A Little Timeline on the Second Law Argument

_{Granville Sewell

February 19, 2016

Intelligent Design}

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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

Origenes:
Considered from a materialistic perspective, life violates the fundamental principle behind the second law — the principle that matter always tends to go toward probable states. Organisms violate this principle, that is, until the moment of death.
No. Origenes:
The materialist is forced to adopt the incoherent position that the fundamental principle behind the second law does not apply to all matter. Put in other words: some conglomerations of matter (organisms) violate the fundamental principle behind the second law.
And again, no. No wonder people think we're IDiots.Mung_{February 27, 2016
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Gordon Davisson #68 Your final insult "dishonest" against Granville and whoever supports the ID argument from the 2nd law is very telling and typical of a card player with a "bad hand". Then the Discovery Institute is "dishonest" because endorses Granville and publishes his books on the 2nd law. Then the BioComplexity journal is "dishonest" because publishes Granville's articles. Personally I know no one in the ID movement and among creationists who opposes Granville's argument. Maybe some are agnostic but nobody clearly refutes it. Then all these guys are "dishonest". Instead maybe you -- who deny the evidence and defend a falsity -- believe to be honest. Well, I am pretty sure that the careful reader is able to understand who is right between Granville, who uses few words, and you who write many words as a smoke screen to hidden a truth lethal for evolution.niwrad_{February 27, 2016
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Granville, do you also agree that life doesn’t violate the Second Law because it powers its actions by the food it eats? [Matspirit]
Considered from a materialistic perspective, life violates the fundamental principle behind the second law — the principle that matter always tends to go toward probable states. Organisms violate this principle, that is, until the moment of death. Energy (e.g. food, sunlight) fails as a sufficient countervailing force, since it cannot explain the order and organization we find in life. The materialist is forced to adopt the incoherent position that the fundamental principle behind the second law does not apply to all matter. Put in other words: some conglomerations of matter (organisms) violate the fundamental principle behind the second law.
So, how does the spontaneous rearrangement of matter on a rocky, barren, planet into 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, represent a less obvious or less spectacular violation of the second law -- or at least of the fundamental natural principle behind this law -- than tornados turning rubble into houses and cars? Here is a thought experiment for you: try to imagine a more spectacular violation than what has happened on our planet. [Granville Sewell]
Origenes_{February 27, 2016
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Gordon Davisson @68: Thanks for your additional thoughts.
If you would go that extra step and say “the second law is not relevant to the key issues at hand”, I could completely agree with you.
Possibly. Just curious, would you say that the Second Law is wholly, completely irrelevant to chemical reactions or to the physical structures we would expect to see form in a given system? Interestingly, some researchers in the origin of life context (including the gentleman you cited earlier in this thread) are explicitly trying to address the thermodynamic issues. I realize you don’t think they’ve provided a solution yet, nor do I. But it is worth noting that they talk about thermodynamic issues that need to be overcome. Are they wrong to do so? Worth at least pondering.
EA: […] First, as has been pointed out many times, a number of scientists and authors have talked about the Second Law more broadly than just thermal aspects. Are they all wrong? Perhaps. GD: They’re not all wrong. But while some generalizations are quite solid and well-supported, that doesn’t mean that all generalizations are valid. In each of the cases I listed above, the extension is based on a carefully-worked-out theoretical basis. On the other hand, all the proposed generalizations I see coming from the ID side here seem to be based on reasoning that goes like this: “It’s obvious that X is impossible, so the second law must forbid X. Oh, the second law doesn’t forbid X? Then there must be some more general form of the second law that does forbid X.” I’ll happily dismiss these generalizations as utter nonsense.
Couple of things. First, many people on the ID side would agree with you about the Second Law and think it is a poor argument. There is not a monolithic ID-related stance on this issue. Presumably you are talking about Granville and a few others who have argued from the Second Law. Second, it bears repeating yet again, there are lots of people who have referred to the Second Law in a more general sense, as has been pointed out to you several times. If you want to express your righteous indignation about their use of the term, fine. But please stop presenting this as though it were some kind of issue brought up exclusively by ID people. It isn’t and wasn’t. Much more importantly, it is a real, observable fact in the real world, as has been acknowledged by many scientists. What would you like to call the principle that applies to the class of phenomena they are discussing? Is there a name or a principle that would make you more comfortable?
You should refer to the second law only to the extent that you are actually using the second law. Claiming your case is based on the second law when it’s actually based on something else (even something vaguely like the second law) is dishonest.
This is more of an allegation against Granville than me, but let me just suggest that you are going a bridge too far. You are implying intent to deceive when that is not necessarily the case. Granville, for example, has tried (we can debate how successfully) to explain that he is talking about a broader principle than pure thermal aspects. Lots of other authors and scientists have done the same. Are they all being dishonest? Of course not. They are observing something in nature that is real and important. Then they are trying to apply a principle that can help us understand that observation, either by arguing that (a) we should think of the Second Law in a broader way than it was originally formulated, or (b) there is a parallel principle at work. We can debate with them and disagree with them all we want. But calling the approach “dishonest” is hardly becoming.
EA: I am very curious, though, to understand why you think sunlight and waste heat radiation are sufficient to make evolution probable? What special property do you think energy brings to the table for something like, say, origin of life? Not just energy, free energy. Free energy is an important concept in thermodynamics, which acts as a sort of opposite of entropy. I can’t explain it fully without getting into technical details, but you can think of free energy as energy that hasn’t been thermalized (i.e. degraded to heat at the ambient temperature). The significance of free energy in this case is that it drives a system (e.g. Earth) away from thermodynamic equilibrium. Equilibrium states are, well, boring. Equilibrium probability distributions are dominated by maximum randomness (sometimes combined with other constraints, like energy minimization, depending on the boundary conditions). Take a look at a probability-based “thermodynamic” argument against evolution or abiogenesis; chances are it assumes an equilibrium probability distribution.
Great, now we have a far-from-equilibrium state. Where does that get us on the path to life? Essentially nowhere. Barely moves the needle. Is energy important for certain chemical reactions? Sure. Is energy important for living systems? Sure. So having some energy, even free energy, is a necessary condition. But the only thing your “open” system does is provide more free energy. That isn’t even a concern on the table. Having enough energy for abiogenesis or evolution has never been in question. Having the right kind of energy at the right time and in the right place is perhaps an open question. But even that is a bit player in the list of problems for abiogenesis. Wouldn’t even crack the top 10. And whatever benefit an open system provides in terms of supplying even more of that free energy is utterly unhelpful to the task at hand. The issue has never been whether there is enough free energy available.
But further from equilibrium, linearity breaks down and the results get much harder to predict (and much more interesting!), as in the case of the hydrologic cycle producing fresh water. The nonlinear regieme is where self-organization can take place. I’m not very familiar with this branch of thermodynamics, but it’s fairly well established.
Well, if you are talking about self-organization, then you are clearly not on the path to forming life or living systems. Self-organization is anathema to such systems. Complete category mistake.
