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Author
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Topic: The Theory of evolution in the Perspective of Thermodynamics and Experience-de Jong
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Scott
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Member # 1222
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posted 16. May 2006 12:14
quote:
Thermodynamics concerns work. There is plenty of energy available in the Earth's biosphere to perform any manner of work. There is also plenty of high-energy particles available, including U/V radiation and chemically active molecules such as ozone even lightning.
From the premiss that energy is available to perform any manner of work you cannot conclude that all manner of work will be performed.
Your argument lacks the requisite logic. It is a non-sequitur.
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Zachriel
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Member # 1793
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posted 16. May 2006 12:59
Scott: "From the premiss that energy is available to perform any manner of work you cannot conclude that all manner of work will be performed."
Certainly true.
Scott: "Your argument lacks the requisite logic. It is a non-sequitur."
That wasn't the claim being addressed.
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Scott
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Member # 1222
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posted 16. May 2006 21:45
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That wasn't the claim being addressed.
Your argument is a non-sequitur. It doesn't address any claim.
You say that there was plenty of energy available to perform any manner of work. So what?
It doesn't follow from this that any work was actually performed.
quote:
Zachriel: There is nothing within the laws of thermodynamics that precludes abiogenesis.
How do you know?
I will grant that there is nothing within the laws of thermodynamics that precludes plenty of energy from being available in the Earth's biosphere.
From this is still does not follow that any actual work has been performed. It also does not follow from this that "there is nothing within the laws of thermodynamics that precludes abiogenesis."
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Zachriel
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Member # 1793
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posted 17. May 2006 07:27
Scott: "Your argument is a non-sequitur. It doesn't address any claim."
kyle7: "Energy has to be controlled by mechanisms to enable the local decrease in entropy."
This was a false claim, which he derived from De Jong.
Scott: "I will grant that there is nothing within the laws of thermodynamics that precludes plenty of energy from being available in the Earth's biosphere."
That is correct. There are two aspects of this problem. The total energy gradient to perform substantial work is certainly sufficient. It allows water to be pumped miles up into the atmosphere and complex water crystals to form. The second aspect is that many instances of molecular work have to be done one quantum at a time. That means that energetic particles must be available. The Sun provides ample high-energy photons. And the same thunderstorm complex that manufactures water crystals, also generates lightning and a variety of related ionized molecular products.
Scott: "From this is still does not follow that any actual work has been performed."
That is correct.
--
[edited "energy" to "energy gradient"]
Zachriel
[ 17. May 2006, 08:15: Message edited by: Zachriel ]
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William DeJong
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Member # 1162
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posted 19. May 2006 10:51
Kyle, Bruce, Zachariel, Scott,
I have followed your discussion on the second law of thermodynamics with great interest, and would like to contribute to it by making two observations:
1. Entropy (S) is related to the likelihood of the state of a system (W) by Bolzmans law: S = k Ln W (see page 3 of my paper that is under discussion here, http://www.iscid.org/pcid/2005/4/1/dejong_everyday_experience.php). Since likelihood is related to information and to order, entropy is related to information and to order. A tidied desk is less likely than a messy desk, and therefore has lower entropy. Carefully positioned ink on a piece of paper forming strings of letters is less likely than a mist of ink spots on an identical piece of paper. Therefore the carefully positioned ink can represent information, and the mist of ink spots cannot. The piece of paper with letters is less likely and has a lower entropy than the piece of paper with only inkspots. Ultimately, chemical processes will break off the ink, the letters will fade, the information will disappear, and both pieces of paper will move to the most likely state of total disorder in a continuing rise of the entropy.
2. In the virtual reality of the theory of evolution, molecules can begin ordering themselves, develop processes to maintain this order (antagonizing the second law), and expand this order further and further (antagonizing the second law). From the discussion here, I have learned that such processes do actually happen in our laboratories. This is great news, since this will solve all energy problems of the world. Without directed effort, entropy goes down. This decline can be tapped, and used to make a motor run, resulting in fact into a perpetual mobile.
[ 22. May 2006, 04:08: Message edited by: William DeJong ]
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Scott
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posted 19. May 2006 11:05
Wm.,
I agree completely. There was plenty of energy available in the early Earth's biosphere to perform any manner of work, and there is still plenty of energy available in the Earth's biosphere even today to perform any manner of work.
