Evolution or Devolution?

Hi Percy,
I was wondering if you would clarify how Kerner is using an incorrect deifintion of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
You refer to an implied distinction between the operation of the second law at the atomic and macroscopic levels as if to suggest that the effects of the law are more apparent at the microscopic level and perhaps are not applicable on the larger scale.
If I have understood you correctly then your own definition of the second law would seem to be very different from that generally accepted among physicists.
As Boltzmann himself pointed out in the 1870s many processes at the microscopic level, such as collisions of individual gas molecules in thermodynamic processes, are indeed reversible and are therefore of themselves in isolation not associated with an increase in entropy. However when the behaviour of a gas is observed macroscopically, for example if a jar of coloured gas is opened into a room such that the contents of the jar are seen to spread out and fill the available space then the second law can be more clearly seen at work.
One of the great scientists of the 20th century Professor Sir Hermann Bondi (who in his time was often said to be the only man apart from Einstein who fully understood relativity!) was interested in how a combination of myriad reversible processes combine to form irreversible processes without necessarily contradicting the quantum principle of CPT symmetry (charge,parity,time).
Bondi showed that the entropic process must be understood in the sense that in the universe as a whole one definite time direction in singled out and that is the one in which the universe expands. According to his postulation it would seem that the thermodynamic distinction of a positive (or 'forward') direction of time with increasing entropy on the macroscopic thermodynamic level arising out of 'entropy neutral' events at the microscopic and quantum level, results from the expansion of the universe and indeed this Hubble expansion of the universe displays effects right down to the level of everyday physics. Specifically, when two bodies at different temperatures are brought into thermal contact, the temperature equalisation that results is an irreversible process corresponding to an asymmetry of the positive and negative directions in time that depends on the expansion of the universe.
I would like to thank you for your contribution to this fascinating debate and await your reply with much interest.
Kind regards,
Andrew

I am unfortunately still at a loss to understand why you think Kerner is using an incorrect definition of the second law of thermodynamics. You seem to imply that because he doesn't use either of what you consider to be the two simplest deifintions then his definition must be wrong.
Perhaps I can use an analogy to express my concerns about your argument:
One could say that the simplest way of explaining why an apple falls from a tree is because there is an attractive force between any two massive bodies that is proportional to their masses although another concise way of describing this is to say that (gravitational) potential energy possessed by the apple due to its height can be released through the apple falling (as it acquires kinetic energy). Having thus made two correct statements about gravity (just as you made two correct statements about the second law) it would seem to me to be rather specious to assume that this renders a third definition (perhaps in this case Einstein's assertion that the apple falls because it follows the curvature of space-time) automatically wrong just because it differs from one's own favourite explanations. Kerner has defined the second law of thermodynamics as the tendency for ordered states to give rise to progressively more disordered states with time. This is in full agreement with Boltzmann's description and indeed the simplest definition of entropy i have seen is expressed mathematically as S=-k.lnW where S is entropy, k is Boltzmann's constant and lnW is the natural logarithm of W, where W is a measure of the number of microstates available to a system and therefore a measure of disorder. You, yourself correctly state in your message that entropy is commonly defined as a measure of disorder within a system so it seems that you are accepting Kerner's definition while at the same time pronouncing it wrong.
You say that Kerner "misunderstands evolution as claiming that 'all things are going from good to better'" and you then proceed to state quite correctly that "evolution makes no such claim".
Of course evolution makes no such claim and if you look again at the passage you quoted from Kerner I'm sure you will agree that he does not say that evolution makes this or any other claim. How could it? How can a process make a claim? It is people who make claims. When the first settlers (many centuries before Columbus) discovered the Americas and realised that the Earth must be round they didn't say that geometry had until then claimed that the world was flat. It wasn't geometry that claimed that the world was flat. It was people who had claimed that it was flat perhaps because of their limited experience and understanding and not because of any flaw in Euclid's theorems for example.
Of the fact that natural selection of heritable characteristics exists it would seem that there is no doubt and having read Kerner's book it doesn't seem to me that he is questioning this. Indeed natural selection may well be one of the strongest driving forces of devolution. Insects and bacteria are in many situations better adapted to survival than humans. Cockroaches for example can survive levels of radiation that would be fatal to humans following man-made nuclear explosions.
- Andrew

