Evolution's Thermodynamic Failure

The American Spectator ^ | December 28, 2005 | Granville Sewell

[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. ...

[jbloedow]

Goddidit is not an explanation. Never has been, although it has been attempted for every phenomenon from disease to earthquakes.

OK, we're dangerously close to chasing our rhetorical tail here... If you follow the (sub)thread, Coyote was willing to allow "Goddidit(TM)" as an explanation for abiogenesis, because as you and he and who knows who else who all read the same pamphlet from the American Humanist Association all said, you guys don't care what the theory of the origin of life is. It doesn't matter. But now it sounds like it does (as I claimed you would). I'm so confused...

[grey_whiskers]

The pattern of ERVs fit a nested heirarchy. Common descent expects this, common design does not.

Let's say you're programming in an object oriented language, and you have a parent class which contains some, err, poorly developed code. If you make a child class which extends the parent class, you will bring the poor code along.

Parent / child = descent. But it's still design in that case.

Just stirring the pot.

Cheers!

[furball4paws]

I'll do my best.

[furball4paws]

Mutations in the germ line only. If you are not familiar with hemophiliacs, read the history of Queen Victoria. Just such a thing hapened there.

Just as well, too. When I was young, I was badly sunburned leaving some ugly scar tissue on my forehead. I wouldn't want to pass that on to my kids :-)

[furball4paws]

"We now know that many mutations in bacteria are caused because the bacteria decided it needed the mutation. It even has special DNA polymerases to cause specific kinds of mutations, whose use is regulated. "

As a microbiologist, I'd like to know more about this. Please enlighten me, preferably using references.

[numberonepal]

it is irrelevant as a practical matter to the biological underpinnings of ToE.

That's a rather narrow view of things, which is really my point. All actions have equal and opposite reactions. If one can grasp that the physical laws themselves change over time, then evolutionary advancement through a biological isn't that much of a stretch. Morphogenetic reasonance is a real thing with plenty of evidence to back it up.

I didn't get the spell check comment.

[atlaw]

In the case of academic and scientific booksellers, their fitness function is highly correlated to the intellectual integrity of their authors. For fictional booksellers, there's a different definition of fitness.

Are you really trying to argue that McGraw-Hill or Wiley or MIT Press are going to start publishing Howard Stern's autobiography just because it would make them lots of money? If that's the position you want to stake out for yourself, go ahead, and we'll all have a good long laugh at your expense.

So your point is that the likes of McGraw-Hill, Wiley, and MIT press only publish credible material by authors with intellectual integrity, and thus would never publish fictional nonsense supportive of, or expanding on, the theory of evolution. Can't say I agree, but that is your point, isn't it?

PS

A small sampling of McGraw Hill publications:

An Introduction to Biological Evolution
By: Kardong, Kenneth

Biological Anthropology
By: Park, Michael Alan

Understanding Evolution
By: Volpe, E. Peter
Rosenbaum, Peter A

Vertebrate Biology
By: Linzey, Donald

Fundamentals of Biological Anthropology
By: Relethford, John

-- Many more at the McGraw Hill Professional Bookstore website.

A small sampling of Wiley publications:

Handbook of Evolution: The Evolution of Living Systems (Including Hominids), 3 Volumes
by Franz M. Wuketits (Editor), Francisco J. Ayala (Editor)

Directed Molecular Evolution of Proteins: or How to Improve Enzymes for Biocatalysis
by Susanne Brakmann (Editor), Kai Johnsson (Editor)

The Theory of Evolution: What It Is, Where It Came From, and Why It Works
Cynthia Mills

-- Many more at the Wiley publishing website.

A small sampling of MIT publications:

Advances in the Evolutionary Synthesis of Intelligent Agents
Mukesh Patel, Vasant Honavar and Karthik Balakrishnan

Computational Modeling of Genetic and Biochemical Networks
James M. Bower and Hamid Bolouri

Computational Molecular Biology
Pavel A. Pevzner Biology

Evolution and Human Behavior
John Cartwright

Evolving Learnable Neutral Networks Under Changing Environments with Various Rates of Inheritance of Acquired Characters: Comparison Between Darwinian and Lamarckian Evolution
Takahiro Sasaki and Mario Tokoro

Radical Epistasis and the Genotype-Phenotype Relationship
David Sloan Wilson and Alexandra Wells

Evolution of Genetic Code through Isologous Diversification of Cellular States
Hiroaki Takagi, Kunihiko Kaneko and Tetsuya Yomo

-- Many more at the MIT press website.

[freedumb2003]

Not exactly, since people designed and built planes, and improved them using empirical testing coupled with theory.

This is a standard CRID misstatement of the scientific process and what is required for a theory. It is both disingenuous and dishonest.

GMO's aside, people have not created life ab initio and so don't have the same level of understanding.

This statement belongs in philosophy and mythology, not sciencer.

[grey_whiskers]

Not exactly, since people designed and built planes, and improved them using empirical testing coupled with theory.

This is a standard CRID misstatement of the scientific process and what is required for a theory. It is both disingenuous and dishonest.

Neither one. I wasn't attempting any classification of evolution as a fact, theory, model, what have you, in the first place. It was actually a comment on the process of engineering that went into the planes...which we didn't put into the GMO's.