There is no reason there should ever be an energy crisis.
It amazes me how unintelligent life could harness that energy and put it to use, and yet we intelligent humans cannot.
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Zachriel
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Member # 1793
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posted 19. May 2006 13:37
William DeJong: "A tidied desk is less likely than a messy desk, and therefore has lower entropy."
This is precisely wrong.
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Zachriel
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Member # 1793
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posted 19. May 2006 13:44
Journal of Chemical Education
"The thermodynamic entropy change from human-defined order to disorder in the giant Egyptian stones themselves, in the clothing and books in a room or papers on a desk, and in the millions of cards in the world's casinos is precisely the same: Zero."
"If one wishes to substantiate a claim or a guess that some particular process involves a change of thermodynamic or statistical entropy, one should ask oneself whether there exists a reversible heat effect..."
http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/Journal/Issues/1999/Oct/abs1385.html
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Zachriel
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posted 19. May 2006 14:06
Scott: "It amazes me how unintelligent life could harness that energy and put it to use, and yet we intelligent humans cannot."
Humans do put the energy of the Sun to work. The very sustenance of life comes from growing food in the Sun (some the the energy being lost in the process as per the Second Law of Thermodynamics). Over the centuries, people have also harnessed the power of the Sun by using beasts of burden, and burning wood to heat their homes and cook their food.
Only recently have fossil fuels become predominant, and even that is the stored energy of the Sun.
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William DeJong
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Member # 1162
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posted 22. May 2006 06:10
Zachriel states at 19 May 2006 13:37: "The thesis that a piece of paper stained with ink has a higher entropy than a piece of paper with the same amount of ink positioned in lines of letters, is incorrect".
This point of view contradicts Bolzmann's Law (which links the entropy of a system to the likelihood of its state) and is grounded in Frank Lambert's paper " Shuffled Cards, Messy Desks, and Disorderly Dorm Rooms - Examples of Entropy Increase? Nonsense!" at
http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/Journal/Issues/1999/Oct/abs1385.html .
Lambert distinguishes several types of entropy: thermodynamic entropy, statistical entropy, information entropy, and contends that these types of entropy are fundamentally different and are confused by the majority of physicist, chemists, mathematicians and engineers.
Lambert appears to look upon entropy as a concept that is identical with the concept "energy content". Since there are as many ink molecules on the stained paper as on the lettered paper, he claims that their entropy is equal. To get rid of Bolzmann's Law, he contends this law only holds for the micro particles of ink and paper, which are identical. The differences in directed effort to move the ink molecules in place on the paper, is not covered by Boltzmann's Law, says Lambert.
In homes, offices, factories and laboratories, chaos never turns into order on its own and proceeds to maintain and expand itself. In hundreds of years, this daily life experience has been laid down in laws by empirical science, using the concept "entropy". The natural tendency of a system to turn into its most likely state of total disorder, unless directed energy be supplied to it, is formalized mathematically by the second law of thermodynamics. Miller's experiment (see page 4 of my paper that is under discussion here, http://www.iscid.org/pcid/2005/4/1/dejong_everyday_experience.php) is a clear example of this fundamental property of reality. Random flashes of electricity can turn basic organic substances into the building blocks of DNA, which are less likely than the basic organic substances they have originated from, and have lower entropy. But the next moment, new flashes may destroy these building blocks, the larger they are the faster. On the long run, undirected energy will not result in a decrease of entropy. Therefore, Miller transported the building blocks formed towards a distillation flask, sheltering them for destruction by new flashes of lightning, resulting into the production of more and more concentrated organic soup. In fact Miller built a primitive DNA-building-block-factory, resulting in the production of more complicated, less likely, organic molecules, at the cost of supplying directed energy. How wonderful it would be that simple molecules would start ordering themselves into complicated macro-molecules, and start maintaining themselves, and expand themselves further and further, without the supply of directed energy. Then complex chemicals would become available for free. But such things only exist in the virtual reality of (macro) evolutionary theory.
[ 22. May 2006, 06:12: Message edited by: William DeJong ]
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2ndclass
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Member # 1979
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posted 22. May 2006 15:59
William,
I assume by "Boltzmann's Law" you mean Boltzmann's definition of entropy, which can be applied to any type of statistical information. This definition says nothing about whether such entropy can decrease, and the 2nd Law of Thermo is of little help since it applies only to thermodynamic entropy. Neither Boltzmann nor the Laws of Thermo say anything about "directed effort" or "directed energy."