Can this sort of far-from-equilibrium self-organization explain abiogenesis? There’s clearly plenty of free energy available to drive it
Yep, agreed. Plenty of free energy available on the Earth. That has never been the issue. And, therefore, I am glad you now have come around to agree :) the “open system” business is a complete red herring.
. . . the question (well, the thermodynamic part of the question) is how it got coupled to the process of abiogenesis. This is a question that any proposed mechanism of abiogenesis must answer, but there’s no reason to think it’s unanswerable. I suspect that there’s a mechanism that can, under the right circumstances, couple free energy (probably from a geothermal source) to drive abiogenesis, thus making the origin of life “not extremely improbable”. I could be wrong, but that’s my suspicion.
Well, at least you are backing down from the idea that abiogenesis is “probable,” so that is good. You also seem to be implying, if I take a charitable reading, that pumping more free energy into the system, in and of itself, doesn’t really get us anywhere significant down the road to abiogensis. Rather, we must have some kind of system that can extract, coordinate, and use that free energy to perform work. That is indeed much closer to the real issues at hand. And so far, based on everything we know about the world around us, there is every reason to acknowledge that no such system exists in the abiogenic context. There is also no rational reason to think that one would just arise on its own. Those are the facts at hand. Those are the problems that have concerned origin of life researchers for decades, not just ID proponents. Any claim that abiogenesis will occur, regardless of copious amounts of free energy, is nothing but pure, unsupported, contrary-to-evidence speculation.
The situation for evolution is much clearer. Basically, evolution is a side effect of reproduction, which is driven via well-understood mechanisms from solar free energy. There’s no (thermodynamic) problem here at all.
The idea that free energy + reproduction results in evolution is simplistic and naïve, but we can leave that discussion for another time. Yes, there is plenty of free energy. So again, that has never been the issue, and the 'Earth-is-an-open-system' compensation argument is a red herring, even in the post-abiogenesis realm.Eric Anderson_{February 25, 2016
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Gordon Davisson @71, 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. That is also why we would immediately know that an alien drone was just that, not an extremely peculiar asteroid. In the same way, open minds capable of objectivity realize that the digital information-based nanotechnology of life couldn't have come about mindlessly and accidentally. This explains why many insist that "the 'second law of thermodynamics' should never have been generalized," and why they turn any discussion of the generalized 2LOT making the mindless and accidental emergence of life an impossibility into a discussion of how the non-generalized 2LOT doesn't really apply to the emergence of life. The strategy is to distract everyone from the embarrassing reality that the generalized 2LOT, with law-like certainty, damns the notion that life emerged mindlessly and accidentally. It seems to me that Sewell is merely saying that you can call it something besides the generalization of the 2LOT, but that doesn't change its law-like impact on nature, which renders the mindless and accidental emergence of significant functional complexity impossible.harry_{February 25, 2016
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harry @ 69:
“It’s obvious that X is impossible, so the second law must forbid X. Oh, the second law doesn’t forbid X? Then there must be some more general form of the second law that does forbid X.” I’ll happily dismiss these generalizations as utter nonsense.
You have successfully refuted your straw man.
From Sewell's original posting:
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!
Yes, I was paraphrasing freely. But as far as I can see, that's the core of his argument.Gordon Davisson_{February 24, 2016
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harry: suppose that an unmanned (or un-aliened in this case) extraterrestrial drone, which was at first mistaken for an asteroid hurtling towards the Earth, slows down at the last minute and gracefully lands in the middle of Central Park. Seems very similar to how human-manufactured rockets land on other planets. Further investigation might reveal other similarities — or not.Zachriel_{February 24, 2016
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Gordon Davisson @ 68
“It’s obvious that X is impossible, so the second law must forbid X. Oh, the second law doesn’t forbid X? Then there must be some more general form of the second law that does forbid X.” I’ll happily dismiss these generalizations as utter nonsense.
You have successfully refuted your straw man. Suppose there is a group of scientists who are wholeheartedly committed to the notion that humanity is the only instance of intelligent beings in the entire Universe. We'll call this group the ESBU (Everbody's Stupid But Us). Further suppose that an unmanned (or un-aliened in this case) extraterrestrial drone, which was at first mistaken for an asteroid hurtling towards the Earth, slows down at the last minute and gracefully lands in the middle of Central Park. The ESBU, of course, insists that this object is actually only an extremely peculiar asteroid, not a drone created by alien intelligent agents. They make their case as follows:
There’s a lot we know about the history of asteroids and how their various features evolved, but there’s also a lot we don’t know much about — how some asteroids can slow down and land gracefully instead of crashing into a planet is the single biggest example, but there are lots of others. But to infer that such an asteroid must’ve been the creation of an intelligent agent? No, that’s the ID-of-the-gaps fallacy. The only thing we can say about the features of such asteroids that we don’t know about yet is “we don’t know about that yet.” Without a definition of what’s sufficient to make such an asteroid “not extremely improbable”, it is useless to point out that its accidental formation is extremely improbable. You may think that sunlight and waste heat radiation aren’t sufficient to make such an asteroid “not extremely improbable”, but I do think they’re sufficient
If the ESBU arguments sound ridiculous, so should such arguments applied to the digital-information-based nanotechnology of life.harry_{February 24, 2016
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[Sorry if this one's a little incoherent; I keep rewriting bits to improve it, but it's getting late, I'm getting tired, and I'm no longer sure my "improvements" are anything of the sort.] Eric Anderson @ 61:
The simplest form I know that can be applied directly to Earth (or the Earth-Sun system if you prefer) is that the system’s entropy cannot decrease faster than it’s exported from the system. In the case of Earth, that export rate is at least 3.3e14 W/K, so as far as the second law is concerned the Earth’s entropy could be decreasing at up to that rate.
Sounds good. But again, it is not relevant to the key issues at hand.
If you would go that extra step and say "the second law is not relevant to the key issues at hand", I could completely agree with you.
EA: Nobody, not a single person, questions whether the Earth receives energy from the Sun. […] GD: Yet many people ignore or deny the thermodynamic implications of this.
The only implication of this is that energy is available. Again, not an issue. Not something anyone, including Granville, has ever disputed.
If we're talking about actual thermodynamics, the implications are actually huge (and the important aspect is that it's free energy rather than near-equilibrium thermal energy).
[...] First, as has been pointed out many times, a number of scientists and authors have talked about the Second Law more broadly than just thermal aspects. Are they all wrong? Perhaps.
They're not all wrong. - The case for a connection between thermodynamic entropy and information entropy is IMO quite solid at the theoretical level, and in the last decade has started to gain empirical support as well. - J. D. Berkenstein proposed a "generalized second law" that applies to systems containing black holes. I'm far less familiar with this, but my understanding is that there's a reasonably solid theoretical case for this. - The fluctuation theorem extends the second law down to microscopic systems. (The second law only applies to macroscopic systems where you are averaging over a huge number of atoms/molecules/whatever.) But while some generalizations are quite solid and well-supported, that doesn't mean that all generalizations are valid. In each of the cases I listed above, the extension is based on a carefully-worked-out theoretical basis. On the other hand, all the proposed generalizations I see coming from the ID side here seem to be based on reasoning that goes like this: "It's obvious that X is impossible, so the second law must forbid X. Oh, the second law doesn't forbid X? Then there must be some more general form of the second law that does forbid X." I'll happily dismiss these generalizations as utter nonsense.
