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Topic: Thermodynamics for Intelligent Design
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Chronos
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posted 23. April 2003 23:34
THERMODYNAMICS FOR INTELLIGENT DESIGN
I’ve read around this excellent forum enough, I think, that I can safely post within the understandably strict standards.
First, I want to give some preliminary information and a brief history of the second law of thermodynamics. Then I will follow with a post on what I feel thermodynamics offers to the body of thought today called intelligent design. My third post will throw out some fresh ideas on this subject by proposing a fifth law of thermodynamics, a formula to calculate the entropy of this law; and hopefully some input from the forum on the credibility of my ideas.
There are many definitions of the second law of thermodynamics depending upon the specific application. However, for our purpose, we can define this law as follows: With any spontaneous event or process, entropy will tend to increase. I am using the word spontaneously unlike the way this word is used in colloquial English. Here, the word means that the process or event must place more energy into the system than it depletes from it.
Much has been offered to the field of thermodynamics since the days of Carnot’s steam engines back in the 1820s.
In the 1850s, Rudolf Julius Clausius was observing a water wheel sitting under a dam being turned by the force of the water. The entire scenario was fascinating him as he watched a four foot wide water wheel turning under a six foot wide stream of water. The water that was turning the wheel was obviously energy being used directly for work on the wheel. But what was the two feet of water missing the wheel?
It certainly was still energy, but it was not energy available for work in his system: the water wheel. Clausius called this energy, entropy: energy unavailable for work.
Today, there are many forms of entropy depending upon the application of the second law of thermodynamics. Traffic planners, evolutionary biologists, statisticians, physicists, chemists, geologists and many others use this concept in their respective fields. But for our purpose, and keeping in mind that entropy is not always this, we can define our entropy as: disorder in a given system.
If entropy increases, then disorder increases. If entropy decreases, then a system will order.
Asimov puts it rather succinctly:
"Another way of stating the second law then is, 'The universe is constantly getting more disorderly!' Viewed that way we can see the second law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in perfect working order: how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself - and that is what the second law is all about."
[Isaac Asimov, "In the Game of Energy and Thermodynamics You Can't Even Break Even", Smithsonian Institution Journal (June 1970), p. 6 (emphasis added).]
Until the 1890s, the second law of thermodynamics and its measure called entropy could only be viewed as applicable to systems where heat was being exchanged. The formula used for this kind of experimentation was deltaS = deltaQ/T. Where S is entropy, Q is the change in heat energy in Joules and T is the absolute temperature of the system defined by degrees Kelvin; with delta being used to denote change.
It was in the 1890s that Ludwig Boltzmann added his famous formula S = K log W where S is entropy, K is Boltzmann’s constant still describing temperature and heat energy and W is a probability state of concentrated/diffused atoms.
This revolutionized the concept of entropy in that now we were not just dealing with heat, but also we were defining entropy as the concentration/diffusion of matter.
Boltzmann defined entropy a little differently as well. He noted that entropy is the opposite of information.
http://www.wellesley.edu/Chemistry/chem120/thermo1.html#boltz
Another revolutionary era in the history of thermodynamics came in the early 1940s. It was at this time that Nobel Prize winning physicist Erwin Schrodinger took the second law of thermodynamics and applied it to the human body, an open system, and used a take off of Boltzmann’s formula to calculate the thermodynamical entropy of the human body over time.
Schrodinger mused: “Every process, event, happening—call it what you will: in a word, everything that is going on in Nature means an increase in entropy of the part of the world where it is going on. Thus a living organism continually increases its entropy—or as you might say, produces positive entropy—and thus tends to approach the dangerous state of maximum entropy, which is death.” {From Schrodinger’s book, What is Life? Chapter 8}
Schrodinger used the formula –entropy = K log 1/D where K is Boltzmann’s constant and D is the atomistic state of the cell.
Of important note is that until the experimentation of Schrodinger, the second law of thermodynamics was thought only applicable to isolated systems. Now is, I think, the right time to define the three systems thermodynamicists study. An open system is defined as a system that can freely exchange both energy and matter with its surroundings. Earth, or the human body are perfect examples of open systems. A closed system is defined as a system that can exchange energy but not matter. An example of a closed system might be a domed biosphere where energy in the form of photons and heat can be exchanged with its surroundings but matter cannot. An isolated system can exchange neither energy nor matter.
There is no such thing in reality as an isolated system unless we wish to consider the universe. And, of course, no one is sure that our universe is the only one out there. What is most ironic is that Carnot—Clausius—Boltzmann, et al., seemed to THINK that Carnot’s steam engines were isolated systems. But for those of us who have spent time around a steam engine, we know that it exchanges energy in the form of outputted heat and matter in the form of excess steam on a regular basis.
