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Author
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Topic: Thermodynamics for Intelligent Design
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 27. April 2003 21:34
A few quick comments
1. Dembski's book has been released quite a few months ago. Perhaps it might be helpful to read the book and see how close Dembski's arguments are to Kauffman's? But from a quick search on the internet I would say that the two 'fourth laws' are quite different.
"In place of Kauffman's candidates for the fourth law of thermodynamics which attempt to proivde a positive account for the emergence of complexity, I want to propose a fourth law that in the spirit of the traditional three laws of thermodynamics imposes a limiation on the emergence of complexity, namely, the Law of Conservation of Information."
Dembski, No Free Lunch p. 169
You also comment "If energy is conserved, it cannot be lost. So it would seem to me that Dembski is pointing out the obvious. CSI can either be retained or lost. "
You may be confusing the concept of conservation of energy with the concept of entropy/complexity. Energy is conserved, entropy isn't.
While the argument may be that CSI can only increase through ID, there seems to be a difference between the claim and the supporting arguments and evidence. The latter suggest that the former may be wrong.
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Chronos
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posted 27. April 2003 22:14
A FIFTH LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS?
I propose that information can be diffused, considering a populational aspect, from a more concentrated state.
For clarity, I might give an example of myself writing a poem. After it is written, this is the state of concentrated, pure and original information that is 100% the way I want it to be and S = 0, because information cannot be disordered if it is originally created information that has not been diffused--Nor can information be any more ordered than in its state of initial creation.
I can then begin to share this information and take it from a state of populational concentration through a state of gradual diffusion as it spreads through a given population, say a small town, from person to person or from person to people (more than one person).
There are two methods in which this information can be diffused. The first is a ‘fixed’ state of diffusion, where that information is fixed in some media that is not likely to be altered, such as a sign, a letter, a book, a video tape, etc. This information can be altered, of course, if work is added into the system--but this is irrelevant. And the media of fixation will someday deteriorate due to the second law of thermodynamics; but I don’t see this as an informational concept either because that information can still exist on another media or in my mind.
The other manner in which this information can be spread is in a ‘loose’ state. This loose state is
non-fixed information such as information communicated by speech, sign language, flag signals, Morse code, etc.
Fixed information does not apply to this theory I’m about to present because it cannot degrade on its own and I don’t feel that informational entropy would apply to it. However, loose information is very much governed by the second law of thermodynamics and remember, I gave some examples of this loose information being diffused via my high school class experiment and my experiment with the translator at altavist.com.
So, keeping all of this in mind, here is my proposed fifth law of thermodynamics: “With any diffusion of loose information, entropy will tend to increase unless sufficient energy is inputted into the system to stabilize it.”
And so, here again, we have information and energy being considered together to describe an application of the second law of thermodynamics.
Please remember that the second law of thermodynamics is a law of tendency. In the case of thermodynamical entropy there are certain rare cases where a non-spontaneous reaction does not absorb heat from the system. In the case of logical entropy, I could at least imagine a glass of water being spilled into another glass of exactly the same size and logical entropy not changing at all in that event. It’s highly unlikely but entirely possible. And concerning this informational entropy, I could imaginably come across a person with a photographic memory, loosely communicate information to him, and him pass it on exactly as it was communicated to him. All of this is possible but highly unlikely and that’s why I must make it clear that all three entropies, exactly as is the law they describe, are tendencies.
It might be relevant to expound on some examples of the type of energy that can be inputted into the system to overcome an increase in informational entropy at this point.
First, let’s look at the experiment with my high school class. In that experiment, I could simply import energy into the system in the form of work to overcome an increase in entropy. Energy can be defined as the ability to do work and if I simply walk around and correct each student, this informational entropy will not increase. I could designate a student to walk around with a written version of the information, again stabilizing this information by the addition of energy, and it would seem that I have converted loose information into fixed if I keep this up as long as the information is diffusing.
In the example I used to show diffusion via the circulation of information through language translation, I could hire a translator to insure the message is communicated exactly as it was conceived, just as algebra is communicated the same way in any given language.
This, quite logically, brings us to the point of introducing the mathematics to calculate this entropy. S = log2(W) would be correct to calculate simple informational entropy just as it is used to describe logical entropy.
Finally, I want to express this potential law mathematically and throw this particular tenet out to the forum for criticism. Let deltaS = entropy and W = possible microstates. If log2(W) is positive, then deltaS must increase and information must disorder.