Should we demand that they stop referring to the Second Law in these cases? Perhaps.
You should refer to the second law only to the extent that you are actually using the second law. Claiming your case is based on the second law when it's actually based on something else (even something vaguely like the second law) is dishonest.
But they are pointing to a principle that is real and exists. They are pointing to a Second Law-like principle. Maybe even pointing to the principle behind the Second Law, which is a useful contribution to our understanding of the world around us. So I hear you on the terminology and your desire to limit this term only to the most narrow, classic thermal sense. But I guess I’m willing to hear people out who argue that there is a broader principle at work or that we can start thinking of the Second Law in broader terms.
I'm also willing to hear out people who argue for that, but so far I haven't seen anyone make an actual solid case, just lots of unsupported claims and wild handwaving. Let me draw a line in the sand here: if you don't have a good understanding of thermodynamics to start from, you have no business trying to draw generalizations from it. I don't see anyone here that actually understands thermodynamics, and thinks these generalizations have any value. Rob Sheldon is a possible exception, but so far I haven't seen him say anything of substance on the issue.
[...] It is difficult perhaps to apply the Second Law to some broad, vague term like “evolution,” but there are no doubt many specific, individual cases in which we can say that a certain reaction or a certain system is impossible or exceedingly unlikely, based in part on thermodynamic constraints and considerations.
I've never seen a coherent argument for such a case. If you have such a case, I'd be interested in seeing it, but be warned: I'll only take it seriously if it's based on an actual, well-recognized formulation of the second law (and you don't botch the physics or logic). Be clear about what form(s) of the second law you're applying, and what system(s) you're applying it to. What are the boundary conditions of the system(s), and how does that influence what the second law implies? If you're using a probability-based form, what probability distribution are you using and why?
I am very curious, though, to understand why you think sunlight and waste heat radiation are sufficient to make evolution probable? What special property do you think energy brings to the table for something like, say, origin of life?
Not just energy, free energy. Free energy is an important concept in thermodynamics, which acts as a sort of opposite of entropy. I can't explain it fully without getting into technical details, but you can think of free energy as energy that hasn't been thermalized (i.e. degraded to heat at the ambient temperature). The significance of free energy in this case is that it drives a system (e.g. Earth) away from thermodynamic equilibrium. Equilibrium states are, well, boring. Equilibrium probability distributions are dominated by maximum randomness (sometimes combined with other constraints, like energy minimization, depending on the boundary conditions). Take a look at a probability-based "thermodynamic" argument against evolution or abiogenesis; chances are it assumes an equilibrium probability distribution. Adding free energy to a system drives its state away from the equilibrium, and as a result changes the actual probability distribution away from what it would be at equilibrium. Take a simple example: a rock. At equilibrium, its thermal energy will be distributed randomly throughout the rock, and it'll have an extremely high probability of being pretty uniform. Basically, the rock will be at a uniform temperature. But if you add heat (at above-ambient temperature so it has free energy) to one side of the rock, its temperature will become uneven (higher on the side you heated). At equilibrium this uneven temperature would be wildly improbable, but away from equilibrium it's entirely normal. Take a more complex example: salt dissolved in the Earth's water supply. Seawater has an osmolarity of around 1000 mOsm/l, which means that it has about 1 mole of ions (=6e23 ions) per liter of water. At equilibrium, those ions will be randomly distributed through the water (ignoring gravitational gradients); in some places the concentration will be slightly lower and in places slightly higher, but it's unlikely to vary significantly. For example, the probability that a particular liter of seawater will have only 1/35th the expected number of ions is (if I've done my math right) about 1 in 10^(10^23). Practically impossible. Freshwater has less dissolved salt than that, and there's a lot more than a liter of it on Earth. Clearly this cannot happen by chance under the equilibrium probability distribution, but free energy from the sun shifts the probabilities enough that a practical impossibility becomes entirely normal. Fresh water not only exists, but is new fresh water is continually generated thanks to free energy from the sun. So, free energy can shift probabilities away from their equilibrium values, even by huge amounts. But that doesn't mean it makes everything more probable. Since the total probability is always 1, every increase in probability has to be balanced by a decrease in the probability of some other outcome. The second law can be used to place a limit on how far the probabilities will shift, but it doesn't give any indication of what direction they'll shift. Close to equilibrium, there are some linearity principles that tell you a bit about what'll happen as the system is pushed out of equilibrium. Essentially, if you "push" twice as hard, the system will depart twice as far from equilibrium, in the same direction. The rock getting warmer on one side is an example: add twice as much heat, get twice the temperature gradient. But further from equilibrium, linearity breaks down and the results get much harder to predict (and much more interesting!), as in the case of the hydrologic cycle producing fresh water. The nonlinear regieme is where self-organization can take place. I'm not very familiar with this branch of thermodynamics, but it's fairly well established. Can this sort of far-from-equilibrium self-organization explain abiogenesis? There's clearly plenty of free energy available to drive it, the question (well, the thermodynamic part of the question) is how it got coupled to the process of abiogenesis. This is a question that any proposed mechanism of abiogenesis must answer, but there's no reason to think it's unanswerable. I suspect that there's a mechanism that can, under the right circumstances, couple free energy (probably from a geothermal source) to drive abiogenesis, thus making the origin of life "not extremely improbable". I could be wrong, but that's my suspicion. The situation for evolution is much clearer. Basically, evolution is a side effect of reproduction, which is driven via well-understood mechanisms from solar free energy. There's no (thermodynamic) problem here at all.Gordon Davisson_{February 23, 2016
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harry @ 66
it is digital information-based nanotechnology the functional complexity of which is light years beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch. Technology, by definition, is the application of knowledge for a purpose. That is why technology never comes about mindlessly and accidentally. It couldn’t be more obvious that life is technology that is astoundingly superior to our own, and is therefore the result of the application of knowledge for a purpose.
It is a pity ID scientists take no steps to find the possessor of such wonderful, advanced technologies. We could profit from it.Me_Think_{February 23, 2016
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Gordon Davisson @ 60,
There’s a lot we know about the history of evolution and how various features evolved, but there’s also a lot we don’t know much about — abiogenesis is the single biggest example, but there are lots of others. But to infer that it must’ve been an intelligent agent? No, that’s the ID-of-the-gaps fallacy. The only thing we can say about the parts we don’t know about yet is “we don’t know about that yet.”