At about the same time (1940s), another person took Boltzmann’s observation that entropy is the opposite of information to new heights. An American mathematical engineer by the name of Claude Shannon contributed greatly to the field of thermodynamics by observing a similarity between Boolean algebra and telephone switching circuits. A strange observation to be sure, but an important one because Shannon would go on from there to apply thermodynamics to information theory and bring his entropy, Shannon-Weaver entropy, firmly into the field of this science called thermodynamics.
In the 1970s, Ilya Prigogene won the Nobel Prize for his work in thermodynamics in far from equilibrium open systems. His biggest contribution seems to be new thought and new math. Prigogine posited that dS = djS + deS. Here dS is the total change of entropy in the system, while djS is the entropy change produced by irreversible processes within it and deS is the entropy transported across the system boundaries.
No longer did we have to worry about a system interacting with its surroundings. We can, today, study a system by calculating the total change of entropy within the system and contrast this with the entropy that is transported across the boundaries of that same system.
This brings us thermodynamically into the new millennium.
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gedanken
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posted 24. April 2003 11:12
Any extended discussion of thermodynamics should have a link to Frank Lamberts: secondlaw.com and
2ndlaw.com articles.
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Chronos
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posted 24. April 2003 20:53
I’m hoping that the science of thermodynamics will become an integral tool to Intelligent Design because there are so many areas, I believe, where the concept of thermodynamics tends to discredit abiogenesis and complex macroevolution and support the notion of design. At this point I would like to show how this law of decay works specifically in man.
THERMODYNAMICAL ENTROPY
There are three distinct entropies that affect the species homo sapien. Thermodynamical entropy, logical entropy and informational entropy, the latter being sometimes referred to as ‘probability entropy.’
http://www-th.phys.rug.nl/~atkinson/Tufan.html
The first I touched on in the last post: thermodynamic, or thermodynamical entropy. The word thermo is of Greek derivation and means heat. Dynamic translates as power or movement.
So when we speak of thermodynamical entropy we will always have heat somewhere in the equation.
I’ve previously pointed out that Schrodinger posited that thermodynamical entropy rises from conception through aging to death where perfect equilibrium—maximum entropy occurs in the organism. He posited this, and was correct I believe, but I’m not sure that Schrodinger really understood why this happens. Please remember that his work was in the early forties and the cellular respiration—Krebs cycle we will soon discuss was not discovered but a few years earlier.
Today, the studies are in that tell us explicitly why this happens. Schrodinger seemed a bit confused in his papers and lectures on this subject. In his book What is Life? which is really just a series of papers derived from the lectures, he concluded that this thermodynamical entropy is only staved off by borrowing neguentropy (negative entropy) from the environment in the form of food. Later, after receiving much flack from his peers, he wrote in his notes on these papers that he only said this in an effort to not confuse his layman readers. What he should have said (paraphrasing his words) instead of neguentropy is that the organism gets its energy to function at the cellular level from food. And this is true. Gibb’s Free Energy that is used to run the cell is derived from the food we eat.
The problem here is one of confusion. Energy is not entropy. Clausius choose the word entropy very carefully because it is similar to the word energy yet would clearly distinguish it from energy. And all that is required of us is to look at a thermodynamical entropy formula to see the difference. In the formula deltaS = deltaQ/T we can see that S is entropy and Q is energy. Both related, each requiring the other to function thermodynamically, yet both distinctly separated in the formula.
We need understand that although thermodynamical entropy deals with heat, it is not itself, always heat. If it were heat in the case of the human organism, we could very easily test Schrodinger’s theory by taking the temperature of a baby and that of an elderly person and contrasting the two. But entropy is not energy so this will not work.
But what is interesting on this subject is that although food is employed to provide free energy to the cell to govern the organism at the cellular level, it is also this food that raises thermodynamical entropy within the organism and eventually kills it. Schrodinger’s era was simply too early in the development of modern science to understand this new science, meaning new to his generation.
The organism cannot use the food it digests directly and must break this food down into phosphates called ATP and ADP.
Through the process of cellular respiration the cell then uses the massive amount of energy directly to perform work derived from the breaking of bonds of the tri-phosphate in transition to the di-phosphate.
Every time you lift your arm the cells in your body use millions of molecules of ATP to provide that energy.
Here is the chemical formula for cellular respiration: C6H12O6 + 6O2 -------------------> 6CO2 + 6H2O + 38 ATP. Glucose and oxygen combine to form carbon dioxide, water and ATP.