My next post will be my final post in this format. I will tie all of this together and show how the second law of thermodynamics affects the ID/naturalism concepts. Then I would hope to engage in an exchange of ideas with forum.
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 27. April 2003 22:36
Chronos:Finally, I want to express this potential law mathematically and throw this particular tenet out to the forum for criticism. Let deltaS = entropy and W = possible microstates. If log2(W) is positive, then deltaS must increase and information must disorder
I thought you stated S = log(2)W which means that
dS/dW~1/W. But may I point out for instance that if log2(W0)=3 and log2(W1)=2 and W1 is the after state and W0 the before state that dS=-1 and entropy has decreased. Thus it may be helpful if you could take us deeper into the realm of mathematics to support your argument. Which brings me to the second issue: What is your argument?
Also why should " S = 0, because information cannot be disordered if it is originally created information that has not been diffused"?
Why should one accept that information cannot be disordered, original or not?
You are throwing around some interesting concepts which could benefit from a coherent (mathematical) argument imho.
Additionally could you perhaps explain why a fifth law of thermodynamics is needed here?
[ 27. April 2003, 22:36: Message edited by: Pim van Meurs ]
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Chronos
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posted 28. April 2003 00:55
Pim,
The moderator screamed at me in bold type the last time I attempted to address your post point by point. You raise some interesting questions. If you'll email me, I will we glad to address your questions.
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 28. April 2003 00:58
Dear Chronos,
I believe that your comments may be of interest to all of us and I do not believe that you need to quote every single line of mine to rebut. Just a general response which addresses some of the issues I raised. I am sure that the moderator would not oppose such a response.
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gedanken
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posted 28. April 2003 15:22
Yes, I've been only reading this thread lately. But indeed I think that going into the mathematics more deeply is what would be expected on ISCID when a mathematical claim is made. I think there are a large fraction of ISCID readers with a strong mathematical background who would be very interested. Pim said:
quote:
Thus it may be helpful if you could take us deeper into the realm of mathematics to support your argument.
An answer needs no point by point rebuttal, rather what was requested was the greater mathemitical detail to support the argument. Doing so would not require any reference to individual statments, rather would simply be an expansion of your argument in greater mathematical detail, including examples like the one that Pim gave and cases to explain the details or difficulties.
This is definitely not a side issue in my opinion, so the issue should be dealt with in public in detail. I would not worry about booring the non-technical readers in this forum. Thanks
[ 28. April 2003, 15:34: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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Chronos
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posted 28. April 2003 16:21
I do want to back-track and clear up an oversight that was, quite correctly, pointed out to me by a poster. S = 0 would not be the preeminent equation to express ‘fresh’ information. I should have expressed this as deltaS = 0. This better falls in line with the mathematical description I used for the fifth law. Delta denotes change in the component that it is placed in front of. And we can see that S could not change in fresh information that did not exist before it was created.
I would propose that the laws of science do not come into existence because of a want or a need for that law. Special Relativity either holds to be true or will be falsified regardless of a cognitive want or need for those laws on behalf of the populations it affects. My point here is, if the fifth law I’ve proposed holds to be true and is not falsified, then it is a law that has always existed from the inception of the big bang forth in space-time; and has been discovered. A need for it is irrelevant.
This formula would better be expressed as S = log2(W) or S = (log2W). Please keep in mind that we are taking log base 2 of a given number W.
In a previous analogy of a bag of marbles sitting on my desk: If the bag of marbles diffused across my office floor into 100 possible microstates then 100 would be W and log base two of W works out to be 6.64385618977473. However, admittedly in an open system information can occasionally (but very rarely, relatively speaking) order. If we are studying order, then W becomes a negative and we must also look at the formula as a negative: -S = -log2W.
Old school thermodynamicists who still have the view that Clausius had it pegged thermodynamically in the 1800s that thermodynamics could always be calculated via heat, used to try and calculate my heat expressed in the falling matter of the marbles. They would readily admit to me in discourse that those marbles were disordering; then would attempt to use the formula for kinetic energy, KE = (mass x velocity2)/2 or 1/2 mv2. This formula comes out in Joules. They then could plug Joules into the formula deltaS = deltaQ/T and plug in the temperature of my office expressed in degrees Kelvin for T and show me my entropy.
