspective I respectfully disagree. The parts do not explain the whole. In each cell countless processes are going on, and although we may expect each process to ‘go its own way’ according to the incalculable factors impinging on it from all directions, what we see is quite different. Instead of becoming increasingly disordered in their relations — as indeed happens after death, when coherence dissolves into disjoint fragments — the processes hold together in a larger unity. However, this may be a discussion for another day. The second reason I disagree, and more relevant to this thread, is that if evolution is regarded as a purely material process towards improbable states, from simple replicators towards humans, then (purely material) organisms and their purely material environment are responsible for a tendency conflicting with the normal trajectory of the Second Law. If evolution is real then bacteria are (or have been) involved in the trajectory towards even more improbable states (like bats and humans).Origenes
February 27, 2016
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I'm going to be out of touch until tomorrow; I'm partway through a response to Eric Anderson @ 79, and after that I'll try to respond to other people. So, basically, I'm being slow to respond. As usual. Sorry about that...Gordon Davisson
February 27, 2016
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Gordon: – Matter only inexorably tends to disintegrate into a more likely state IN SYSTEMS WITH NO FREE ENERGY INFLUX. What does an influx of free energy do to change that?Mung
February 27, 2016
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Does the concept of entropy only have meaning when a system is at equilibrium? There exists for every thermodynamic system in equilibrium an extensive scalar property called the entropy, S, such that ... http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/node38.htmlMung
February 27, 2016
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However, some people, including Gordon Davisson in our interaction above, prefer — nay, insist, as a matter of all that is right and holy — that the Second Law can only, ever, be understood in the very narrow, original sense in which it was articulated by some guy a couple of hundred years ago.
Not sure this is correct. If so I'd ask Gordon which guy. I can think of at least three different formulations of the second law. The fact is there is something that unifies all three.Mung
February 27, 2016
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First, the semantic issue. It is generally helpful in these discussions to avoid saying that “x violates the Second Law.” Going to the moon violates the law of gravity. Therefore, man never went to the moon, and birds can't really fly. :)Mung
February 27, 2016
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harry @ 72:
Life aside, the generalization of the 2nd Law rings true. There ARE NO instances of significant functional complexity coming about mindlessly and accidentally. Matter DOES inexorably tend to disintegrate into a more likely state. That is why significant functional complexity, being matter’s least likely state, never comes about mindlessly and accidentally.
I have to strongly disagree on all three counts. - There are examples of significant functional complexity coming about mindlessly, such as river systems -- complex interconnected networks of channels, all correctly positioned, sloped, etc to allow water to drain efficiently into the world ocean. They're formed by erosion, powered by the hydrologic cycle, which in turn is powered by free energy from the sun. You'll probably object that this isn't the same kind of functional complexity you're talking about, but the fact that you're going to have to adjust your definition to evade refutation weakens your case significantly. - Matter only inexorably tends to disintegrate into a more likely state IN SYSTEMS WITH NO FREE ENERGY INFLUX. - Functional complexity is not matter's least likely state. In situations where probability is dominated by entropy (/randomness), ordered states are less likely than functionally complex states. For example, a random sequence of letters is more likely to happen to form a meaningful English sentence than it is to just be "aaaaaa..." -- there are many possible meaningful sentences, but only one sequence of all "a"s. Similarly, a random sequence of DNA bases is more likely to code for a functional protein than it is to be "AAAAAAA" (or "ACGTACGTACGTACGT...." or...). Mind you, both organization and order are highly unlikely when entropy (/randomness) dominates. But when that's not the case, organization can become highly likely (as in the self-organizing systems that tend to form when a system gets far enough from equilibrium).Gordon Davisson
February 27, 2016
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Origenes: doesn’t that entail a violation of the laws of probability which are foundational to the second law? While both playing cards and entropy entail distributional probabilities, they are not the same thing. Entropy concerns distributions of microstates. If you sort playing cards, the laws of thermodynamics just says it requires free energy to power the sorter. The stored energy of the playing cards is in the arrangement and bounds of the paper fibers.Zachriel
February 27, 2016
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Mung,
When you receive a deck of cards from the factory it is typically ordered by suit and rank. There’s only one of two things that can happen. It can stay the same. It can become “less ordered.” If you have a perfectly shuffled deck, there’s only one of two things that can happen. It can stay the same. It can become “more ordered.” Neither would entail a violation of the second law. [Mung]
Indeed, isolated freakish incidents happen. I agree. However when one shuffles a deck of cards a thousand times and it stays the same each time.... doesn't that entail a violation of the laws of probability which are foundational to the second law? Life is like that to the gazillionth power.Origenes
February 27, 2016
