Evolution's Thermodynamic Failure

The American Spectator ^ | December 28, 2005 | Granville Sewell

[johnnyb_61820]

... the idea that the four fundamental forces of physics alone could rearrange the fundamental particles of nature into spaceships, nuclear power plants, and computers, connected to laser printers, CRTs, keyboards and the Internet, appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics in a spectacular way.

Anyone who has made such an argument is familiar with the standard reply: the Earth is an open system, it receives energy from the sun, and order can increase in an open system, as long as it is "compensated" somehow by a comparable or greater decrease outside the system. S. Angrist and L. Hepler, for example, in "Order and Chaos", write, "In a certain sense the development of civilization may appear contradictory to the second law.... Even though society can effect local reductions in entropy, the general and universal trend of entropy increase easily swamps the anomalous but important efforts of civilized man. Each localized, man-made or machine-made entropy decrease is accompanied by a greater increase in entropy of the surroundings, thereby maintaining the required increase in total entropy."

According to this reasoning, then, the second law does not prevent scrap metal from reorganizing itself into a computer in one room, as long as two computers in the next room are rusting into scrap metal -- and the door is open. In Appendix D of my new book, The Numerical Solution of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations, second edition, I take a closer look at the equation for entropy change, which applies not only to thermal entropy but also to the entropy associated with anything else that diffuses, and show that it does not simply say that order cannot increase in a closed system. It also says that in an open system, order cannot increase faster than it is imported through the boundary. ...

[grey_whiskers]

Other common and simple inorganic molecules will work pretty well under mildly different parameters (ammonia, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, etc), and under more extreme environments you can have complex solvent chemistries based on liquid metals -- some very exotic molecular materials can be precipitated from liquid metal solutions.

Sure you can. But just having an alternative solvent will not produce, nor will it necessarily support life.

What is the hydrogen bonding in ammonia compared to water? How would that affect the double helix of DNA, or the primary, secondary, tertiary structure of proteins? What of cell walls? What of the reaction rates for Krebs cycle, etc.?

Insert obligatory "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it" here.

Cheers!

[tortoise]

Sure you can. But just having an alternative solvent will not produce, nor will it necessarily support life. What is the hydrogen bonding in ammonia compared to water? How would that affect the double helix of DNA, or the primary, secondary, tertiary structure of proteins? What of cell walls? What of the reaction rates for Krebs cycle, etc.?

This is making a rather extraordinary number of assumptions about what constitutes "life". DNA, and even organic chemistry, are very much irrelevant when discussing such things in the abstract. The argument is not about life on this planet as it actually is, as it theoretically could be, or even necessarily as it can be in this universe.

Insert obligatory "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it" here.

Precisely.

[grey_whiskers]

Behavior can be learned and acquired, but genetic traits have to be in the germ line to be passed on.

Sigh. You mean acquired characteristics like genetic mutations from radiation or various toxins (think mustard gas, it can affect the DNA, I've read) cannot be passed on?

Darn it.

[grey_whiskers]

Behavior can be learned and acquired, but genetic traits have to be in the germ line to be passed on.

Hi furball, thanks for your earlier freepmail about the hemoglobin. This weekend I may actually have time to READ it...!

With your permission, I'd like to Freepmail you again about that and 1 or 2 other points.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Except that I'm anything but a layperson. I'm not sure how you've come to that conclusion from my posts.

I was talking in a general way, with no *specific* poster in mind.

I apologize that you thought I was attempting to slight you, even in a backhanded fashion.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

This is making a rather extraordinary number of assumptions about what constitutes "life". DNA, and even organic chemistry, are very much irrelevant when discussing such things in the abstract. The argument is not about life on this planet as it actually is, as it theoretically could be, or even necessarily as it can be in this universe.

Sigh. Abstractions are one thing, and empirical evidence another.

As Feynman said, "It doesn't matter how good your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's WRONG."

If you want to say "The argument is not about life on this planet as it actually is, as it theoretically could be, or even necessarily as it can be in this universe" then there is a little too much room for discussion.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

They do not assert correctness, which no reasonable person can assert (c.f. the Incompleteness Theorem), they merely assert a hypothesis with the highest probability of correctness which is outside the purview of the limitations of axiomatic systems

Are you using specialized terms for "correctness"? If you are, please provide a reference.

Otherwise, (and it may be the late hour), it looks like you are saying you are constructing contrary arguments which need not be correct.

"So if they don't claim to be correct why bother with them?" ;-)

References?

Cheers!

[RunningWolf]

A man has got to know the limits of his models.

Wish I had said that tortoise.

It's astute pertinent profound true and real.