To just assume a phenomenon must have come about mindlessly and accidentally, when that assumption isn't just counterintuitive, but is also without any evidentiary basis whatsoever, is the "naturalism of the gaps" fallacy. Life aside, since it is the subject the origin of which is being debated, we have no evidence whatsoever that significant functional complexity ever comes about mindlessly and accidentally. Every instance of significant functional complexity known to us, is known to have had intelligent agency as a causal factor in its coming about. Not only that, life doesn't merely exhibit significant functional complexity, it is digital information-based nanotechnology the functional complexity of which is light years beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch. Technology, by definition, is the application of knowledge for a purpose. That is why technology never comes about mindlessly and accidentally. It couldn't be more obvious that life is technology that is astoundingly superior to our own, and is therefore the result of the application of knowledge for a purpose.harry_{February 23, 2016
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Statistical mechanics does not state that highly improbable states cannot be realized. Neither does the Second Law. Boltzmann specifically wrote about this, which I have quoted here in the past but don't recall the source. Physics textbooks are among the worst. =PMung_{February 23, 2016
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Does adding energy increase or decrease the number of macrostates? Does adding energy increase or decrease the number of microstates?Mung_{February 23, 2016
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CS3 @32 and 52: Excellent discussion. Well said.
Thanks; same to you!
The second law — the actual second law — actually does imply that converting the random to all-heads arrangements must be compensated by an equal-or-larger increase of entropy in some other form, such as heat. This is the basis of Landauer’s principle.
As I said, “In my coins example, with regards to energy, both statements also are satisfied.” Landauer’s principle would seem to support that. From what I have read, the experiment that purportedly supported Landauer’s principle did the following (from http://www.nature.com/news/the-unavoidable-cost-of-computation-revealed-1.10186):
To test the principle, the researchers created a simple two-state bit: a single microscopic silica bead held in a ‘light trap’ by a laser beam. The trap contains two ‘valleys’ where the particle can rest, one representing a 1 and the other a 0. It could jump between the two if the energy ‘hill’ separating them is not too high.
It seems the way information is stored is related to the configurational entropy, and thus, when the available states are reduced by resetting the “bit”, there is a dissipation of energy. I assume this is not too dissimilar to my forced compression of a gas example, in which the number of states available to the gas molecules is reduced, but is accompanied by a transfer of energy through the work to another form with increased entropy.
You may not think of the arrangement of coins as bearing information, but the definition of information that’s relevant here is Claude Shannon’s… The arrangement of heads and tails does not have meaning, but that’s irrelevant; it’s selected (randomly) from a set, and thus has information in the Shannon sense.
Yes, this is a valuable distinction to make, but the origin of order, or information, that is meaningful, or functional, is what the debate is about. When the Zumdahl textbook says “Looking at the new sequence of the cards, you would be very surprised to find that it matched the original order”, what is surprising is that the resulting order has meaning. Whether we should be surprised or not if we get the original order has nothing to do with how much thermal entropy enters or leaves the system. It sounds like you don’t dispute that there is no relationship between the “meaningfulness” of the order or information and the thermal entropy that must be released. That’s the point. If we flip 10,000 fair coins, and they exactly spell out a passage from Shakespeare in binary (i.e., result in a meaningful result, where meaningful states are a very small subset of the possible states), then our surprise isn’t mitigated by any thermal entropy measurements. If a DNA sequence arises that codes for a functional flagellum, our surprise again isn’t mitigated by any thermal entropy measurements. It could, theoretically, be mitigated if the physics dictates a restricted set of available states such that these results are not a very small subset of the possible states.
That question has a simple answer: it is not the second law, so don’t call it that.
It seems, though, that talking about the Second Law with regards to the statistical principles behind it was never controversial – until a design advocate did it. Here are just a few more examples of books that express the idea that the Second Law has something to say about the surprise we should feel when we get an order that has meaning. From University Physics by Young and Freedman, in the Chapter “The Second Law of Thermodynamics”:
[I]magine a tedious sorting job, such as alphabetizing a thousand book titles written on file cards. Throw the alphabetized stack of cards into the air. Do they come down in alphabetical order? No, their tendency is to come down in a random or disordered state. In the free expansion of a gas, the air is more disordered after it has expanded into the entire box than when it was confined in one side, just as your clothes are more disordered when scattered all over your floor than when confined to your closet.
From a different edition of University Physics, in a section about "building physical intuition" about the Second Law:
A new deck of playing cards is sorted out by suit (hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades) and by number. Shuffling a deck of cards increases its disorder into a random arrangement. Shuffling a deck of cards back into its original order is highly unlikely.
From Isaac Asimov in "In the game of energy and thermodynamics, you can't even break even":
We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself, it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily.... How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in perfect working order; how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out — all by itself — and that is what the second law is all about.

Without a definition of what’s sufficient to make something “not extremely improbable”, this is useless.
Yes, it is useless by itself. Sewell’s contribution here is not an argument against those who believe there is nothing extremely improbable about the origin and development of life. That is purview of others, such as Behe, Meyer, Denton, etc. Sewell’s contribution is to refute those, like Asimov, who seek to avoid that question altogether by arguing, yes, the origin and development of life IS extremely improbable, but it isn't an issue because of the “increase in entropy that took place in the sun”. Less rigorously, Sewell does sometimes point out the apparent double-standard we have in applying the (general principle behind the) Second Law. From Basic Physics by Kenneth Ford:
Imagine a motion picture of any scene of ordinary life run backward. You might watch...a pair of mangled automobiles undergoing instantaneous repair as they back apart. Or a dead rabbit rising to scamper backward into the woods as a crushed bullet re-forms and flies backward into a rifle while some gunpowder is miraculously manufactured out of hot gas. Or something as simple as a cup of coffee on a table gradually becoming warmer as it draws heat from its cooler surroundings. All of these backward-in-time views and a myriad more that you can quickly think of are ludicrous and impossible for one reason only - they violate the second law of thermodynamics. In the actual scene of events, entropy is increasing. In the time reversed view, entropy is decreasing.
From General Chemistry, 5th Edition, by Whitten, Davis, and Peck:
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is based on our experiences. Some examples illustrate this law in the macroscopic world. When a mirror is dropped, it can shatter...The reverse of any spontaneous change is nonspontaneous, because if it did occur, the universe would tend toward a state of greater order. This is contrary to our experience. We would be very surprised if we dropped some pieces of silvered glass on the floor and a mirror spontaneously assembled… The ideas of entropy, order, and disorder are related to probability.
We have no qualms about concluding a dropped mirror can shatter but not self-assemble, or that automobiles may mangle in a crash but not re-assemble, or that tornados may destroy but not construct houses. Yet, when it comes to the question of whether a barren planet can turn into one filled with jet planes, computers, and human brains, not to mention automobiles, live rabbits, and mirrors, we say, sure, this can happen by natural processes. Unlike the refutation of the compensation argument, this “intuition” obviously isn’t a rigorous proof, nor does it claim to be. Maybe it really is the case that the origin and development of life only appears to be extremely improbable, but really isn’t. There are, I’m sure, plenty of other threads that discuss that. Nevertheless, it is still worthwhile to point out how contrary such a reality would be to our experiences in other contexts.CS3_{February 23, 2016
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Gordon Davisson @60:
But to infer that it must’ve been an intelligent agent? No, that’s the ID-of-the-gaps fallacy. The only thing we can say about the parts we don’t know about yet is “we don’t know about that yet.”