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Origenes @74: Welcome to the thread. A charitable reading of your comment provides a pretty good idea of what you are driving at. However, if I might, there are a couple of things that could be tightened up to make sure the point is more clear and less subject to, for example, the cryptic and somewhat unhelpful critique by Mung. I know you probably know all of this, but thought I would lay it out just in case it is helpful to any other readers as well. ----- In my experience, there are three major hangups, or traps for the unwary, surrounding this issue of the Second Law. The first is a purely semantic issue. The second is historical. The third is evidentiary. 1. First, the semantic issue. It is generally helpful in these discussions to avoid saying that "x violates the Second Law." Particularly if x is an observed phenomenon. Nothing violates the Second Law. Ever. I know you know that, and so does everyone else, including Granville. Further, anyone who understands the substantive issues at play and who is sincerely desirous to address the substantive issues will realize that no-one, not Granville nor anyone else, is claiming that the Second Law was ever in fact violated. However, when someone says "x violates the Second Law" it gives very easy ammunition to opponents to use the smear tactic and shout, "So-and-so is an idiot, because they think the Second Law was violated!" One might occasionally get an audience that is thoughtful enough to understand the real argument without getting hung up on semantics, but it is rare. The semantics are just to easy and just too tempting, and if your opponent catches you on the semantics it lets them avoid addressing the substance altogether. So best to be careful with the wording from the outset. For example, there is a difference between saying: (a) "Living organisms violate the Second Law." and (b) "The normal trajectory of the Second Law tends against, not toward, the formation of something like living organisms under purely natural conditions — unless there is a countervailing factor at work." Anyone familiar with the debate will understand that Granville, or anyone else, saying something like (a) really means something like (b). But once you say (a), you fall right into the semantic trap and the debate will get bogged down in semantics before it ever gets off the ground. 2. Second, the historical issue. There is a real, legitimate question about whether the Second Law should be understood more broadly than it was originally articulated. As has been pointed out by commenters above, and as we all know, many authors and scientists have talked about the Second Law in a more broad sense. However, some people, including Gordon Davisson in our interaction above, prefer -- nay, insist, as a matter of all that is right and holy -- that the Second Law can only, ever, be understood in the very narrow, original sense in which it was articulated by some guy a couple of hundred years ago. There is excellent reason to question this mental rigidity, but sometimes it is better to avoid it altogether. We note, for example, that Gordon Davisson, in multiple lengthy comments in this thread has completely failed to address the substantive issue that Granville is raising, offering nothing more than a couple of vague claims in passing that he thinks lots of sunshine and free energy make abiogenesis and evolution possible. Instead, his entire effort has been to attack the idea that the Second Law can ever be understood as anything other than the way it was originally put forth. So we can battle and debate and fight over definitions, but at some level it is better to say, "Fine. Keep your original, narrow definition of the Second Law. Look at x in nature. It is a real, observable principle. We can call that principle whatever we want. Now, given that principle, how do we explain the origin of life or the formation of living organisms?" 3. Third, the evidentiary issue. This is really the only substantive point of the three. But in most debates we have to get past the first two before we can even begin to address this one. Thus, my careful and lengthy back-and-forth with Gordon Davisson to get to this point. Hopefully he will be willing to continue the discussion, now that we've largely dispensed with the semantic and historical distractions. There is reason to think that the Second Law -- even in its narrow, classical formulation -- might have something to say about the expected trajectory of chemical reactions and the formation of functional integrated structures. But we have to talk about specifics if we are going to make headway. A number of origin of life researchers are quite aware of these issues and specifically indicate that their research seeks to deal with the thermodynamic problems. These are solid, card-carrying, kool-aid-drinking members of the Darwinist club. This is not an issue that was dreamed up by intelligent design proponents. So there are good reasons to take the thermodynamic constraints into consideration, but it needs to be done by addressing specific cases, not just by saying "the origin of life violates the Second Law," or something like that. Finally, and this is a bit of a nuance, but an important one: living organisms clearly do not violate the Second Law. They exist, they perform work, they are all around us. None of them are violating the Second Law. This harks back somewhat to our semantic issue, but with a twist. Specifically, the question is not so much about whether living organisms -- in their process of living -- go against our expectations of what to expect from natural processes. Rather, it is source of the initial formation or origin of those organisms that is at issue. Everyone agrees that living organisms have the ability to take in energy and perform work. Everyone agrees that numerous mechanism within the cell and otherwise are required to keep the organism going -- living, breathing, growing. It is not the living that is the problem for the materialist creation story. It is the origin. So we are again back to the same question that we face with the origin of life, namely, are there principles, thermodynamic or otherwise, that militate against the natural formation of a living organism or against the natural formation of new biological features? There is excellent reason to think that there are. But we need to frame the issue in that way and, to the extent possible, provide specific examples. This is no small task, and it can be incredibly frustrating -- particularly when the rejoinder from the opposition is a simplistic, naive, vague, hand-waving, "Well, I think such things can form under natural conditions. So there." But to the extent possible, we need to focus on specifics. It is there that the thermodynamic issues can be brought to bear. ----- P.S. I should add that in general this is a difficult area in which to make headway. Granville's broader point is well taken and is a substantive issue that needs to be addressed. However, it is so difficult to get past the semantic games and the historical rigidity and it takes enough effort to come up with good, specific, substantive examples on the thermodynamic side that this becomes an exhausting area in which to debate. Not that it isn't worth doing; not that it isn't important at some level. But it can quickly drain one's energy with little to show for it. Typically a lot more mileage is gained by homing in on the more obvious problems, like Behe's focus on the formation of integrated functional molecular machines or Meyer's focus on information content.Eric Anderson
February 27, 2016
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Origenes, First, you didn't make any argument yourself, you just declared what you believe. Second, my arguments (and those of others) are up-thread. I didn't feel like repeating myself, again.Mung
February 27, 2016
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Mung, Zero counter-arguments and ad hominem attack fail to persuade.Origenes
February 27, 2016
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