Wolf

[Liberty Wins]

The classic puzzle about whether an infinite number of monkeys typing for an infinite period of time would type a Shakespeare play has been answered in the affirmative. Researchers at the Raleigh Institute near Manchester, England, announced that the monkeys in their lab produced a perfect version of "Romeo and Juliet."

"We've been holding our breath for weeks," says Alan Ripshaw, the researcher in charge of the Monkey Project. "We knew the monkeys were getting close, but we've had a number of false starts.

"One time they got to the fourth act of Macbeth, before making a mistake. The monkeys also recently typed out a Norman Mailer novel, but that doesn't count."

Ripshaw says he began the project because he was intrigued with the controversy over whether Shakespeare really was the author of the plays bearing his name.

"Some scholars think Bacon was the real author," Ripshaw says. "That's when I had the thought, 'What if they were written by monkeys?'

Ripshaw assembled 5,000 monkeys and an equal number of typewriters. The monkeys were rewarded with bananas every time they filled up a page with letters.

"Ninety-nine percent of it was nonsense," Ripshaw says. "But one of the monkeys put up a blog on the Internet, and it has a big following."

But a researcher checking says the monkeys made a mistake. "In one reference, they typed 'Romeo,' 'Romero.'"

Says Ripshaw, "I guess it's back to the drawing board."

-- JAKE ANDERSON of the Weekly World News

[bobdsmith]

Your faith in evolution has no relationship to the the size of a hard drive in a computer. Computers are and will be "created". Your faith in the future of evolution has all the characteristics of a religion. At least yu are honest enough to acknowledge that a belief in evolution requires a degree of faith.

My prediction was that technology will allow evolutionary mechanisms of natural selection an mutation to be directly tested over millions of generations on organisms alive today. This is exactly like a prediction that 1tb harddrives will eventually be widespread. It's inevitable in a culture of increasing technology and knowledge about genetics.

[bobdsmith]

"ERVs are not a design feature though."

Source, please? Have you spoken to the designers?

There is no design benefit of ERVs, and the mechanism for their creation by retroviruses is known.

Your argument could be used in any situation to cast doubt on a claim of lack of design feature. For example if I claimed that the specific pattern of craters on the moon was not a design feature you could say "source, please? Have you spoken to the designers?". But would the obvious lack of a soruce, or lack of transcripts with the designers somehow lend any credance to the idea that the pattern of craters on the moon are design features? No of course not. The claim for a lack of design feature is based on the lack of any known design benefit coupled with the known natural creation of those features. The burden is on those who claim something is a design feature to show how it can be such a thing. I don't see how ERVs, or moon craters provide any design benefit.

[Elsie]

We now know that many mutations in bacteria are caused because the bacteria decided it needed the mutation.

Oh??

Neat trick!

[Elsie]

Uh, yeah. They're all one species. One subspecies even.

Then quit using this to back up some claim of Evolution!

[Elsie]

(The last one...)

[Elsie]

 I will wager they go with the same type of literalist scriptural interpretation, as our more rigid Bible followers. 

 

 

 

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The Koran

The Clear Evidence

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.

[98.1] Those who disbelieved from among the followers of the Book and the polytheists could not have separated (from the faithful) until there had come to them the clear evidence:
[98.2] An apostle from Allah, reciting pure pages,
[98.3] Wherein are all the right ordinances.
[98.4] And those who were given the Book did not become divided except after clear evidence had come to them.
[98.5] And they were not enjoined anything except that they should serve Allah, being sincere to Him in obedience, upright, and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, and that is the right religion.
[98.6] Surely those who disbelieve from among the followers of the Book and the polytheists shall be in the fire of hell, abiding therein; they are the worst of men.
[98.7] (As for) those who believe and do good, surely they are the -best of men.
[98.8] Their reward with their Lord is gardens of perpetuity beneath which rivers flow, abiding therein for ever; Allah is well pleased with them and they are well pleased with Him; that is for him who fears his Lord.

 

 

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It appears that if you don't follow the Jewish or Christian Book, them you may be in line to be a Muslim!  (According to THEIR book!)  [and the evidence]

[Elsie]

When was the design of eyes fixed so that they could be inherited by all these species across so many unrelated lines?

After all, just a SMALL change means that cousins can't BREED!

[Elsie]

...why massivly waste resources creating ones that aren't?

P>Don't you know that HE owns it all and can make more at a Word?

[Elsie]

Try saying 'accumulated differences'.

Dang!

I tried it four times and each time it came out as...

Abracadabra!

[Elsie]

I don't see why a leap of faith is necessary; if enough minor changes accumulate on two different lines from the same ancestor, it seems obvious to me that eventually you'll get to a point where interbreeding is impossible.

Yup.... conjecture all right!

[Aquinasfan]

I just read an article on the lack of science progress in the muslim world. Teaching Darwinian evolution is against the law, in Saudi Arabia.

Causation and correlation are different things.