Okay - I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a clue what this is talking about. Anybody out there to summarize in layman's terms?
I think it is saying that Tasmanian devils are different than dust devils. ;-)
Very basic argument: If the universe tends to become disorderly on its own (entropy), then how can one explain evolution, which is supposedly a naturally occuring tendency towards order.
Hi mic9852! Posted this on my lunch hour, but am now back to work. Will try to boil this down for you this evening. Stay tuned!
I think you have to be really limber to do it.
"Okay - I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a clue what this is talking about. Anybody out there to summarize in layman's terms?"
It will take a while for me to digest, but my first reading SEEMS close to what I think, as a mechanical engineer who is very into thermodynamic processes. In closed systems, disorder (entropy) controls the evolution. In open systems, local order creation accelerates universal entropy, so evolution is actually preferred, not disallowed as creationists assume, by the second law.
That said, to me there appears to be an evolutionary gradient, an attractor, to which we are drawn (a directionality to evolution). So, I think of myself more as a crevo than evolutionist OR creationist. God created a evolutionary gradient.
"Okay - I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a clue what this is talking about. Anybody out there to summarize in layman's terms?"
The article is attempting to disprove evolution by dragging out the old "it violates thermodynamics" argument, all tarted up in a lot of pseudoscientific glossolalia.
Evolution doesn't violate thermodynamics, of course, because living things on Earth gain their order at the cost of expending lots of energy, and the Sun is constantly pumping energy into the system.
....according to which the transformation of disorder to order was said to be infinitely improbable....
Thus opening the field for the infinite improbability drive and the Heart Of Gold.
This piece also allows for cultural evolution as in Christian evolution or the changes in Christianity over the years. We are now wittnessing a bout of Islamic evolution, the outcome of which is in doubt. As Darwin said, unsuccesgul selection fails to endure.
read later with dictionary handy
I remember when I was taking thermodynamics in college I always had trouble doing entropy problem. I eventually got to the "aha moment" when I finally understood that it only applies to CLOSED systems. The earth is not a closed system - there is a net amount of energy falling on it (from the sun) and that is what allows it to become more "orderly".
The sun hasn't run out of gas yet.