C'mon, Gordon. You know better than that. You have some good thoughts and a generally careful approach, so please don't stoop to the tired anti-ID rhetoric. Two things: 1. There is no ID-of-the-gaps fallacy. ID does not argue that because we don't know how something came about it must have been designed. You know better than that. ID makes a positive case for what can be accomplished through intelligent agents and also makes a comparative case against competing non-intelligent explanations. It is perfectly reasonable and appropriate. You can disagree with the conclusion; you might feel the design inference isn't strong enough for you to side with it in a particular case. But there isn't a fallacy in the approach. Some people, unfortunately, like to caricature ID for their own philosophical or worldview purposes. They like to caricature it as arguing "we don't know; therefore design." So, yes, there is a caricature-of-ID-of-the-gaps fallacy. But there is not an ID-of-the-gaps fallacy. 2. Given that you acknowledge you "don't know about that yet," you must logically also be open to the possibility that such a system or part was designed. And if it were designed, how could we tell? That is precisely the question asked by ID. It is a perfectly legitimate, objective, science-based question. ---- The upshot is this: Someone could reasonably take the position that we don't know enough about biological system x or y to say how it came about. Many systems are in that category. At that point the reasonable -- the intellectually responsible -- thing to do as it relates to ID is acknowledge (a) the possibility of design as a live option, and (b) the ways in which we might be able to draw a reasonable inference to design. Again, one might feel that the inference in a particular case isn't strong enough. One might hope in their heart-of-hearts to someday discover a purely naturalistic explanation. But to reject the design inference based on philosophical or worldview biases or to reject the design inference based on a false caricature, is neither helpful nor intellectually responsible.Eric Anderson_{February 23, 2016
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Gordon Davisson @58:
The simplest form I know that can be applied directly to Earth (or the Earth-Sun system if you prefer) is that the system’s entropy cannot decrease faster than it’s exported from the system. In the case of Earth, that export rate is at least 3.3e14 W/K, so as far as the second law is concerned the Earth’s entropy could be decreasing at up to that rate.
Sounds good. But again, it is not relevant to the key issues at hand. Where the energy comes from is a minor, bit-player issue in all of this. We could have energy from radioactive decay, thermal pools, from deep sea volcanic vents. Getting energy into the system is not and never has been the primary issue. So when people point out that the Earth can get energy from the Sun they aren’t adding anything to the discussion.
EA: Nobody, not a single person, questions whether the Earth receives energy from the Sun. […] GD: Yet many people ignore or deny the thermodynamic implications of this.
The only implication of this is that energy is available. Again, not an issue. Not something anyone, including Granville, has ever disputed.
The most you can really argue here is that evolution is in the same category as cold fusion — it’s thermodynamically allowed, but actually impossible for some other reason. But you cannot say that that “other reason” is the second law.
That might be a reasonable way to start thinking about it. However, we need to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Two caveats are in order: First, as has been pointed out many times, a number of scientists and authors have talked about the Second Law more broadly than just thermal aspects. Are they all wrong? Perhaps. Should we demand that they stop referring to the Second Law in these cases? Perhaps. But they are pointing to a principle that is real and exists. They are pointing to a Second Law-like principle. Maybe even pointing to the principle behind the Second Law, which is a useful contribution to our understanding of the world around us. So I hear you on the terminology and your desire to limit this term only to the most narrow, classic thermal sense. But I guess I’m willing to hear people out who argue that there is a broader principle at work or that we can start thinking of the Second Law in broader terms. Even in the classic sense, there are probably a dozen different attempts by well-known scientists to formulate the principle behind the Second Law into a particular description or statement in our language. Must we forever only think of the Second Law in the terms outlined by some guy a couple of centuries ago? Perhaps. But perhaps we should also be open to exploring and framing things more broadly. Second, I would agree with you that the Second Law does not prohibit the existence of living organisms and the like. Obviously it does not. We are here. Yet the Second Law, even in the classical sense, is very much relevant to what we can expect of certain chemical and biochemical reactions, operating on their own. And the question on the table is not whether the Second Law prohibits the existence of certain systems, but whether the formation of such systems by purely natural and material processes is thermodynamically prohibited or at least highly unlikely. These are very different questions. It is difficult perhaps to apply the Second Law to some broad, vague term like “evolution,” but there are no doubt many specific, individual cases in which we can say that a certain reaction or a certain system is impossible or exceedingly unlikely, based in part on thermodynamic constraints and considerations.
Now, there are some people who are attempting to actually explain life — not just why it’s not forbidden, but why it actually happens — on thermodynamic bases (Jeremy England is the latest example). But this is a much more difficult task, involves much deeper principles of thermodynamics, and so far I haven’t seen any arguments that I really found convincing.
Yeah, I agree with you that these proposals are unconvincing. Nick Matzke send us down this rabbit hole before with another proposal of this kind he had run across. As far as I’ve looked into these kinds of proposals, they typically rest on vague generalizations, questionable assumptions, and, too often, semantic games about what is thermodynamically favorable.
As far as I can see, thermodynamics neither forbids nor requires life to originate and/or evolve.
I agree with you in general, at least insofar as we understand “forbids” in the 100% absolute sense and insofar as we refer to "evolution" vaguely and generally. However, we need to be careful not to claim that the Second Law is irrelevant, based on the important caveats I outlined above, particularly the second one.
So far, all the attempts I’ve seen to define and justify such a broader principle have been wrong and/or useless. Take Sewell’s attempt at a broader principle: 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. Without a definition of what’s sufficient to make something “not extremely improbable”, this is useless. You and Sewell may think that sunlight and waste heat radiation aren’t sufficient to make evolution “not extremely improbable”, but I do think they’re sufficient; Sewell’s principle doesn’t do anything at all toward deciding which of us is right.
I don’t think the statement you’ve quoted is his broader principle in terms of applying the Second Law to anything. The statement you quoted is just an observation he is making (one that is definitionally true, if seemingly trivial) that simply throwing energy into a system doesn’t make the improbable probable. That statement is a direct response to the “compensation” arguments that tend to be thrown around as though they were some kind of explanation. It is true – trivially so – that unless the additional energy is doing something very specific to make the improbable probable, then simply adding more energy doesn’t help. I am very curious, though, to understand why you think sunlight and waste heat radiation are sufficient to make evolution probable? What special property do you think energy brings to the table for something like, say, origin of life? Presumably you aren’t simply making the general claim that evolution is more likely to occur when energy exists than when it doesn’t exist. That is no doubt true, but is also obviously not the issue at hand. Again, having enough energy on the Earth, whether from the Sun, radioactive decay, hydrothermal vents or otherwise, is not the issue. Presumably you also aren’t simply making the slightly more focused observation that some chemical reactions require energy. Again, yes, everyone agrees. We have to have some sufficient level of energy for certain reactions to occur. So that makes some amount of energy a necessary condition; but that does not make it a sufficient condition. What special property do you think energy brings to the table? And if it does bring some special property to the table, presumably adding more energy would bring more of that property, which would be interesting indeed. So what special property do you think energy like sunlight or waste heat radiation brings to the table that is sufficient to make something like the origin of life probable?Eric Anderson_{February 23, 2016
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harry @ 59: There's a lot we know about the history of evolution and how various features evolved, but there's also a lot we don't know much about -- abiogenesis is the single biggest example, but there are lots of others. But to infer that it must've been an intelligent agent? No, that's the ID-of-the-gaps fallacy. The only thing we can say about the parts we don't know about yet is "we don't know about that yet."Gordon Davisson_{February 23, 2016
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Gordon Davisson @ 58,
You and Sewell may think that sunlight and waste heat radiation aren’t sufficient to make evolution “not extremely improbable”, but I do think they’re sufficient
Without a mechanism to harness the energy, sunlight and waste heat radiation make matter warm and radiated, not assemble it into functional complexity. The productive harnessing of energy achieved by photosynthesis is an extremely complex system itself. How did it evolve in the first place? This is the same kind of problem as the one Karl Popper noticed when he pointed out that the assembly instructions to build the cellular machinery necessary to process the information encoded in DNA, was also encoded in the DNA. How did such a system evolve in the first place? Why would a digital information storage device like the DNA molecule evolve at all when it had no functionality whatsoever until it was populated with useful information and there was cellular machinery to utilize that information? The only plausible explanation for such things is the involvement of an intelligent agent in the process.harry_{February 23, 2016
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Eric Anderson @ 56:
Yes, yes. There are situations in which defining an open vs. closed system is important to our analysis of the particular system in question. Yet we would do well to consider how the system in question is defined. The definition of our system is not “arbitrary” in the colloquial sense of that word, meaning willy-nilly or just throwing a dart at the board. It is, however, very much arbitrary in a technical sense of that word, meaning where we choose to draw the boundary.