But this is not valid logic. Because let’s look at the opposite scenario. Say these marbles are sitting on a large table scattered about in the exact same diffusion as they were on the floor of my office. Suddenly, the old house settles and one corner of it drops. The marbles role off the table which is the same height of my office desk and mass and velocity are the same. These marbles role toward the tilted corner, through a hole in the floor and concentrate themselves in a tin cup on the other side of the hole. Now let’s use the KE premise to calculate Joules and show the neguentropy (negative entropy) of the organized marbles. But one cannot do this. Because the KE in this example of ordering is the exact same positive number as was the example of disorder. But when we use the formula –S = -log2W we get the same figure but in the negative : -6.64385618977473. This would be correct.
In my next post (if there are no other posters to answer), I will tie all of this together and my points will become clear.
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gedanken
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posted 28. April 2003 19:38
Chronos, before you "tie" things up with the implications of any such 5th law, could you please go into the mathematics and its application to the law in some more detail?
Specifically could you do some exapmles in which the microstates are calculated for the "information" in question? It is difficult to see how to apply the mathematics in your example of the poem that was completed to perfection and now represents some initial state of the information of the poem.
Perhaps you could use some detailed exmple using some sort of information storage system representation or the like, and show the specifics of how to calculate W, and the other relationships thereon. Or if this is not meaningful, give another example of calculating the microstates as the "information" is first created, then as the poem is distributed to others.
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Chronos
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posted 28. April 2003 19:40
CONCLUSION
I have discussed the three distinct kinds of entropy that affect the human organism.
Thermodynamical entropy rises in the organism from conception forward and eventually ages and kills it. That is all we need to know about this version.
Logical entropy works differently. Note that I have posited that the second law can be overcome or "staved off" by the addition of energy from a source outside the system. In the case of organisms utilizing sexual reproduction, an offspring is brought to the stage of birth via a prepackaged bundle of energy packed with all kinds of hormones, enzymes, vitamins and minerals; and pre-programmed by its DNA to grow to maturity. These prepackaged bundles of energy are eggs, cocoons, seeds and amniotic sacs. Logical entropy is temporarily overcome because of these conditions and this continues through maturity via these same catalysts with food providing Gibb's Free Energy to the cells to get there.
However, once the organism reaches maturity, logical entropy begins to increase rapidly as the organism begins to age, wither away and die. The body finally decomposes and logical entropy is at its max. So, just as thermodynamical entropy rises over time, so does logical entropy, just differently.
Logical entropy also operates in another observation considering the organism. It works directly at the cellular level to kill the organism as cells lose just a bit more of their ability to divide in the process of meiosis as the telomeres, which provide a mechanism for division, shorten just a bit with every division until they are depleted. This is logical entropy in the form of FULL---->EMPTY.
Informational entropy becomes important to the development of the species homo sapien when we look at the genome. Genes contain information and as such they are very much subject to the laws of thermodynamics as this information is spread. And this information is not fixed information as it can change, and often does as the information is passed down the ancestral lineage. This is loose information.
We can view this degradation of the information in the genome as mutations. One might argue that there are a few beneficial mutations that can occur in a given population of vertebrates. I would agree and we would expect this in view of the second law because we understand that this law is a tendency. And, in the big picture, we see mutations detrimental to the organism as the tendency. "Most mutations are detrimental and eliminated."
http://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/jacobson/Fundamentals/5Microev.htm
We will soon learn that this scientist is only half right. He’s right in that most mutations are detrimental. But he is wrong that most bad mutations are eliminated.
But if all this is true, can’t we do a direct study to see for ourselves if the genome is actually disorganizing over time as the second law would dictate with loose information? Yes, we can and we did and it does.
The results of the only detailed study that sought to find the number of ‘bad’ mutations in the human genome has been in for a couple of years now: "Two British researchers, Adam Eyre-Walker of the University of Sussex and Peter Keightley of the University of Edinburgh, report these findings in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature, the first time the rate of bad mutations has been measured in humans or any other vertebrate."
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/mutation990127.html
Both of these guys are evolutionary biologists. They based this study on the hypothesis that man sprang from a chimp over a period of about 6 million years. They then began a study of the related genomes. What did they find? They found that there are 4 harmful mutations per generation in the devolution of the genome.
They also discovered that only 1.6 of these mutations were severe enough that natural selection weeded them out.
But they tend to round off numbers in the articles for the sake of understanding. If we round off the numbers, then out of these four generational mutations 2 are weeded out and two are left in the genome to accumulate to the next generation.
http://www.open2.net/truthwillout/evolution/article/evolution_walker.htm
So what does this mean? This means that we have extant evidence that all three of these entropies are and have increased in the human organism over time.
THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE SECOND LAW TO NATURALISM AND ID
A synopsis of the big picture might go like this: The second law of thermodynamics dictates that in spontaneous processes entropy will increase. But the naturalist posits through the theory of complex macroevolution that man magically morphed from a single celled organism over a period of around 2 billion years via perhaps a billion speciations each, or at least most, more complex than its predecessor. Each, or at least most, generations would have had to grow more complex in their genome both quantitatively and qualitatively—and massively so to morph an amoeba to a homo sapien. So, the second law requires simplicity while naturalism requires complexity.
One of these theories is quite obviously wrong. Which is it? Let’s just do the math and see. From the first article we can find W, because the researchers tell is there are about 100 million possibilities that could mutate, so four mutations is not that big a number, relatively speaking. But if this is positive entropy, then we can safely say that entropy has risen each generation for the last six million years and there is no evidence at all to suggest it hasn’t been this way throughout the entire 2 billion year process.
S = log2W, S = log2(100,000,000), S = 26.5754247590989, therefore S is positive showing a tendency of disorder. Complex macroevolution would have violated one of the most basic and well proven laws of science. And since we know that nothing violates a law of science as a tendency, we can most assuredly conclude that complex macroevolution never occurred.
William Dembski has been correct in positing over the years that CSI as found in the human organism cannot occur on its own and must have been designed. And now we understand why it cannot form on its own.
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gedanken
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posted 28. April 2003 23:11
quote:
S = log2W, S = log2(100,000,000), S = 26.5754247590989, therefore S is positive showing a tendency of disorder.
Chronos, if W, the number of states by some measure, is greater than 1 then S will be positive by your formula. Thus any number of states will be "showing a tendency of disorder." Is this what you meant, that any system whatsoever that has any degrees of freedom whatsoever is showing a tendency of disorder? And if that is not what you meant, could you explain your concept in greater detail? Thanks
[ 28. April 2003, 23:14: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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Rex Kerr
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posted 29. April 2003 00:33
Suppose we have a box with 2 molecules of H2, 1 molecule of O2 and enough space for, say, 2^10 molecules if packed solid. This has an entropy of S = log2(W) = log2(1024*1023*1022/2) ~= 10+10+10-1 = 29.
Suppose we look at the box later, and we find 2 molecules of H2O. This has an entropy of S = log2(W) = log2(1024*1023/2) ~= 10+10-1 = 19. Entropy has gone down.
Therefore, hydrogen cannot burn.
Chronos, what is wrong with this analysis?
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Chronos
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posted 29. April 2003 02:12
I certainly do not mean to imply that this is my work: “if W, the number of states by some measure, is greater than 1 then S will be positive by your formula. Thus any number of states will be "showing a tendency of disorder.” This is not my work and was done much earlier by such greats as Boltzmann and Feynman et al.
In fact I think I referrenced Feynman for the forum: “We measure "disorder" by the number of ways that the insides can be arranged, so that from the outside it looks the same. The logarithm of that number of ways is the entropy.”
You might see how close this really is to Boltzmann’s formula. What we are doing is basically just dropping the heat calculation from it and considering the disorganization of matter withot heat calculations. Another formula that will operate exactly as does Boltzmann’s is very similar to the one I’m employing: S = K lnW.
Finally on this, I’m not implying that every system that involves microstates will increase its entropy. But if there is a reaction within that system, then this will be the probability entropy. With this said, we know that in the case of genes, they do react with every new generation.
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Chronos
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posted 29. April 2003 02:18
Rex;
I’m not sure where you are wanting to go with this or how it relates to the discussion. Perhaps you might want to develop your point, contrast your point with the ones I have made and we’ll go forward from there.
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gedanken
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posted 29. April 2003 03:24
quote:
I certainly do not mean to imply that this is my work: “if W, the number of states by some measure, is greater than 1 then S will be positive by your formula. Thus any number of states will be "showing a tendency of disorder.” This is not my work and was done much earlier by such greats as Boltzmann and Feynman et al.
In fact I think I referrenced Feynman for the forum: “We measure "disorder" by the number of ways that the insides can be arranged, so that from the outside it looks the same. The logarithm of that number of ways is the entropy.”
I have no doubt that you are using the same words as Feynman and Boltzmann. My questions are more related to whether you are using them correctly, not whether you are using similar word patterns.
