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 ...
I will compare my grades and 25 years of experience at Cray Research and others to your background anytime.
Again, I challenge YOU - take a 8 bit micro, start feeding in random op codes - when will this machine boot????
You are a IDIOT!
Oh really? Who then wrote the "rules" that allow an "amorphous blob of disorganized clouds" to form into "organized Spiral Bands, symmetrical, with a perfectly round and clear eye". Not once but thirty some times in a row. Solar energy, like any other form of energy is chaos, the intersection of pure energy to create an organized system requires physical rules (gas laws, the Coriolis effect, &c.) to impose order. It is not energy alone that causes a hurricane, nor is it random chance happening.
Merely saying that this involved no outside intelligence begs the question of how the "natural laws" that allow hurricanes to form came to be? It's not likely to be random chance after the season just passed.
Regards,
GtG
Non-sequiter.
There is a systematic influnce at work in this: the differing densities of the liquids, and a gravitational field. Re-do the experiment in endless free-fall and comment on your findings. Due at close of class today.
Try the reaction, and then tell me I'm incoherent. (Use safety glasses)
See post 24.
Could you tell us with your reasoning why the portion of text shown here is wrong. Use the example used in the text and tell me why they are "hilarious" to you.
I hope you haven't been holding your breath waiting for an answer. ;-)
Great analogy.
I know about evolutionary programming, i did the same experiment (calculating the value of Pi) when in grad school....here's the problem....
You are guiding the result - YOU are determing (by enforcing a rule) what is "good" and selectively pruning the results.
And supposedly this i done in the "real" world by survival of the fittest, or longer beaks, etc.... this all essentially boils down to intelligent life must exist because it can...
let me ask some simple questions - why has there not been a microrganism evolve that can simply feed on any carbon chain? Or one that defeats aging? Remember stem cells are aging immune.
Have you seen the 500 lb land tortoises on Galapagos? Darwin believed they evolved right there on the island. So if you believe in the pea soup to peacok theory of development, an IDENTICAL evolutionary trail must have been established on the other continents to form modern tortouses..... (this is because Galapagous is an island made from igneous extrusion from the sea floor, and 500 lb land tortoises are incapable of swimming from any other landmass).
non-equilibrium thermodynamics
Idiot? What is the answer then? Never?
With all due respect, I realize you spent 25 years developing the Cray super computer, but your logic makes no sense.
Who is to say that these possibilities won't happen ( or perhaps have happened on this planet or others?). Its all conjecture until someone pokes an eye out.
No, the probability is 1.000, since anything less is to deny the reality that surrounds us, we are here and what is, is! The argument is whether the reality is the result of random actions or intervention by being or beings unknown. A third possibility being non interventionist IE: we are living and growing in a universe in which the rules were established at t=0 and in which the "builders" have lost interest and no longer interact with this physical reality. God was playing in the sandbox and was called in from recess, as it were, leaving us as a work in progress.
Regards,
GtG
Given simple objects, it is quite possible (with very little programming) to combine them in novel and useful ways.
Quoting your post: "Take 1 cup of water
Must it be distilled water? This is science after all and we want to be precise to 24 decimal places."
Reply:
Cute, but silly, and avoiding a real response.
Tap water will do nicely. So, explain the order arising from disorder.
The probability is 1.0 IF you don't rule out things, such as intelligent design. Your proposition is, as I assume you know, a tautology.
No, I have no trouble with the world being complex. I just find it impossible to explain by Darwin's rules.
Of course. What the mathematics show is that the probability of our present world arising out of random matter in motion is infinitesimally small.
How can you say that? Where is your math that shows that?
"After five years' work I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up some short notes; these I enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the conclusions..."
."For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question"
Darwin himself states that his theory is speculation and someone considering the same subjects could come to an opposite conclusion.
It requires faith to believe his theory, therefore it is a Religion.
The version of the Second Law I prefer—and that I teach to my students—states that the entropy generation rate cannot be negative. This appears to be true of both closed and open systems, at equilibrium or not. This statement of the Second Law does not depend on any microscopic or statistical model; nor does it depend on the notions of "order" or "disorder."
If Professor Sewell wants to show that evolution violates the Second Law, he only has to show that evolution produces a negative entropy generation rate. As far as I can tell from his article, he has not done so.
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