Agreed.
In the context of the current discussion, the statement “the Earth is an open system” is pointless. And, unfortunately, it is also a semantic game. Watch carefully. I can simply reply: “The Earth-Sun is the system in question. Now explain how life arose on the Earth.” Or I can say that we need to consider the entire Solar System, or the galaxy, or the universe. It is very much a semantic game.
The Earth-Sun system is not closed either; the sun dumps heat (well, thermal radiation) to deep space at a huge rate. That doesn't mean you can't apply the second law to it, or to the Earth alone, though -- it just means you can't apply the "entropy always increases" form, you have to pick a form that actually applies to the system. The simplest form I know that can be applied directly to Earth (or the Earth-Sun system if you prefer) is that the system's entropy cannot decrease faster than it's exported from the system. In the case of Earth, that export rate is at least 3.3e14 W/K, so as far as the second law is concerned the Earth's entropy could be decreasing at up to that rate.
Nobody, not a single person, questions whether the Earth receives energy from the Sun. [...]
Yet many people ignore or deny the thermodynamic implications of this.
Yet this recognition over the course of millennia has provided exactly zero answer to the fundamental questions of how life originated and developed to its current state. Anyone who puts forward the juvenile and pedestrian observation that the Earth receives energy from the Sun and therefore “compensates” for a decrease in entropy at the Earth, as though this were some kind of explanation for the fundamental problems of origins, simply has no idea what they are talking about.
Nobody's doing that. The energy from the sun (and just as important, heat flow from Earth to deep space) explains why the origin and evolution of life is not forbidden by the second law of thermodynamics, but that's not at all the same as explaining how or why it does happen. The second law never actually says what will happen; it only says what won't. Let's look at a less controversial example: cold fusion. At low temperatures and pressures, spontaneous fusion of light elements to heavier elements is allowed (in fact, strongly favored) by the second law, because the free energy of the fusion products is lower than that of the initial atoms. But it doesn't actually happen. All the second law can really say is "it's not forbidden for this particular reason". But it might still be impossible for some other reason, or it might just turn out that there's no way for it to happen. In the case of cold fusion, it doesn't happen because the activation energy is just too high. The most you can really argue here is that evolution is in the same category as cold fusion -- it's thermodynamically allowed, but actually impossible for some other reason. But you cannot say that that "other reason" is the second law. Now, there are some people who are attempting to actually explain life -- not just why it's not forbidden, but why it actually happens -- on thermodynamic bases (Jeremy England is the latest example). But this is a much more difficult task, involves much deeper principles of thermodynamics, and so far I haven't seen any arguments that I really found convincing. As far as I can see, thermodynamics neither forbids nor requires life to originate and/or evolve.
Again, if we want to stomp our feet and loudly protest that the Second Law only applies to thermal considerations, fine. I don’t have a particular problem with that. As I said, I think much of the pushback Granville has experienced is precisely because he has formulated his argument with reference to the Second Law.
I am going to stamp my feet and insist that a law of physics says what it actually says, and not some other things that someone thinks it should say. I am also going to insist that if people claim to be doing physics, that they actually do physics. That does not mean I object to applying the second law to things other than heat. What I do insist is that if you're going to apply it to something other than heat, you actually work out how it applies to that thing, rather than just making stuff up and attributing it to the second law.
[...]But we must not forget that there is a broader principle at work. One that perhaps at some level might be seen to even encompass the Second Law. One that could perhaps be viewed as parallel to the Second Law, but addressing aspects other than thermal. One that is regularly observed and well supported. Should we call that principle the Second Law? Many people have, but I’m certainly not going to fall on my sword over the issue. [...]
That question has a simple answer: it is not the second law, so don't call it that.
I don’t care what we call it. The point is it is real, it is there, we should recognize it. Now the question for you: Do you recognize it?
So far, all the attempts I've seen to define and justify such a broader principle have been wrong and/or useless. Take Sewell's attempt at a broader principle:
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.
Without a definition of what's sufficient to make something "not extremely improbable", this is useless. You and Sewell may think that sunlight and waste heat radiation aren't sufficient to make evolution "not extremely improbable", but I do think they're sufficient; Sewell's principle doesn't do anything at all toward deciding which of us is right.Gordon Davisson_{February 22, 2016
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Oops. Me @ 53:
The actual second law does not forbid entropy decreases in open systems. Such decreases are completely normal and unremarkable.
I meant to say that such decreases are completely normal and unremarkable in open systems.Gordon Davisson_{February 22, 2016
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Gordon Davisson @53:
If you’re talking about the actual second law of thermodynamics, you are absolutely dead flat wrong here. The actual second law does not forbid entropy decreases in open systems. Such decreases are completely normal and unremarkable. The open vs. closed distinction is about as far from “essentially arbitrary” and “a definitional semantic game” as you can get. Understanding boundary conditions and how they change the implications of the second law is incredibly basic to applying it correctly.