Very specifically you stated that if S is “positive” in your formula, that indicated the tendency toward disorder. This seemed to be essential to your “conclusion” post. And indeed we have the case that the second law is obeyed, and any closed system for example will have its “S” or entropy (when actually calculated correctly) tend to increase or stay the same -- thus strictly speaking if S is positive (or negative or any other value) the overall system will be “disordering” by some very technical measure.
However the way you used that in your “conclusion” post is as though the positive value for “S” meant something. If it is meaningless (e.g. the property is always true for every possible case, or the calcuation of “S” would be positive for every possible case, and thus the calculation is irrelevant) then I might suspect that your argument is a very loosely coupled set of statements that sound technical, but don’t have a rigorous mathematical foundation. Without a rigorous mathematical foundation, you have no argument.
I am simply proposing that you go into more detail to explain the mathematical foundation. Without some more detail to support your argument, this conversation will be very short. I register my objection that it does not make any sense, you claim otherwise, and we are done.
Rex posed a simple example. This example seems to fit the description you gave. As I read the conclusion post you wrote, it implies that water cannot form from the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen in Rex’s example as he explained it. Yet this is obviously observed in nature. As you put it above, something must be wrong here. I suggest that your claims are wrong in your concluding post. The implicaiton that water will not form from the combination of oxygen and hydrogen is not correct -- contrary to the implications that would seem to entail from your post. (And Rex already gave the details, they don’t need to be expounded upon again, rather how your concept works is what needs to be explained in more detail.)
You choose to ignore Rex’s question and to wish to have Rex do all the work. What Rex appeared to be asking is for you to analyze Rex’s case using the methods suggested by your concluding post, and make some sense of his example. You choose not to do this. However you asked specifically for criticisms and for discussion. Questions were asked, and you don’t want to explain any detail of how your proposition works in that situation that Rex gave. So be it. It thus appears to me that there is no foundation in your claims, because you cannot back them up with detailed answers showing in detail how what you propose actually works in the real world. Without detailed answers this will be a short conversation indeed. You have proposed the new concept, you have the responsibilty to explain it if you want others to understand.
So at this point I choose to not engage any more in this discussion, at least until some mathematical basis can be given for the claims given, some analysis or examples of how to apply it to any real world case. I leave it to the readers to note that there appear to be claims made, but they have not been backed up. Words were claimed to be similar to greats of science like Feynman and Boltzmann, yet the connections to their work cannot be demonstrated with mathematical detail demonstrating understanding of their theories.
When such details are being offered, I shall consider posting again.
Otherwise I enjoyed reading the posts above. I think I would enjoy it if some of the ID writers should choose to start using some of your argument in their public speaking. Thankyou
[ 29. April 2003, 04:12: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 29. April 2003 14:02
Hi chronos
Seems to me that changing S=0 to dS=0 makes things worse. First of all dS refers to a before state and an after state so what are these before and after states? Are you saying that entropy cannot be created or destroyed?
As far as your comment about the need for the fifth law, let me explain my concerns. It is relatively easy to take a basic law of science and apply it to some particular circumstance, however one would not want to call these derived findings laws since they are all reducible to the basic laws of mechanics, thermodynamics etc. Hence my question whether there is a 'need' for the fifth law or if the fifth law is merely a logical consequence of the four basic laws of thermodynamics? So far I have not seen any evidence of the former and much hints at the latter.
A good formula for DeltaS would be DeltaS=log2(W2/W1) where dS=S2-S1 and 2 and 1 are after an before states.
Thus depending on W2/W1 dS can be either positive W2 gt W1, zero (W2=W1) or negative (W2 lt W1)
Your claim that "Complex macroevolution would have violated one of the most basic and well proven laws of science. And since we know that nothing violates a law of science as a tendency, we can most assuredly conclude that complex macroevolution never occurred." fails to take into account open versus closed systems. It seems that the lack of a solid mathematical foundation is leading you to conclusions which have little relevance to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, nor do your examples show why there is a need for the fifth law since it can be all well explained in terms of the existing four laws of thermodynamics.
As Rex has shown, one could almost prove anything with incorrect application of the basic principles. Rex has shown that according to your (incorrect) arguments hydrogen cannot burn.
So far the lack of a solid mathematical foundation seem to lead you to false conclusions. Therefore as Gedanken suggests, it may be helpful to first expand on the mathematical foundations before drawing any conclusions.
[changed per Gedanken's suggestion to improve the mathematical clarity of the argument]
[ 29. April 2003, 14:53: Message edited by: Pim van Meurs ]
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