Also please know that this is an exothermic reaction and a chemically spontaneous one. Every time this reaction reacts, 7.4 kcal of heat per mole of ATP produced is emitted into the cell, our system under study.
So is this heat our entropy? No, and this important point cannot be over-stressed. Heat does not rise in the body or it would quickly kill us. The entropy we are looking for from this reaction is not heat, it is aging and cellular disorder that eventually kills the cell via a cell death called cellular necrosis.
We can learn the meaning of this word by simply looking up necrosis in the Merke Manual and it will also tell us that this cell death is a result of entropy: “Cell death may occur by necrosis or apoptosis. Necrosis is due to physical or chemical insults (eg, metabolic inhibition, ischemia) that overwhelm normal cellular processes and make the cell nonviable. In necrosis, loss of ion gradients across the cell membrane leads to an influx of calcium and other ions, which triggers proteolysis and rupture of organelle membranes. Necrosis is a purely entropic phenomenon due to loss of the cell's ability to transform external energy.”
http://www.merck.com/pubs/mm_geriatrics/sec1/ch1.htm
Interestingly enough. the apoptosis Merke mentions above is another form of death via thermodynamics. On the ends of the chromosomes are tiny structures called telomeres. These telomeres serve as biological clocks and they also serve as little handles the cell uses to grab onto in the process of meiosis. The telomeres get a bit shorter with each division, until they are finally so short the cell can no longer divide and it dies (about 50 divisions).
The thermodynamics involved here is entropy in the form of FULL-->EMPTY much as we see in the thermodynamics of the sun. The sun will burn until its fuel is depleted and then die a thermodynamic heat death with the rest of the universe.
A side note on apoptosis is this is a major head-ache to the biologists who do cloning. Why did Dolly the cloned sheep not live a normal life-span? Because these cloners forgot about telomeres. Sheep normally live about 12 years on a farm. But they cloned Dolly from a six year old sheep that had exhausted some of the telomeres in the cells. Dolly lived a biological life of 6.5 years. But her genetic life was 12.5 years. This explains the premature aging found in Dolly. And when they checked her cells, sure enough, the telomeres were shorter than would be expected in a sheep of that age.
Today, Dr. Denham Harman of the University of Nebraska is an old man. But he is now coming in vogue in academia and is being called the ‘father of aging’ by those who study this phenomenon.
The reason that Harman is becoming popular is that many of the latest studies show that the research he conducted in the 50s and 60s on mitochondrial DNA to show that aging is caused by charged particles of oxygen called free radicals is right on research.
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag95/95jun3.htm
In the formula, C6H12O6 + 6O2 -------------------> 6CO2 + 6H2O + 38 ATP, many times the reaction goes haywire and some of the oxygen in the reactants does not yield CO2 in the products.
This oxygen is released as free radicals, highly unstable charged particles that steal molecules of nearby healthy tissue in order to stabilize themselves. This event damages healthy tissue and sometimes outright kills it. This is the reason that people eat a steady supply of antioxidants in the form of selenium, vitamin A, C and beta carotene, etc. However, Harmon has shown that not much of these antioxidants make it into the mitochondria of the cell where this breakdown of food actually occurs.
So we can see by this that although food supplies Gibb’s Free Energy to the cell to keep it running, food actually increases cellular entropy in the process.
This is the very reason that researchers have discovered that one can live longer on a starvation diet. “only a single dietary regime has ever been conclusively demonstrated to extend the life span and improve the health of laboratory animals, let alone humans. It is known in the scientific lingo as "caloric restriction"
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0008A0FE-1251-1C75-9B81809EC588EF21&pageNumber=1&catID=2
Richard Weindruch, who is studying calorically restricted monkeys at the University of Wisconsin- Madison agrees with me: “Weindruch wrote that mitochondria seem to inadvertently make free radicals while producing ATP. The free radicals, in turn, damage the mitochondria, and the damaged mitochondria make more free radicals. Eventually the cycle of damage becomes a slippery slope that we call "aging."
http://whyfiles.org/057aging/radical2.html
As does George Roth, who headed a study for the National Institutes of Aging on calorically restricted monkeys. “As Roth sees it, aging is a reduction in the amount of order in living systems, which require a high degree of order. He says that more energy, in the form of more calories, creates more disorder (which scientists call entropy). He suggests that caloric restriction "slows the energy flux through the organism so we disorder at a slower rate.’”
http://whyfiles.org/057aging/radical2.html
I propose that my main-man Schrodinger was very correct in his assertion that thermodynamical entropy rises in the human organism until it ages and kills him.