Yes, yes. There are situations in which defining an open vs. closed system is important to our analysis of the particular system in question. Yet we would do well to consider how the system in question is defined. The definition of our system is not "arbitrary" in the colloquial sense of that word, meaning willy-nilly or just throwing a dart at the board. It is, however, very much arbitrary in a technical sense of that word, meaning where we choose to draw the boundary. In the context of the current discussion, the statement "the Earth is an open system" is pointless. And, unfortunately, it is also a semantic game. Watch carefully. I can simply reply: "The Earth-Sun is the system in question. Now explain how life arose on the Earth." Or I can say that we need to consider the entire Solar System, or the galaxy, or the universe. It is very much a semantic game. Much more importantly, as I also explained, the whole issue of open-vs-closed in the context of the current discussion is irrelevant. It is a red herring. That the Earth receives energy from the Sun isn't something that is even at issue. As CS3 explained in his last paragraph @52, the so-called "compensation argument" is missing the point entirely. If anyone thinks the issue on the table is whether the Second Law forbids entropy decreases in open systems, then they haven't a clue what the issue on the table is in the context of origins. Nobody, not a single person, questions whether the Earth receives energy from the Sun. Yet this recognition over the course of millennia has provided exactly zero answer to the fundamental questions of how life originated and developed to its current state. Anyone who puts forward the juvenile and pedestrian observation that the Earth receives energy from the Sun and therefore "compensates" for a decrease in entropy at the Earth, as though this were some kind of explanation for the fundamental problems of origins, simply has no idea what they are talking about. Again, if we want to stomp our feet and loudly protest that the Second Law only applies to thermal considerations, fine. I don't have a particular problem with that. As I said, I think much of the pushback Granville has experienced is precisely because he has formulated his argument with reference to the Second Law. At the same time: It is also the case that Granville has been clear that he is not primarily interested in the thermal aspects (although, ironically, the Second Law, even in the classic thermal sense, may end up having much to say about things at the origin of life and biochemical levels, but that is a topic for another time). Rather, Granville is saying that there is a broader principle at work. Many authors and researchers over the years have talked about the Second Law in a much broader sense. Granville can neither take credit nor blame for thinking this up; it is not some ID article of faith and your assertion that ID proponents as a rule take this approach is incorrect and inappropriate. We could go on a campaign to make everyone stop talking about the Second Law unless they are referring to thermal aspects in the most classical sense. I might even be tempted to join your crusade on that point. But we must not forget that there is a broader principle at work. One that perhaps at some level might be seen to even encompass the Second Law. One that could perhaps be viewed as parallel to the Second Law, but addressing aspects other than thermal. One that is regularly observed and well supported. Should we call that principle the Second Law? Many people have, but I'm certainly not going to fall on my sword over the issue. I don't care what we call it. The point is it is real, it is there, we should recognize it. Now the question for you: Do you recognize it?Eric Anderson_{February 22, 2016
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CS3 @ 52:
However, in the coins example, the second statement is not applicable with regards to the heads-tails configuration order, because that is not a form of energy. Just because my coins have become more “ordered” with regards to heads-tails configuration does not mean that some other coins in some other part of the universe have to become even more disordered with regards to heads-tails configuration. It also doesn’t mean that this decrease in heads-tails “entropy” has to be “compensated for” by some increase in some other type of entropy, such as thermal entropy. Only the first statement, that nature is tending towards the most probable state available to it, is applicable.
Actually, the second statement (i.e. the actual second law of thermodynamics) does appear to be relevant to the heads-tails configuration. In statistical mechanics, the entropy of a system is defined as S = k_B * ln(w), where k_B is Boltzmann's constant and w is the number of states the system might be in. There are 2^100 possible "random" arrangements of 100 coins and only 1 all-heads configuration. Each of those configurations corresponds to a huge number of microscopically distinct states (exact arrangements of atoms, vibration states, etc), but if we assume that each heads-tails arrangement corresponds to the same number of microstates (call it w1), then the ratio of total states will be 2^100. The difference in total entropy between the all-heads and random states will then be DeltaS = k_B * ln(w1*2^100) - k_B * ln(w1) = k_B * ln(2^100) = 9.57e-22 Joules/Kelvin. Some of these states (the ones that differ in arrangement of heads vs tails) might have the same arrangement of energy; this does not matter, since the entropy calculation includes all distinct states, not just those that differ in energy. The second law -- the actual second law -- actually does imply that converting the random to all-heads arrangements must be compensated by an equal-or-larger increase of entropy in some other form, such as heat. This is the basis of Landauer's principle. Charles H Bennett puts it this way:
Landauer's principle, often regarded as the foundation of the thermodynamics of information processing, holds that any logically irreversible manipulation of information, such as the erasure of a bit or the merging of two computation paths, must be accompanied by a corresponding entropy increase in non-information bearing degrees of freedom of the information processing apparatus or its environment.
You may not think of the arrangement of coins as bearing information, but the definition of information that's relevant here is Claude Shannon's, and as he put it:
The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible messages.
The arrangement of heads and tails does not have meaning, but that's irrelevant; it's selected (randomly) from a set, and thus has information in the Shannon sense. So the second law -- the real second law -- does apply just fine to the arrangement of coins. And it places restrictions on what's needed to straighten them out. But the restriction has nothing to do with intelligence, and can be fully satisfied by converting a little free energy into heat. You may also think there's a requirement related to intelligence, but if so that's separate from the actual second-law limit.Gordon Davisson_{February 22, 2016
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CS3 @32 and 52: Excellent discussion. Well said.Eric Anderson_{February 22, 2016
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Eric Anderson @ 50:
The practical problem seems to be that Granville has chosen to frame his argument in the context of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Sloppy readers take note: he is not arguing that the Second Law in its most classical, thermal-only, incarnation is the primary issue (though it could be relevant in some cases). Rather, he is arguing that either (a) the Second Law should be applied more broadly, and he has provided over the years some rational reasons for taking that approach, as well as citations from many authors that do so; or (b) something like the Second Law is operational in nature that applies to functionally-organized systems, similar to how the Second Law applies to thermal systems.
I think this is a huge part of the communications problem. When I talk about the second law of thermodynamics, I'm talking about the actual second law of thermodynamics, not something else that's a bit like it. Pretty much everyone on the ID side of this seems to be talking about something they think is a law and is a bit like the second law of thermodynamics. For instance, you wrote:
1. Granville notes that many evolutionists have argued as follows: “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.” Granville is correct that this is a common argument. It is also an incredibly absurd, nonsensical and completely misinformed argument. It is an utter red herring. The determination of whether a system is closed or open is essentially arbitrary and is nothing more than a definitional semantic game in the case of the Earth. It is a terrible argument. No thoughtful supporter of evolution should ever make the argument. It belies a total lack of understanding of the issues relevant to the formation of living organisms.
If you're talking about the actual second law of thermodynamics, you are absolutely dead flat wrong here. The actual second law does not forbid entropy decreases in open systems. Such decreases are completely normal and unremarkable. The open vs. closed distinction is about as far from "essentially arbitrary" and "a definitional semantic game" as you can get. Understanding boundary conditions and how they change the implications of the second law is incredibly basic to applying it correctly. Other important differences include: - The actual second law of thermodynamics is about heat, energy, entropy, and things related to them. The "things related to them" actually means it's related to a great many things (including Shannon information), but not the sorts of things ID is concerned with (like organization). - As I told nirwad, the actual second law doesn't make any special allowances for intelligent agents or their designs. Intelligent agents have been trying design perpetual motion machines for longer than the second law itself has been around, and they've uniformly failed. For example, organisms need to take in free energy from their environment to survive. Free energy is what powers pretty much all of the interesting things that living organisms do -- metabolism, growth, reproduction, and yes evolution -- and without it they will run down and die. Plants mostly get free energy from sunlight, animals get it from stealing other organisms' stores of free energy (by eating them), but all organisms need it in some form or other. - The actual second law is backed up by over a century of testing, research, etc. Your second-law-wannabes, on the other hand, are not accepted outside of the ID community. Put it this way: the second law says that when things are left to themselves, they go to pot. But the sense of "left to themselves" and "go to pot" that the second law are not the senses that are relevant to the ID argument. So, please be clear on when you're talking about the actual second law, or something else that just somewhat resembles it!Gordon Davisson_{February 22, 2016
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CS3: They don’t say, “well, unless sunspot activity is particularly favorable that day They do say that entropy is a measure of molecular randomness or disorder, so it’s clear that playing cards are an analogy.