Houses do not tidy themselves. Given enough time they do become messy as their constituent parts rot,crumble,rust,collapse and fall down. Yes it is through energy that the status quo is changed and some of the energy might come from outside and some from inside. Everything breaks down from order into chaos given time unless subjected to an ordering influence (such as you tidying your house). Our bodies, the houses we live in, everything is subject to the second law of thermodynamics. Living things are not exempt. We are all subject to ageing and death. From the moment we are conceived we begin to die despite the input of energy.
I'm sorry you feel the need to make personal attacks and accusations. In my discussion of the 'direction' of evolution I was attempting to make a distinction between the actual theory of mutations and natural selection and the commonly held perception of evolution held by many people who believe that evolution has produced sentient human beings as a gradual fortuitous development from sea invertebrates.
It was the direction of evolution that was under discussion not the fact that species change.
In the 1980s when I was a medical student, the eminent evolutionary biologist Prof John Maynard Smith came to my university town to give a public lecture entitled "did Darwin get it wrong?" The subject of his lecture was not of course whether evolution occurs or not and was not even about the direction of evolution. His lecture was about whether evolution happens entirely by a process of gradual change or whether it occurs partly by a process of "punctuated equilibrium"
Following the lecture there was an opportunity for the audience to comment. I actually made a point in three parts drawing from a previous work by Kerner which I had read:
My first point was about thermodynamics and about the postulation that in a universe where everything moves from order into greater states of chaos that it would seem unlikely that any given number of apes would eventually give rise spontaneously through gradual mutations to a Shakespeare or a Gandhi.
My second point was about the human brain. I had recently read that contrary to commonly held belief it had been found through studying palaeontolgical remains that neandarthal and cro-magnon men and women actually had larger cranial capacities (taking into account body size) than modern humans. Also there had been some published work by Professor John Lorber, professor of paediatrics at Sheffield, England which looked at hydrocephalics who had merely a sliver of their cerebral cortex intact and yet had no demonstrable functional deficit. Some had even been high achievers academically. One of the students at Sheffield who had an IQ of 126 and was awarded a first class honours degree in mathematics for example was a hydrocephalic who had virtually no detectable cerebral cortex on a CT brain scan. I suggested that if as Lorber's research suggested we can get by with no apparent functional deficit with only 10% of our cortex intact then perhaps since evolution is not expected to make something in anticipation of possible future benefit but only adapts to selective pressures operating in the present that perhaps our ancestors used more of their brains or perhaps used their brains more than we do and the 90% we no longer need might just be a vestigial remnant of that. My third point was about natural selection itself. I mentioned that what are commonly considered to be "lower" forms of life may often be better adapted to survive than we are. For example human "progress" leads inexorably to the creation of more powerful weapons that can threaten our continued existence as a species. Man's inhumanity to man is magnified by technology and weapons of mass destruction although cockroaches could survive a nuclear holocaust. So in conclusion, I suggested that Darwin perhaps didn't get it wrong to suggest that mutations and selective pressure can result in species adaptation and speciation itself but that perhaps the direction of evolution might be more likely to make a monkey out of man than a man out of a monkey.
The professor was not familiar with Lorber's work and questioned my sources but it so happened that unbeknownst to me one of the original members of Lorber's team was in the audience that evening and he verified that the research had suggested that most of our cerebral cortex we could do without with no noticeable deificit. I had suggested that we only need 5% of our cortex but he corrected me and said that it was more like 10%
I will never forget Professor Maynard-Smith's reply to all this. He said that he couldn't fault my logic but he didn't agree with me!

Thank you for your interesting comment.
Of course I do agree that snowflakes do form but where do they form? I’m no meteorologist but it is my understanding that for snowflakes to form requires a confluence of several conditions being met.
Snowflakes form on a planet where there is liquid water and an atmosphere that can facilitate evaporation, condensation and precipitation. Such a planet would be a rare oasis of temperate moderation in this universe which would seem to largely consist of large expanses of almost empty space at temperatures below minus 250 degrees centigrade punctuated by stars at temperatures of millions of degrees. Such a planet would be where we might be more likely to find that most rare and precious treasure we call life.
Snowflakes do fall and there are people on this planet who can marvel at their beauty and symmetry. There are children who can make snowmen, have snowball fights and go sledging.
Snowflakes might form on planets such as ours which cling on to remnants of prior order but for how long?
As I’m sure you are aware, eventually when our sun begins to run out of fuel it will expand and all our snowflakes will melt. Perhaps long before that our species will have become extinct or changed beyond recognition.
Perhaps there are planets out in space which once bore beings like us. -As time passes and new planets are discovered it is seemingly becoming increasingly likely that our planet is not unique in the history of the universe in at one time harbouring intelligent life. Perhaps they too once had snowflakes and young ones who could play and gaze into their night sky in innocent wonder and question whether there might be other similar planets out there (or out here). I know I am being hypothetical and speculative but I hope that if you bear with me it might become clear that I might not be indulging in a pointless flight of fantasy but am actually addressing your point about low entropy states.
Could it be that there were once other planets like ours where there was once intelligent life. Perhaps like us they would have had intelligence but not wisdom. Perhaps like us they would have had consciousness but without enough conscience or compassion to stop them destroying each other and their environment. Perhaps their planet is now lifeless and resembles planets like venus in our own solar system. What might have become of them?
Through intelligence without wisdom foresight or compassion we have succeeded in developing technology to puncture the ozone layer, many would argue that we have already begun to witness disastrous effects of a man made greenhouse effect. Certainly 60 years ago the fruits of our deadly, ignorant, narrow intelligence fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It would seem when you look at man’s inhumanity to man and consider how billions endure starvation, disease and war as a result of it that perhaps we will become extinct one day or selective pressures might make us evolve or devolve into a species that isn’t clever enough to find a way to destroy itself . Perhaps we might one day resemble even more closely the apes that we now keep in zoos.
Perhaps it is not inevitable. Perhaps we are more than a random molecular soup and also more than just puppets of a directive, creator god following his whims to be created for his own gratification and need to be praised. Perhaps we have free will?
If there were such a thing as free will then there might be something other than neuro-chemical reactions and thermodynamics to determine our behaviour. Free will is the hallmark of true sentience. Consciousness of itself has no mass, no extent in space and no boundaries in time. Schrodinger, the great quantum theorist in his book entitled what is life? suggested that perhaps the reason that we can perceive that we can exercise free will is because we actually do. Consciousness collapses the wave equation.
Perhaps if we do have free will then it might be that some of the wisest people who have lived might be people like Siddhartha Gautama (usually known as Buddha), Yeshua of Nazareth and Mahatma Gandhi who taught us about non-violence and compassion for our fellow human beings. Perhaps we might be able to learn the lessons they taught and, if Schrodinger was right perhaps there is a way of existence or life that is free from moths, rust, thieves who break in and steal and all the other artefacts of a degenerative universe. Perhaps there is some clue to this in the image on the Turin shroud which recent evidence suggests may be far older than the original carbon dating suggested.
- Andrew

