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Evolution's Thermodynamic Failure
The American Spectator ^ | December 28, 2005 | Granville Sewell

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 ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: creation; crevolist; evolution; intelligentdesign; law; mathematics; physics; scientificidiocy; thermodynamics; twaddle
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To: jbloedow
You're the one who made the original claim, without citation or documentation (to the best of my knowledge). Don't ask me to backup my claims without first backing up yours.

No offense, but this is all covered in vanilla algorithmic information theory (AIT). Rehashing what someone with a solid math background would consider "basic" is usually considered bad form.

You were referring to a Thing That Exists that has a Minimum Description Length (MDL) of zero (also known as the Kolmogorov Complexity of that Thing). "Information" and "Algorithm" are equivalent in theory, with the caveat that in really old information theory (say half a century ago), this was not really true in practice because the mathematics was not well-developed. In AIT, it is always true and is technically the correct version.

You will discover that anything with a description also has a non-zero Kolmogorov Complexity, and therefore is most certainly an "algorithm". I would point out that Kolmogorov Complexity is the size of the smallest algorithm that can generate a given pattern, which implies the existence of said algorithm.

(BTW, you respond very quickly for a tortoise.)

Which is why I do not get my real work done...

761 posted on 12/29/2005 11:00:25 PM PST by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
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To: tortoise
complements of the Invariance Theorem

Guh. That would be "compliments".

762 posted on 12/29/2005 11:02:01 PM PST by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
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To: xmission
Would this not make these dogs into two different species, because they are (almost certainly) unlikey to breed?

Dogs are an example of a ring species. Unlike the gulls, the extremes aren't geographic, but are based on size.

763 posted on 12/29/2005 11:03:14 PM PST by Virginia-American
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LichensDidit placemark


764 posted on 12/29/2005 11:49:11 PM PST by dread78645 (Sorry Mr. Franklin, We couldn't keep it.)
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To: Ichneumon
The astute reader will notice that several times in that post, I stated that these processes have been observed occurring in nature, and that there is abundant evidence for them.

A moderately astute observer would also notice that there was no evidence even claimed that there has been any observation of a species of one classification evolving into a species of another classification.

Adaptation/micro-evolution is quite different from macro-evolution.

If macro-evolution had ever been observed, there would be no evolution v. ID/creation debate; would there? Iknow of no evolutionist who has claimed that macro-evolution has been observed. All they do is speculate that it has happened.

765 posted on 12/29/2005 11:53:55 PM PST by connectthedots
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To: bobdsmith; Elsie
It will eventually be possible to directly verify it when the technology is available. A number of hurdles are still in the way, but they could be jumped at any time. One main hurdle currently is the problem of deriving the protein shape produced by any given sequence of DNA.

This appears to be an admission that evolution is largely based on speculation.

766 posted on 12/30/2005 12:10:34 AM PST by connectthedots
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To: connectthedots
Iknow of no evolutionist who has claimed that macro-evolution has been observed. All they do is speculate that it has happened.

And using this "speculation" make predictions about what future research will show. And have these predictions come true, over and over again.

Please explain the pattern of primate ERVs and the shared mutation that blocks the synthesis of ascorbic acid under an ID or creationist scenario. Now do the same for the cow-hippo-whale example.

See here for details...but I have a funny feeling you've seen it before.

Why isn't common descent the best explanation for these genetic facts?

How is this any different, except in scale, to testing "Anastasia" against known Romanovs, Habsburgs, Windsors, etc, to see if she really is the missing heir to the Russian throne? Or a mundane paternity test?

767 posted on 12/30/2005 12:18:27 AM PST by Virginia-American
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To: Virginia-American
Bees fly.

I'm surprised at the amount of response that statement made.. especially since it was meant to be a sarcastic remark showing that things aren't always what they seem..

I'll have to look up the basis for the original quotes on it, but I'll "bet" it was some sort of urban legend..

Fact is, the mechanics of flight for "bumblebees" ( someone insisted I should be specific ) has been worked out and verified..
Scientists have determined that bumblebees can fly..
Bumblebees world wide are mightily relieved.. ( sarcasm )

768 posted on 12/30/2005 2:11:45 AM PST by Drammach (Freedom; not just a job, it's an adventure..)
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To: johnnyb_61820
So evolution is a preprogrammed process? I think I've heard of that before. What's it called.... oh yeah -- ID.

