Thermodynamics and The Universe

EODoc has been communicating with me by email, and being rather more reasonable.

Looks like he's given up. No answer to my last reply, and it's been more than a week.

Many people on both sides assume that the 2LoT forbids any decrease in entropy. That is wrong, it permits local decreases, provided that they are balanced by increases elsewhere. Thus it is necessary to take into account the energy coming into the system (which represents an increase in entropy at it's source).Berra's argument is, in fact, not bad. The mere fact that energy is coming in - and the fact that we know that life can and does use this energy - is sufficient to rebut any naive claim that evoltuion violates the 2LoT. And I woudl add that any claim that Berra needs to provide more detail needs to consider the context in which the remark was made and the audience it was addressed to. Would, for instance a detailed description of metabolism be worth providing under those circumstances ? If not, then why insist that he should be providing one ?If you want something really bad you have to go to the creationist side. The creationists often equivocate between the 2LoT and the supposed need for mechanisms while being really vague about what the supposed violation of the 2LoT is in the first place.In fact I've never seen a creationist seriously try to show that evolution does violate the 2LoT or even point out what part of the actual processes of evolution is supposed to include this never-demonstrated ot explained violation.

IIRC information theory does not include an equivalent of the 2LoT. Unless I am wrong any discussion of the 2LoT must refer to thermodynamic entropy (or at least entropy in the sense of physics and not information theory).

I'll agree that it is very difficult to sensibly apply thermodynamics to evolution (it's one of the reasons why creationists don't really try).But look at it this way. Evolution is an outcome of what life does. All the actual processes involved obey the 2LoT. It's difficult - perhaps impossible - to apply the 2LoT directly because evolution is at a higher level of description and we don't usually consider a lot of the details that would be relevant to a thermodynamic analysis. But - so far as we can tell - if we went to the bother of adding things up we'd find that everything involved obeyed the 2LoT.In that sense evolution obeys the 2LoT. (So far as anybody knows.)

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I was specifically referring to two kinds of entropy, not two different second laws of thermodynamics.

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The quote from my post does not mention two laws of thermodynamics either. It refers to a common misunderstanding which affects both sides. Creationists often fail to recognice that local entropy can decrease, evolutionists often say that an open system is not subject to 2LoT. Both sides are wrong.

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I don't believe that 2LoT refutes evolution, per say. I'm saying very simply that things never organize themselves. I've heard it argued that such processes like crystals are formed by an unguided process, and for face value, I would agree. However, just saying that and leaving it alone misses a much greater point, especially if someone wants to use this as an analogy to a biological system. Configurations are ordered, not disordered, for the sole reason the mechanisms necessary for that configuration is already present.

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Sometimes things do organise themselves, given energy inputs. Dawkins refers to the way that wave action sorts sand and pebbles on a beach, for instance.Evolution DOES make use of existing mechanisms - the reproductive mechanisms of life. There are other aspects of course, but when discussing how phenotypes are produced that is the relevant one. Reproduction is a prerequisite for evolution, thus there is simply no issue that evolution relies on mechanisms that do not exist.

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And its this simple understanding that makes IC so attractive, like it or not

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No, IC is based on a simplistic misrepresentation of evolution. It's a simple and elegane idea - and one that can be illustrated quite nicely (Behe's mousetrap). But ultimately it relies on the idea that evolution simply adds parts - it rarely if ever subtracts parts or changes parts/ Decades before Behe, Mueller recognised that evolution would tend to remove unnecessary parts and predicted that evoltuion would produce IC systems.

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The formation of crystals (or snowflakes, as I've heard it argued at times) is a simple chemical reaction in accordance to physical laws that do not in any sense, evolve and certainly could not be compared to genetics.

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I don't see that complex chemical reactions cannot be compared with simpler chemicla reactions. Genetics and developments all boils down to chemistry in the end.

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As for Berra's supply of heat making all things possible, its only partly true.

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That's a misrepresentation of Berra's point. You certainly can't honestly claim he said that on the basis of the quote. Berra's point is that energy inputs permit localised entropy decreases - which is as far as you can go with 2LoT. Anything beyond that is outside of 2LoT territory.

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ike I said, its pointless unless there is a designed mechanism in place, beforehand, to convert that energy into something useful. As an example, I would offer photosynthesis as process that harnesses energy.

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So all you've got to do is to prove that photosynthesis is designed. If you can't show that then your assertion fails.

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Metabolism is a great example. But metabolisms are an orderly mechanism, not some series of happenstances. That would best described as a converter.

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It's a good example of the detail you were asking for. You want even more than that. Why you want it when Berra's short answer deals with the 2LoT aspects is somethign you have yet to explain.

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I would never say that evolution "violates" 2LoT, because nothing does. However, if creationists say that anything using energy must need some sort of converter, I obviously would agree that.

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You may not say it, but other creationists do. The issue of "converters' is not a 2LoT issue - and it isn't much of a problem either. "Converters" are ubiquitous - even atoms may act as converters (e.g. spectral emission lines).