I believe that one likely source of confusion is that some formulations of the Second Law apply to every type of order, while others apply only to energy entropy. This formulation, from Chemistry by Zumdahl and Zumdahl, applies to every type of order, including the ordering of cards, the result of coin flips, and the type of order that impressed Asimov about the human brain:
Nature always moves toward the most probable state available to it.
However, this statement, from General Chemistry by Whitten, Davis, and Peck, applies only to energy entropy:
The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that the entropy of the universe increases during a spontaneous process.
If you want, you could refer to Statement 1 as “the general principle behind the Second Law”, and Statement 2 as “the Second Law”. The difference is that the second statement depends not only on the first statement, but also on the First Law of Thermodynamics, i.e., that energy is neither created nor destroyed, but can change forms. We know the Second Law predicts against the “free compression” of a gas. However, we also know that a gas can be compressed. Doing so requires work, and, since work is the transfer of energy, one can do the calculations to show that the overall (energy) entropy of the universe has increased during the forced compression of the gas. Thus, both statements of the Second Law are satisfied. In my coins example, with regards to energy, both statements also are satisfied. Any flip of the coins will increase the energy entropy of the universe, regardless of the resulting heads-tails configuration. With regards to the heads-tails configuration order, the first statement also holds. When all states are available to the fair coins, it will tend towards the most probable state, i.e., one with roughly equal numbers of heads and tails. When the magnet is applied, it will still tend towards the most probable state available to it, but the physics dictates that all heads is the only state available to it. However, in the coins example, the second statement is not applicable with regards to the heads-tails configuration order, because that is not a form of energy. Just because my coins have become more “ordered” with regards to heads-tails configuration does not mean that some other coins in some other part of the universe have to become even more disordered with regards to heads-tails configuration. It also doesn’t mean that this decrease in heads-tails "entropy" has to be “compensated for” by some increase in some other type of entropy, such as thermal entropy. Only the first statement, that nature is tending towards the most probable state available to it, is applicable. Therefore, it is non-sense to try to “compensate” for iPhones with thermal entropy. Doing so is trying to apply a formulation of the Second Law that is relevant only for energy to a type of order that is not a form of energy. If the physics restrict the states available to the atoms such that iPhones are not improbable, then we may well get iPhones. If not, then we are unlikely to get them, regardless of how much thermal entropy is entering or leaving the Earth.
Welcome CS3.
Thanks!CS3_{February 22, 2016
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MatSpirit, see my #2 @50. No-one, certainly not Granville, is claiming that living organisms violate the Second Law. Nothing, as far as we know violates the Second Law. The issue needs to be framed more carefully than that. ----- P.S. The question is not whether energy is coming in or going out, whether the system is open or closed, and so on. Those aspects have almost nothing to do with it.Eric Anderson_{February 22, 2016
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Couple of things: 1. Granville notes that many evolutionists have argued as follows: "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." Granville is correct that this is a common argument. It is also an incredibly absurd, nonsensical and completely misinformed argument. It is an utter red herring. The determination of whether a system is closed or open is essentially arbitrary and is nothing more than a definitional semantic game in the case of the Earth. It is a terrible argument. No thoughtful supporter of evolution should ever make the argument. It belies a total lack of understanding of the issues relevant to the formation of living organisms. 2. Some people have claimed, with a snort and a tsk-tsk in their voice, that Granville has claimed that some things, like living systems, violate the Second Law. That is an extremely unfair and twisted reading of what he is saying. It is another red herring and such a debating tactic should not be countenanced by anyone of intellectual integrity. 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. This is a very simple point. It is observed by every one of us on a daily basis. There are billions upon billions of real-world examples. It is so obvious that it scarcely bares mentioning. Except for the unfortunate fact that 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". 3. It is true that Granville is pointing to a very clear "law" about how things work in nature. His specific examples, as well as his overall broader point seem well made. It is unfortunate that the broader point is lost on some. The practical problem seems to be that Granville has chosen to frame his argument in the context of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Sloppy readers take note: he is not arguing that the Second Law in its most classical, thermal-only, incarnation is the primary issue (though it could be relevant in some cases). Rather, he is arguing that either (a) the Second Law should be applied more broadly, and he has provided over the years some rational reasons for taking that approach, as well as citations from many authors that do so; or (b) something like the Second Law is operational in nature that applies to functionally-organized systems, similar to how the Second Law applies to thermal systems. We can dispute whether Granville has made his case as to (a), and lots of ink has been spilled on that front. However, (b) seems to be a relatively well-supported position, even if it lacks an agreed-upon definitional statement or lacks broad support among biologists. I have not personally taken enough time with Granville's writings to have my mind made up as to whether (a) is a reasonable approach. My sense is that part of the reason his writings have been something of a lightning rod has to do with his insistence that (a) is a solid position. I think he has softened this a bit over the years (evident even in the OP), toward something closer to (b). We can have lengthy debates about (a). These debates might even be interesting and in some cases even important. And one might reasonably take the position that Granville has bitten off more than he can chew with (a) or that he won't win that particular point. Be that as it may, I am personally glad that he has raised the issues. Whether in a formulation approximating (b) or otherwise, he has continued to raise an important larger point. One that has not been adequately addressed by proponents of traditional evolutionary theory. Not even close.Eric Anderson_{February 22, 2016
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While this may not have much to do with this discussion, my wife and I were watching a video of an "exploration" of a shopping mall abandoned in 2013. It was stunning to see how much deterioration had occurred in this facility in just 3 years. To me, it serves as further conformation of the futility of thought that would permit one to believe in the "power" of evolution to take lifeless chemicals and turn them into a human being.OldArmy94_{February 22, 2016
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Mat Spirit:
Granville, do you also agree that life doesn’t violate the Second Law because it powers its actions by the food it eats?
It is the origin of life via purely stochastic processes that violates the second law.Virgil Cain_{February 22, 2016
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Zachriel:
The mechanism was the result of a long period of evolution,
So you say yet cannot support.
SETI hasn’t claimed to have found “intelligent agency” from outer space. Forensic pathology and archaeology point to specific intelligent agents, not a nebulous and ill-defined agent.
Actually merely saying a human did it is a nebulous claim. But I digress. All three, SETI, forensics and archaeology look for signs of intentional agency involvement. Artifacts are not necessarily just from humans. It is a good thing that Zachriel isn't an investigator.Virgil Cain_{February 22, 2016
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