My apologies to the readers in that I promised three posts. But I’ve decided to break the three forms of entropy down to three posts to avoid inundating the reader with information. Please feel free to jump in at anytime with comments, questions and criticisms.
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Chronos
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posted 24. April 2003 21:04
Thank you Gedanken. I enjoy Dr. Lambert's writings and can recommend that site. Although I disagree with him on some points.
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gedanken
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posted 24. April 2003 22:19
So would this be Jeptha, of this ARN debate? I just wanted to know previous argument basics. Thanks
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Chronos
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posted 25. April 2003 00:29
Yes, it would be. Good to chat with you again, Gedanken.
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yersinia
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posted 25. April 2003 14:54
Long live jepodynamics!
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kyle7
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posted 26. April 2003 03:35
Jep,
You say the following:
quote:
There are many definitions of the second law of thermodynamics depending upon the specific application. However, for our purpose, we can define this law as follows: With any spontaneous event or process, entropy will tend to increase. I am using the word spontaneously unlike the way this word is used in colloquial English. Here, the word means that the process or event must place more energy into the system than it depletes from it.
Your definition of "spontaneous" is not a standard definition – at least not what I have heard. A spontaneous process is one that tends to proceed in a given direction on its own accord. The requirement that more energy be placed into a system compared with the depleted energy has nothing to do with the term "spontaneous".
Gedanken,
Prof. Lambert makes some statements that can be refuted. He talks about entropy being the measure of the tendency to disperse energy and tries to do away with the notion that entropy is related to order. A simple thought experiment can be conducted to disprove his argument. Suppose we had two different gases (or liquids) that had the same specific heat. If entropy has no relation to order and relates only to the dispersion of energy, then the entropy of the mixed gases should be the same as the entropy where the gases are in the same container but are not mixed. The dispersion of energy would be the same for both systems. If one would measure the entropy of the two systems one would find the entropy of the unmixed gases lower compared to the entropy of the mixed gases. Entropy is related to the dispersion of energy and to the notion of order.
Jep,
I am not sure how aging supports ID? I agree that the second law plays a role in aging, but I don't see where you are going with your argument.
[ 26. April 2003, 03:44: Message edited by: kyle7 ]
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Chronos
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posted 26. April 2003 15:12
Hello Kyle, Welcome to the discussion:
“Your definition of "spontaneous" is not a standard definition – at least not what I have heard. A spontaneous process is one that tends to proceed in a given direction on its own accord.”
JEP: I would basically agree with this but would add some clarity. From freshman chem. class, a reaction or process is deemed spontaneous if it requires no energy to react. A non-spontaneous reaction must have energy present to absorb in order to react.
However, this is over simplified in that there are a few certain reactions that do not abide by this definition. Therefore it is better, biochemically speaking, that we look at Gibb’s Free Energy to determine spontaneity. If free energy goes down, then the reaction was non-spontaneous. If free energy goes up, the reaction was spontaneous.
Now let me explain why I worded my definition so carefully. Let’s look at gasoline and coal combustion. Gasoline requires the spark from a sparkplug and coal requires at least a match in order to react. So here are two examples of reactions considered spontaneous that CANNOT react without a source of energy. Yet both of these reactions are deemed spontaneous because they put out more energy into their surroundings than they absorb from them.
“A spontaneous change requires no input in order for it to proceed. It will occur "naturally". A non-spontaneous change requires some form of stimulus, usually energy is needed for it to be able to occur.”
http://uhavax.hartford.edu/chemistry/CH114/notes/chp8-1.html
Now, let’s tie this in with the second law of thermodynamics. If we are looking at a biochemical heat system (or any heat system, for that matter), then we need know that when heat (energy) goes up in that system, entropy increases and the system disorders due to the kinetic energy of molecules. When heat is removed from a heat system, entropy decreases and the system orders.
Thus, when a spontaneous reaction dumps energy into a system, entropy will increase. But if a non-spontaneous reaction absorbs heat from a system in order that it can react, then entropy must go down. This is why we must word our definition of SLOT (second law of thermodynamics) very carefully: With any spontaneous reaction, entropy will ‘TEND’ to increase. The ‘TEND’ is also an irreducible component of this definition because, as explained above, there are a few exceptions to our definition of spontaneity. SLOT is a law of tendency.
”Gedanken,
Prof. Lambert makes some statements that can be refuted.”
JEP: I would agree. I emailed Frank Lambert yesterday and invited him to become a part of this discussion. I do have respect for Dr. Lambert as a thermodynamicist. However, he argues thermodynamics from the aspect of a chemist. This is understandable as I have found that each discipline has their own version of SLOT pertinent as to how they apply it. What I have attempted to do is to tie in all of the research and applications into an overall body of thought.
