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To: stremba
The second law of thermodynamics makes evolution impossible

I'd just like to add to that that entropy != disorder, a misunderstanding many creationists exploit. Entropy is very hard to define with a single word, but in the systems I study, (diblock-copolymers), there is a progression from a disordered state to a very regular, beautiful patterned state, even in a closed system. In fact, there are examples of "hard" systems in which entropy is the driving force behind the disorder -> order transition. That is, they become ordered because entropy drives them to become ordered.
94 posted on 12/09/2004 12:04:48 PM PST by crail (Better lives have been lost on the gallows than have ever been enshrined in the halls of palaces.)
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To: crail

Absolutely. Entropy is better seen as a quantity that deals with dispersion of energy. Energy tends to become more dispersed over time. It is only through a single equation in statistical mechanics that it became associated with the concept of disorder, namely the Boltzman equation S=klnW. Even here, "disorder" is not a completely appropriate term. The W refers to the number of available microstates of the system, which is only a loose measure of disorder. Usually what we would consider a more disordered system will have more available states. This is not necessarily always the case, however, as your work with di-block copolymer systems demonstrates.


110 posted on 12/09/2004 12:20:25 PM PST by stremba
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