Except ID claims the process is incapable of explaining the diversity of species, and rather some intelligence must have had to interfere in the process. Evolution on the otherhand says that there is no reason to think the process isn't capable of generating all the species alive today from one original form.

So now you realise evolution is essentially one of these "programs" or "processes" or whatever you want to call it, perhaps you can now see why the thermodynamic argument against it is totally bogus.

769 posted on 12/30/2005 2:30:07 AM PST by bobdsmith
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To: tortoise
Not true. Entropy in physics is nothing more than a special case of entropy in mathematics.

Ah thanks, this has always been a confusion of mine. Unfortunately I am not very skilled at maths at all. One question - is it safe to equate entropy with disorder?

770 posted on 12/30/2005 2:36:40 AM PST by bobdsmith
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To: tortoise
No offense, but this is all covered in vanilla algorithmic information theory (AIT). Rehashing what someone with a solid math background would consider "basic" is usually considered bad form.

You're a gas. I dare say I probably have one of the better math backgrounds of anyone here -- go find out how many people got an "A" in their Further Mathematics A level in England -- and yet this didn't even come up in my graduate level Ivy League engineering program. In fact, I don't think my Ivy League school even offered any undergraduate courses on the subject, except perhaps as elelctives for CS seniors. How odd.

But then it's only odd if you weren't being disingenuous.

Do you really want to argue that you need a graduate-level degree in mathematics or computer science to have a "solid math background"?

Anyway, if you want to start a post-graduate-level symposium on information theory, that's all well and good, but Ich-Dichy was pontificating about how anyone who argued that SLoT was in conflict with ToE was a complete fool because it was all "basic science". (Basic science enough that apparently many science textbooks are confused on the subject, but I digress...)

You can argue that the most minimal set of information constitutes an algorithm, or set of instructions, and thus the whole universe is programmed, but I was rather hoping that these questions could be resolved by remaining strictly at the level of "basic science".

No offense.

771 posted on 12/30/2005 2:43:26 AM PST by jbloedow
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To: bobdsmith
The only use for the above analogy is as a reminder of why analogies are one of the worst forms of argument.

Translation:

E analogy good,

C analogy bad.

772 posted on 12/30/2005 4:01:09 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: Virginia-American
And using this "speculation" make predictions about what future research will show. And have these predictions come true, over and over again.

the is hardly a difference between "prediction" and "speculation" in this context. Like I said, the trandformation of one species of clas of animals into a species of a different class, has never been observed, It it had, you would not have to use the word "predict".

The first peson to offer proff that this has actually happened will certainly win a Nobel Prize. Quite frankly, it isn't going to happen.

773 posted on 12/30/2005 4:01:20 AM PST by connectthedots
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To: bobdsmith
National Geographic is a prestigious journal...

National Geographic is a prestigious journal that is drifting farther and farther left. How soon we forget the China dino-bird fiasco.


Scientific American is a prestigious journal (could be said 15 years ago)

Scientific American WAS a prestigious journal (Today)

774 posted on 12/30/2005 4:04:11 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: xmission

The Chihuahua didn't want to get the Great Dane pregnant, but the Beagle put him up to it.


775 posted on 12/30/2005 4:08:32 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: xmission
Could physical geography be used as a reason to seperate a species?

Yes, if one accepts the E take on this.

However, if you do, that means there's been a whole LOT of physical spliting goin' on!


Could there be ANOTHER reason the squirrels on the North and South of the Grand Canyon are so different?

776 posted on 12/30/2005 4:11:20 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: xmission

Michael Jackson


777 posted on 12/30/2005 4:11:56 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: Lurking Libertarian
Human and chimp DNA have both been fully sequenced, and they show evidence of common ancestry in the same way that DNA of 2 humans shows evidence of common ancestry (except that the last common ancestor of humans and chimps was farther in the past).

This is an assumption, based on what you THINK happened.

The parts are basically the same, yet, we cannot create a human-chimp offspring. (Who has tried a chimp-human one?)

Where is our CLOSEST animal critter? why can we not BREED with them?

778 posted on 12/30/2005 4:17:28 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: Last Visible Dog

Dang!

You make it so simple! ;^)


779 posted on 12/30/2005 4:19:02 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: 4Liberty
No need to 'brace' ;^)

As a scientist and rational thinker, you would just want to know where THAT [something someone points to, and calls a God] came from.... hence, I'd term myself an atheist, not an agnostic.

This sentence shows that you put a limit on what is called a god. Yours is limited by having a need for a Creator.

780 posted on 12/30/2005 4:21:13 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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