”I am not sure how aging supports ID? I agree that the second law plays a role in aging, but I don't see where you are going with your argument.”
JEP: You will better understand after I tie it all together. Please let me present a few more writings on entropy. I will then try to paint the big picture. But you are welcome to ask for clarity or provide input or criticism, as you just did, anytime that you wish.
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Chronos
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posted 26. April 2003 17:39
LOGICAL ENTROPY
Of paramount importance is what to do with entropy that has nothing to do with heat what-so-ever.
People have for over a century known that this phenomenon of more and less ordered matter exists and that it was a form of entropy. J. Willard Gibbs, the nineteenth century American theoretical physicist, called it "mixedupness."
A good example of increasing logical entropy might be a bag of marbles I have sitting on my desk and as it settles over time the bag tips and spills the marbles all over my office floor. That bag of marbles will scatter randomly across the floor and go from a more ordered state of being concentrated in the bag to a less ordered state of diffusion all over the floor.
Ludwig Boltzmann, known as a father of thermodynamics, recognized this phenomenon as entropy and incorporated it into his formula for entropy in the 1890s. And Thermodynamicist Frank Lambert actually defines the second law of thermodynamics using these guidelines: "Energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused or dispersed and spread out." While I disagree with Lambert that this is THE definition of the second law, this is certainly part of it.
http://www.secondlaw.com/two.html#time
And we can very easily test this form of entropy to see if logical entropy does follow the second law of thermodynamics in that it falls within the definition that describes it: With any spontaneous reaction, entropy will tend to increase.
I propose that we do a mind experiment to see what happens in real life. We will sit 1000 champagne glasses on the top floor balcony of the Empire State Building. We will sit them at a curious angle where with time they will all gradually slide off the edge, because remember, this is supposed to be a spontaneous event. Then we will go below and observe what happens when they hit the concrete street.
So here we are and these glasses begin falling one by one so quickly that I can barely write fast enough to record them. And what is happening when they react with the concrete? They are disorganizing. All of them. Not one is doing any ordering. When they hit the street they are transforming from nicely ordered champagne glasses with ornate flowing stems into highly disorganized shards of glass with increased entropy.
But I am a diligent researcher, so I’m not about to leave this experiment at this point. I have had my assistants on the street with brooms and instructions to sweep up each glass being very careful to insure they didn’t miss any pieces. Those assistants were careful to place all the pieces of each glass into separate sandwich baggies.
Now we're going to go back up on top and observe what happens when the glass shards themselves react with the concrete. Is there any chance that when they react they will order back into glasses? Is there any chance they will order into anything at all?
The answer, of course, is no. When they react they do not order. Instead they disorder even more by further breaking into tinier shards with a higher entropy.
Richard Feynman clearly understood these differences between thermodynamical and logical entropy. He discussed thermodynamic entropy in the section called "Entropy" of his Lectures on Physics {published in 1963}, using physical units, joules per degree, and over a dozen equations (vol I section 44-6).
He discussed the second meaning of entropy in a different section titled "Order and entropy" (vol I section 46-5) as follows:
"So we now have to talk about what we mean by disorder and what we mean by order. ... Suppose we divide the space into little volume elements. If we have black and white molecules, how many ways could we distribute them among the volume elements so that white is on one side and black is on the other? On the other hand, how many ways could we distribute them with no restriction on which goes where? Clearly, there are many more ways to arrange them in the latter case. 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. The number of ways in the separated case is less, so the entropy is less, or the "disorder" is less."
I thought that was an apt description of logical entropy and he gives us the formula with which to calculate it. S = log2(W) where S is entropy and W is “that number of ways” or the possible microstates of the matter we are considering.
And this writing would not be complete unless we give credit to A.S. Eddington for his contribution of Time’s Arrow into logical entropy and the body of thought called thermodynamics. Eddington took logical entropy and applied it to time.
He observed that when the Titanic hits an iceberg, it will tear a hole in her belly. Never could the Titanic hit an iceberg and repair a hole in her belly. Divers don’t dive backward up from the water to the diving board. Rocks don’t roll up hills.
Eddington’s contributions are important for us to understand in order to grasp the notion that FULLàEMPTY is another valid description of logical entropy. Through the postulations of Time’s Arrow we can comprehend the notion that fires don’t grow brighter throughout infinity, they exhaust their resources and die out. Cars don’t get newer over time, they grow old and rust away. Batteries don’t recharge themselves, they use their charge and become exhausted. Your car cannot re-fuel itself as you drive, you must add work into the system and manually re-fuel it. Water does not run out of a submarine when a torpedo opens a hole in it, water rushes into it. The odor of perfume will always gush from perfume concentrated in the bottle and dissipate throughout the room. Never can one go into a room containing the odor of perfume, open a sterile bottle and observe the perfume concentrating itself into the bottle.
