Posted on 12/28/2005 3:01:53 PM PST by 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. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
In your soduku example, you were exactly as constrained as I indicated. Now, I am very ignorant of how Soduku works, but let me point out the following:
1) All of your changes followed the rules of Soduku. Did you also consider changes that violated the rules of Soduku? This greatly limits the set of possible changes.
2) None of the fitness jumps required a search of more than 500 bits.
Searches do work for limited search steps. They do not work when a large step is required to maintain fitness. An organism cannot survive the few million years it would take to find the appropriate adaptation.
"I disagree. They seem contrained against a random mechanism being a key player in evolution. I suspect this is because they are not content with a designer that sets the first lifeform up and lets the ball roll from there."
Wells would not be content, but Dembski certainly would, as would Denton.
"There is a reason to "hang on" to the mechanisms of RM and NS. First they are known to occur, second the algorithm is known to design."
Are the mutations really random? We now know that many mutations in bacteria are caused because the bacteria decided it needed the mutation. It even has special DNA polymerases to cause specific kinds of mutations, whose use is regulated.
Please point me to a research article that shows (a) a beneficial mutation, and (b) shows that the mutation is in fact random, for any common-sense or mathematical definition of the word.
Only when it becomes dogmatic.
Evolutionists are dogmatic.
Uh, yeah. They're all one species. One subspecies even.
GENUS SPECIES SUBSPECIES ----- ------- ---------- Mus musculus domesticus
Although there were found to be varying degrees of reduced fertility among the various races. The article linked in my original message to (refusesto)connectthedots has all the details.
b_sharp seemed to find it on his own. Perhaps you can too. It's not my responsibility to read stuff for you, read it to you, or bring you milk and cookies.
Evolution, by the way, does not deal with the origin of life.
Ah, one of my favourite evo red herrings, but in the name of changing the topic, let's go at this one.
First, Sewell's critique does not deal only with the origin of life. That said...
Of course in the narrowest sense ToE, by virtue of the mechanism of natural selection, presupposes life, and only operates on life, but evolution in the more generally accepted, though arguably more slack, understanding of the term, certainly assumes a gradualist and Naturalist theory of abiogenesis.
So it's not clear to me what you think this point gains you. Are you really going to be happy with a ToE which presumes a divinely created original life form to get things started?
Also, tell me exactly what is the most primitive form of life necessary for ToE to operate? Are we talking protein? amino acids? Nucleotide? Enzyme? RNA? DNA? Complete unicellular organism? At what point do we hand things off to Darwin?
It simply means that two species have strong and mutual environmental impacts on each other, such that if one species evolves some new or improved capability, the other will be under an immediate selective pressure to respond in some way, and so their evolution is linked by a feedback loop via natural selection.
Did you find a peer reviewed article or textbook that concludes thermodynamics is troublesome for evolution?
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.
First, Sewell's critique does not deal only with the origin of life. That said...
Of course in the narrowest sense ToE, by virtue of the mechanism of natural selection, presupposes life, and only operates on life, but evolution in the more generally accepted, though arguably more slack, understanding of the term, certainly assumes a gradualist and Naturalist theory of abiogenesis.
Abiogenesis is origin of life. Just because some asshole says a slack understanding of the term evolution assumes naturalistic abiogenesis does not mean that thermodynamics is troublesome for evolution once life exists.
No one claims to know how life started. There is speculation and there is research, but no detailed hypothesis.
At this point it appears you're not even trying to understand what I'm saying. Thanks for the memories.
We know that evolution operates on single celled organisms, and we know it operates on viruses. But at seast 6/7ths of the history of life is unavailable for examination.
Yesterday I asked the above question. Several people fell into a rhetorical trap, making the unwarranted assumption that I was implying Granville Sewell had published his article in this journal. Then I got called away from the computer.
Now I'm back and here's the rest of it: Edward Cussler and Brian Gettelfinger of the University of Minnesota published an article in this journal (Vol. 50, no. 11, October 2004, pp. 2646-7) entitled "Will Humans Swim Faster or Slower in Syrup?"
This was apparently an experiment to settle the longstanding scientific question of whether people can swim faster in syrup or in water. LOL Now whether they were serious or silly (some scientists do have a sense of humor), most people would consider this a goofy experiment. So goofy it received the Ig Nobel Award from the people over at the Annals of Improbable Research.
My point is a simple one: just because something is published in a "peer-reviewed scientific journal" doesn't mean it's carved in stone, and it certainly doesn't validate the information therein, any more than going to a movie makes you a movie critic.
By the way, I find it interesting that so many people jumped to conclusions without any supporting evidence and assumed I was talking about Mr. Sewell's article. Is that typical of the evolutionary approach?
"I don't think you understand what "co-evolution" means. It has nothing whatever to do with the inheritance of acquired characteristics, or even (directly) with inheritance at all."
You're missing the point. If co-evolution is happening within a hundred years, it must be Lamarckian, because otherwise the "random mutation" part would not have time to catch up.
"It simply means that two species have strong and mutual environmental impacts on each other, such that if one species evolves some new or improved capability, the other will be under an immediate selective pressure to respond in some way, and so their evolution is linked by a feedback loop via natural selection."
Exactly, but if this process can happen within a measley few generations, then the adaption process is not random in order for evolution to occur at that pace.
I think you responded to the wrong post.
I thought this was a really good post. Not that I agree, etc., but a very meaningful contribution.
Lots o questions. Just start w/ a couple:
1) How did he "sidestep the biochemical utilization of energy to produce work"? It seems to me that he was emphasizing that in the SLoT equations you have to balance "statistical entropy" or whatever we're calling it and "thermal entropy" independently (amongst other things). Are you just saying that you don't think his thermal equations were complete because his system was not complete?
2) You said "his understanding of evolution and biology is quite poor, as evidenced by his use of a slightly modified tornada in a junkyard analogy". Why does this make his understanding of evo/bio poor? Because the process is presumed to be far more gradualistic than that? As I remember it, thermodynamics doesn't care too much about the path you take from energy state A to energy state B; if it's uphill, then even if you divide the path into infinitessimally small uphill gradations, you still have to travel that same thermal/entropic ladder.
(Caveat: I did learn all this stuff quite extensively once upon a time, but I really need to brush up on the details, so I may be talking cr@p here.)
I am skeptical about that (no evolution in Muslim countries.) I've seen evolution promoted in Muslim countries. Can you please post a link? Thanks.
Why do you insist that "God musta done it" and "we know scientifically how it happened" are mutually exclusive? They aren't. The big point re evolution is that natural selection does not explain all the "information" and diversity out there. The evidence for it is weak.
ToE is independent of the origin of life. As long as there is inheritable variation, mutation, and differential survival, there will be evolution. How could there not be?
Yes, this thread is looking very suspicious. Why are all these people home from work? Called in sick two days in a row? Do they even have jobs? Surely they can't all be housewives or househusbands . . .
So even if there was no origin of life, ToE would still operate????
As long as there is inheritable variation, mutation, and differential survival, there will be evolution.
I think you meant to say that ToE assumes the origin of life, otherwise I'm not sure where you get your inheritable variation, mutation, etc.
How could there not be?
So what are you saying? You don't need any evidence of evolution now? It's just obvious? You can just assume there's no genetic boundaries to this inheritable variation?
Differential survival can just as easily (more so?) ensure stasis. Does your little creation cocktail make stasis so obvious too? If so, which is more likely? Don't you need to factor in the environment? What if that's constant?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.