"The adverse effect of most injuries to the cerebral cortex is sufficient to falsify....[Prof. Lorber's findings]"
I am very surprised that you would say that. It seems to me out of keeping with the spirit of dispassionate scientific enquiry that I would have expected from you. Surely one verified exception should be enough to make us challenge or question what we had formerly believed to be received wisdom. When an atomic clock was taken on board a plane and returned to land showing a different time to the clocks on the ground no-one said that the time dilation effect was disproved by all the other clocks saying the same time.
Isn't it after all surely the exception that proves the rule?
- Andrew

With all due respect what gave you the impression that i thought that tidying one's house disobeys the second law? I certainly never claimed that. Of course the process of tidying one's house produces more disorder than order in the universe as a whole(obvious examples being disordered heat energy released by vacuum cleaners and also the equalisation of pressures as the vacuum is filled). Those who know me and know what an untidy person i can be will perhaps see the irony of my statement.
Nevertheless, i maintain that tidying one's house could be an ordering influence on the house without directly disobeying the second law.
I have never claimed that evolution violates the second law or denied that adaptive evolution takes place. I am merely questioning the direction of that evolution and examining what i believe to be clues which were elaborated on in more detail by Kerner in his book that perhaps the direction of that adaptive change might be such that our species might evolve into one with less functional brain capacity and that perhaps this has already happened to some extent.

Below is a link to an abstract of one of Lorber's papers I hope this is useful
Pub Med Article
Dev Med Child Neurol. 1992 Jul;34(7):623-32
The professor also published some of his findings in an article in the (UK) Nursing Mirror (Nurs Mirror. 1981 Apr 30;152(18):29-30)
Roger Lewin discussed his work and presented some of his findings in the journal "Science" (Science. 1980 Dec 12;210(4475):1232-4)
In the UK there was also a television documentary about his work made by Yorkshire television entitled "is your brain really necessary?"This message has been edited by Admin, 02-28-2005 09:42 AM

In explaining that the second law suggests that everything tends towards states of greater disorder unless subjected to an ordering influence. I am not saying or implying that such an ordering influence refutes, invalidates or breaks the second law. If I can make a distinction between what I have said and what you seem to be reading in what I have said with an analogy then perhaps I could do it as follows:
In one of my earlier posts I was referring to different ways in which one could explain how gravity causes an apple to fall from a tree. In fact, one could see that generally an apple suspended above the ground will always fall unless it is subject to force countervailing the gravitational force of the Earth. The fact that the branch and the twig holding it to the tree are still intact preventing it temporarily from falling would not be seen as a refutation of the law of gravitation. In the same way the temporary presence of an ordering influence doesn't of itself contradict the second law of thermodynamics. I apologise if my original explanation was ambiguous or unclear and I hope this clarifies my position.
For the record I do agree with Kerner that a spontaneous "positive" direction for evolution of man from small brained creatures is absurd.

I have been very willing throughout to justify my claims by reference to the scientific literature (Boltzmann, Prof Sir Hermann Bondi and Schrodinger to name but a few) and if you ever read Kerner's work I am sure you will find that he does too.
I frankly find your patronising didactic stance rather amusing.In particular the implication that my definitions (of 2LOT) may not be accepted even if they are axiomatically consistent with accepted laws of physics and are logically self consistent unless I recant on Kerner's alleged heresy seems very bizarre.
As for the accusation of multiple registrations all I can say is you seem to have a very active imagination. I have only registered once.