But note that I have introduced a new concept in the last paragraph. I posited: “Your car cannot re-fuel itself as you drive, you must add work into the system and manually re-fuel it.” And I wish to point out that the second law can sometimes be staved off or even overcome if energy is added to the system by an outside source.
Consider the analogy I used above of champagne glasses disordering into glass shards. Is there anything I can do to this system to order these shards of glass back into neatly structured drinking glasses? Yes. I can add work into the system. I can take these glasses to a glass factory, melt them back down to liquid, pour them into molds and I will have overcome the decay effects of the second law of thermodynamics via the addition of energy into the system.
I could have accomplished the same with my marble diffusion analogy above. Had I added work into the system by walking across my living room floor, picking up the marbles and replacing them into the bag, I would have manually decreased the entropy of the marble system back to where it was at before they diffused.
The addition of energy into a system can delay/overcome an increase in entropy regardless of the type of entropy we are considering. In the case of thermodynamical entropy, That tray of ice cubes I forgot about when I laid it out on the kitchen counter has now melted and disorganized from crystalline structure into water. But I can simply put it back into the freezer, plug it in and let electricity provide the work to organize it again.
Finally, this post would not be complete without me quoting my favorite definition of logical entropy. Einstein had quite the sense of humor. One time someone asked him to define entropy. He replied: “It’s when my room gets messy.” Summed that one up.
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Chronos
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posted 27. April 2003 16:42
INFORMATIONAL ENTROPY
Claude Shannon has contributed as much to the body of thermodynamics as any other single scientist, I believe.
I have previously pointed out his somewhat different observation in the similarity between Boolean algebra and telephone switching circuits.
Later, as he was developing the first mathematical theory of information, he noticed something just as important: it seems the formula he had devised for determining the amount of information contained in a message looked strikingly similar to the equations for thermodynamical entropy proposed by Boltzmann. Shannon believed he was on to something new concerning thermodynamics; and stated at the time that if this were not thermodynamics, it certainly was “The daughter of thermodynamics.”
Today, there is little doubt that this relatively new field of information theory falls very firmly into the field of thermodynamics and is governed by the second law.
In my experience of debating this subject over the Internet with scientists from many fields and from virtually every perspective, I have observed that many of the scientists who try to pull information entropy out of the field of thermodynamics tend to do so out of bias against the design contention because it is such a useful tool to ID.
Dr. David Bowman, associate professor of physics at Georgetown, states (in an on-line exchange): “It is not true that "the Second Law of Thermodynamics says nothing about information". In fact, thermodynamic entropy (with which the 2nd law is very concerned) is an example of an information-theoretic quantity. To be precise, the thermodynamic entropy possessed by a macroscopic system is the average minimal amount of further information necessary to determine, with certainty, which microscopic state the system is actually in, given that the system is defined by only its macroscopic state. The thermodynamic entropy of a system is a measure of how much ignorance about the system's microscopic state attends a merely macroscopic description of the system.”
http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199911/0329.html
Of course, I’ve previously stated that over 100 years ago, Ludwig Boltzmann defined entropy as: “Entropy is the opposite of information.”
Shannon approached this phenomenon from a different perspective than I wish to approach it. I believe he overcomplicated a very simple observable fact; granted that his mission was different, because he was seeking to describe a different phenomenon than am I.
Shannon was an engineer for Bell Labs at the time searching for ways to overcome the problem of how to regain, at certain target points across the system, the information a sender has transmitted. There simply was too much noise on the line to understand the information trying to be understood in the 1940s.
Shannon initially developed information entropy as a measure for redundancy. Redundancy is the duplication of critical components of a system with the intention of increasing reliability of the system. In many systems, certain controling devices may be repeated more than once. A good example is the emergency brake on your car. If your main brake goes out, you have another redundant component, the emergency brake that will still stop the car.
Shannon defined a measure of entropy that could determine the capacity of the proper channel to transmit a source as encoded binary digits: Shannon-Weaver entropy. This measure of entropy quickly became useful as a measure of the information contained in a message.
The informational entropy I wish to propose is somewhat different, although it is based on the work of others, including the work of Claude Shannon.
When I used to teach high school science, I would have some fun with my kids with an experiment concerning informational entropy. I would write a paragraph on a piece of paper, say, a poem.