Cheers!

[freedumb2003]

Why is it that when creationists critique evolution, evos' first reply is "You don't understand evolution"; yet you folks can get away with stuff like this which indicates you don't have the first flying clue what creationism is?

In what context? If Creationism means that God started the whole process and the process has gone forward as stated in the TOE, then there is no conflict.

If Creationsim says {poof} -- "God made man in His Image" and it happened instantaneously with a bolt of lightning, then that is not a "theory" but a belief and has no place in rational scientific discussion.

As we've discussed countless times, much of modern science was developed by creationists of some sort or other. It was classical Christianity which fostered a worldview which motivated the very pursuit of scientific investigation.

Nice to know and of zero meaning to the discussion at hand. I am a devout Christian and yet understand what the Theory Of Evolution is and how it applies.

[grey_whiskers]

If one can grasp that the physical laws themselves change over time, then evolutionary advancement through a biological isn't that much of a stretch.

Would you please give examples of physical laws that change over time? We may be talking past each other.

Morphogenetic reasonance is a real thing with plenty of evidence to back it up.

I didn't get the spell check comment.

And apparently you still don't, see the underline :-)

Cheers!

[freedumb2003]

Then you missed 1/2 of my statement.

My original statement (or at least its intent) was that that Evolution is as much a science as Physics, Mathematics and the like.

Suggesting Creationism as an "alternate theory" to Evolution is analgaous to saying "God holds up the plane" as an "alternate theory" to Physics.

I guess my original post was unclear.

Sorry.

[js1138]

I personally think a naturalistic explanation will be found for biogenesis. This is just speculation on my part, but it is based on the history of science. Hard problems sometimes take centuries to solve, but science is patient. I have seen nothing to suggest that any observable phenomenon can't have a naturalistic explanation.

What I find unexplainable is people who argue that we shouldn't look for naturalistic explanations.

By the way I'm still waiting. Explain how evolution is thermodynamically different from metabolism, growth, development, learning, photosynthesis. What specific chemical process involved in evolution violates thermodynamics?

[grey_whiskers]

In the case of academic and scientific booksellers, their fitness function is highly correlated to the intellectual integrity of their authors sales.

[grey_whiskers]

Then you missed 1/2 of my statement.

Happens all the time, especially when I am trying to read and comment on a 900+ post thread at one sitting.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Mutations in the germ line only. If you are not familiar with hemophiliacs, read the history of Queen Victoria. Just such a thing hapened there.

Sorry, you are using nomenclature unfamiliar to me. What is the "germ line" ? It sounds like a bunch amoebae with linked pseudopods, dancing together on a tiny stage, while holding carbon nanotube top hats and canes... like something out of Far Side cartoon.

Full Disclosure: Yeah, yeah, I know. But I was up till 2:30 on this thread, and went to see Cats last night as well...

Cheers!

[numberonepal]

There is evidence that the constants "c" and "e" may not have always been what they are today. Also it is believed that the weak nuclear force didn't "pop-up" until after the Big Bang. In other words, all was pure energy without matter. There's G_d right there if you ask me. I see "reasonance", but what does that have to do with monkeys typing Shakespeare (which is a shallow hypothesis given the probabilities involved)?

[Coyoteman]

so...lets define some terms (from a google search):

Faith: the belief in something for which there is no evidence or logical proof

A google search? Wow. Was this from a high school paper? I could spend precious seconds explaining just how juvenile a definition of faith this is, but the real issue is that you can't even be bothered to put in the effort to come up with a definition of terms that are beyond the parody level.

I note you do not supply an alternate definition.

From the American College Dictionary:

Faith: 1. confidence or trust in a person or thing. 2. belief which is not based on proof. 3. belief in the doctrines or teachings of a religion. 4. the doctrines which are or should be believed. 5. a system of religious belief...

Better now?

[jbloedow]

Oh, so clever.

No. My point was that they try to publish stuff that _they believe_ is credible and which the customers in their niche will perceive to be likewise.

You can try to be a smartass about it, but my original point that the argument that Wiley published Sewell's stuff even though it was "hilariously full of errors" is a bit weak.

(FWIW, I just wrote the author and Wiley has in fact received zero complaints about the scientific credibility of the book, as of yet.) I guess you guys are still working on yours...

[grey_whiskers]

OK, let's parse your post. :-)

There is evidence that the constants "c" and "e" may not have always been what they are today.

I've seen the suggestion about 'c' and IIRC it has already been effectively dismantled on crevo threads.

I have not yet heard that 'e' (inverse of natural log e?) has ever changed.

Also it is believed that the weak nuclear force didn't "pop-up" until after the Big Bang

Nothing popped up until after the big bang--the energy regime early on was such that you didn't have "condensation" into what are now protons, neutrons, etc for some time, so there was nothing for the nuclear force "to work on"...

I see "reasonance", but what does that have to do with monkeys typing Shakespeare (which is a shallow hypothesis given the probabilities involved)?

Someone posted, earlier in the thread, the famous "10,000 monkeys" as an article from weekly world news in which the Monkeys came up with Romeo and Juliet but spelled Romeo as "Romero" once, so it was back to the drawing board.