I would then whisper this to the first kid, she would whisper it to the one sitting behind her and this would go around the room to the last kid, who would then write it on the board. I would then write the original message on the board and we would all have a good laugh, because the original message would be so degraded and informational entropy increased to the point that the messages were not even similar.
This is a great example of informational entropy in action. Another I found while running around the Web. It is at altavista.com and is their language translator. I’m going to go over there, and plug in the following paragraph and we will watch it degrade as it is circulated around through several languages: “A wooden barrel is a good way to store whiskey. Whiskey absorbs chemicals from the wood and actually adds flavor to the beverage. This is the accepted method of whiskey storage in America.”
From English to Spanish, then back to English, we get: “A wood barrel is a good way to store the whiskey. The whiskey absorbs chemical agents of the wood and really adds flavor to the drink. This one is the accepted method of storage of the whiskey in America.”
Some slight degradation, but certainly we can still ascertain the original message. Now let’s pass it through a few more languages and see what we get. From English to French, German and Italian then back to English, we get: “A keg gives of wood is the good sense to store to the Whiskys. The whisky it absorbs chemical means of the wood and it really adds the drink of savour. That is the method concurred of the lima of the Whiskys in America.”
Hmmm….this informational entropy is beginning to increase dramatically. But let’s go back over, pass it around through all of the languages and see what we get: “It establish this pleasing impression the feeling { make clear the waste for } whiskys the wood? This absorption wood chemical industry method or the increase eastern part taste drink is not in } lie {. This method agreement Whiskys is the American 粗锉 dependence in the cover } that {.”
Total gibberish and informational entropy has now increased to the point that our original information does not even exist.
There are four laws of classical thermodynamics.
The first law governs a sister law called the law of conservation of energy. The law of conservation of energy dictates that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. It can only be changed. This kind of rules out the inception of the universe via any other method than a designer, doesn’t it? But this argument is for another time and place.
The second law is the law of decay that we are covering in depth in this thread.
The third law states: the entropy of a pure perfect crystal is 0 at 0 K. Mathematically expressed, we can very easily see this: S(0K) = 0.
Finally on this, the fourth law is up for grabs. One possible fourth law of thermodynamics, also called Zeroth’s Law of Thermodynamics, says that if two objects are both at the same temperature as a third, then all three are at the same temperature. Er….no kidding?
This is so blatantly obvious that most teachers of thermodynamics don’t even bother to mention it.
But there are more possibilities to fill this slot. Another was physical chemist Lars Onsager who proposed Onsager's law of reciprocal relations, sometimes called the fourth law of thermodynamics. He received the Nobel Prize for his studies on nonequilibrium thermodynamics concerning systems in which differences in temperature, pressure, or other factors exist. But the problem is that it seems only Onsager and perhaps his wife and kids recognized this as the fourth law.
Chemist John Moore of the University of Wisconsin has proposed one that certainly seems to apply to me: “Discourse on any thermodynamic topic increases spontaneously (and perhaps exponentially).”
But perhaps a leading contender might be a fourth law proposed by Dembski-Kauffman et el.
This one postulates that CSI (complex specified information) must either be conserved or lost in non-intelligent processes. As for me, this states the obvious. Isn’t ‘anything’ either conserved or lost in nature? But admittedly, it might be me lost on this.
This posit seems to state that CSI doesn't just spontaneously arise in natural processes, and that the source will always turn out to be an intelligent cause. In short, this theory is a conservation law for complex specified information. Now, this latter seems very logical to me. I might help them word the concept a little clearer: “Complex specified information can be destroyed but not created.” Worded thus, we have a physical law similar to the law of conservation of energy in that just like matter, CSI cannot poof itself into existence on its own.
So, let them fight it out for the fourth law. I’m going for the fifth in the very next post.
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 27. April 2003 17:17
Chronos: But perhaps a leading contender might be a fourth law proposed by Dembski-Kauffman et el.
I was not aware that others beyond Dembski had proposed this 'fourth law'. Did Kauffman et al really propose this fourth law ala Dembski or did Kauffman propose a very different 'fourth law'?
One has to be careful not to confuse the various proposals for fourth laws.
Kauffman's fourth law seems to be quite different from Dembski's
Kauffman:
quote:
An Attempt to Explore the Hypothesis that the Universe as a Whole might be a Self-Constructing, Coevolving Community of Autonomous Agents that Maximizes the Sustainable Growth in its own Total Effective Dimensionality. Or More Generally, the Universe Follows a Preferred Path Towards Maximum Complexity With Exchange of Mass and Space, Because Maximum Complexity Via Growth Into the Fastest Expanding Adjacent Possible Maximizes Decoherence into Classicity. Maximum Complexity as Attractor Poised Between Universe Expanding and Contracting.
Dembski:
quote:
This relates to another of Dembski's ideas, a proposed fourth law of thermodynamics: the law of conservation of information. This law states simply that complex, specified information is always conserved or lost in natural (non-intelligent) processes. Naturally, this implies that information flows can be traced back to their sources (information doesn't just spontaneously arise in natural processes), and that source will always turn out to be an intelligent cause.
Source
And although Dembski claims that 'CSI' is 'smuggled' in by the algorithm he fails to show how this natural process of smuggling in information is somehow different from CSI smuggled in by ID. I would argue that in both cases the fourth law when applied to open systems is relevant whether the system is opened by ID or by natural processes is irrelevant.
Chronos:
This one postulates that CSI (complex specified information) must either be conserved or lost in non-intelligent processes. As for me, this states the obvious. Isn’t ‘anything’ either conserved or lost in nature? But admittedly, it might be me lost on this
I would argue the latter since in nature it is obvious that not everything is just conserved or lost. A good example is the work by Adami and Schneider who both have shown independently that information can increase in the genome when under selective pressures from the environment. Of course total entropy still increases but locally entropy decreases.
As I have argued in other threads, Dembski's fourth law appears to be nothing more than the second law of thermodynamics applied to closed systems.
WHile I am not sure what your arguments really are, there is no doubt that entropy can locally decrease/information locally increase and that natural selection is but one of many processes which could lead to such decrease in entropy/increase in information.
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Chronos
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posted 27. April 2003 19:17
“I was not aware that others beyond Dembski had proposed this 'fourth law'. Did Kauffman et al really propose this fourth law ala Dembski or did Kauffman propose a very different 'fourth law'?
One has to be careful not to confuse the various proposals for fourth laws.”
JEP: Yes, one should be most careful and I would appreciate input from those that are familiar with this fourth law that might have insight. Are the laws proposed by Dembski and Kaufmann two entirely separate laws? It was certainly two entirely separate books.
If they are different, and I would like to know, then there is a lot of disinformation out here on the Net. Some pages seem to describe the laws as being totally different and credit either Kauffman or Dembski with that particular version.
Then you have pages that tie Kauffman and Dembski directly together such as this ARN page: “Perhaps his best book is the forthcoming No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity cannot be Purchased without Intelligence, currently circulated as a pre-print and due out next month, in which Dembski develops the implications of results in information theory for, among other things, Kauffman's proposed fourth law of thermodynamics.”
http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/kauffmandembski111101.htm
So here it sounds like Dembski is developing math to support Kauffman’s law.
“And although Dembski claims that 'CSI' is 'smuggled' in by the algorithm he fails to show how this natural process of smuggling in information is somehow different from CSI smuggled in by ID. I would argue that in both cases the fourth law when applied to open systems is relevant whether the system is opened by ID or by natural processes is irrelevant.”
JEP: But then you would be ignoring a paramount principle of the overall concept, wouldn’t you? That concept is that CSI cannot occur via naturalism and must have occurred via design. Isn’t this the whole point?
JEP:
This one postulates that CSI (complex specified information) must either be conserved or lost in non-intelligent processes. As for me, this states the obvious. Isn’t ‘anything’ either conserved or lost in nature? But admittedly, it might be me lost on this
”I would argue the latter since in nature it is obvious that not everything is just conserved or lost.”
JEP: I would disagree with this but must admit that Dembski could be using this word in a way slightly different than those who study the sciences use it. Considering the first law of thermodynamics, energy can’t be either conserved or lost because the two terms are mutually exclusive and you have to pick one if this is to be a law. 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.
“WHile I am not sure what your arguments really are, there is no doubt that entropy can locally decrease/information locally increase and that natural selection is but one of many processes which could lead to such decrease in entropy/increase in information.”
JEP: I have one more post to make. Then I will post a document to tie all of this together into the big picture of ID verses naturalism. At that point discourse on this can begin.
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Moderator
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posted 27. April 2003 20:29
Chronos,
Let me give you the same warning I've given almost everyone else.
Quote for quote replies are not permitted at Brainstorms.
Write as if you were in an actual conversation. You don't repeat exactly what the other person said. You might rephrase what they said in your own words or incorporate it into the text of your actual response.
The main interest is to prevent point by point rebuttals. You are actually closer to the idea that we're after when you said that they should be post for post replies rather than quote for quote replies.
[ 27. April 2003, 21:08: Message edited by: Moderator ]
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Chronos
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posted 27. April 2003 20:43
see above.
[ 27. April 2003, 21:08: Message edited by: Moderator ]
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