The heart of the problem is that you're taking an intuitive, non-mathematical approach to a counterintuitive, mathematical concept. If you formalize your argument, as Granville Sewell did in the appendix here, then determining whether you're right or wrong should be pretty straightforward. (Sewell's misstep was applying premise (2) to open systems, which results in a conclusion that happens to be true for thermodynamic entropy, but is false in general.)
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Zachriel
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Member # 1793
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posted 22. May 2006 19:25
William DeJong: "The differences in directed effort to move the ink molecules in place on the paper, is not covered by Boltzmann's Law, says Lambert."
That is incorrect, and correctly noted by Lambert, "The agent of movement undergoes a thermodynamic entropy increase in the process." The different patterns of ink on the page have the same thermodynamic entropy, but the work to place the ink on the page requires energy. This causes an increase of entropy in the penman as he burns calories.
In addition, it's quite possible that what you consider to be splotches on the parchment are letters in a language you simply don't understand. Your understanding of any semantic meaning in the ink patterns is irrelevant to the determination of the thermodynamic properties of the parchment. Nor will learning this new language change the entropy of the parchment.
--
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is an observation. That's what makes it a physical law. Energy tends to spread out and become unusable. Any statistical interpretation of this fundamental observation must be consistent with this observation. There is no more available energy in the ink written in English than written in splotches. There may be a difference in information content or semantic value, but that would be a different issue and require different tools of analysis.
(If you really wanted to get pedantic, you could add up the eigenstates for every molecule on the parchment. You would find that the various arrangements of ink are completely insignificant to the vast numbers of arrangements and vibrations and twisted bonds of the 10^22 or so atoms that make up the paper and ink. There are more eigenvalues in a single dot of ink than every possible distinguishable rearrangements of the splotches.)
[ 22. May 2006, 19:33: Message edited by: Zachriel ]
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Christopher D. Beling
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Member # 723
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posted 23. May 2006 17:10
Zach, In the book Biological Physics Philip Nelson clearly spells out that thermodynamic entropy equates with informational entropy. There are many other books that make this clear.
The 2nd law of thermodynamics (the law of entropy increase) is not just an empirical law, but is derivable by statistics. Admittedly the way in which Boltzmann did this in the late 19th century in his famous H-theorem was a little inadequate and came under some criticism (although basically ok in approach), but now we have much better ways of proving it using statistics and probability arguments - see for example Time's Arrow; the origin of thermodynamic behavior by Michael Mackey. In essence a system will always move (on average) to a microstate of overal smaller probability. This may seem an odd thing to say - counterintuitive, but remember we are transiting to a system state (not microstate) which has more complexions in configuration space (more complexions means that for each system microstate the probability is less). [In William's argument by analogy - there are many ways for an untidy room - but each of them is in that state we call "untidy" - each way to configure the room as "untidy" in itself is a highly improbable state - the room continues to move to a "microstate" of lower probability]
This is beautifully brought out in William Dembski's law of Information Increase (which applies to Stochastic process - a category that most physical changes come into)[p 159 of No Free Lunch :
I(A@B)=I(A)+I(A given B)
I(A given B) is the information we gain about A by knowing B. From this law we see that the amount of Shannon Information describing a system can only increase for physical processes [i.e. I(A@B)>(A) as the system configuration in an omega space transits from state A to state B]. Since Shannon Information is -log(P) this is equivalent to the probability P (microstate) increasing - as already described above.
The general law of "Shannon Information Increase" is applicable to thermodynamic systems in which case the thermodynamic entropy (defined by heat transfer /Temperature) increase [and we get the 2nd law in its common heat application form]. It is also applicable to configurational entropies - i.e. the configurational entropy of the specific DNA code or the coding on a polypeptide protein - see for example The Mystery of Life's Origin "Mystery of Lifes Origin" [see p 136] by Thaxton et al (these systems of which have the same temperature and heat content).
Thus Wm de Jong I believe is correct - not in a thermodynamic sense - but in the broader sense of the 2nd law being considered as the Law of Shannon Information increase. This is indeed a broader definition - but because it is a true law - we must abide by its restraints. The 2nd law of thermodynamics (heat application) is a sub-law of the general.
[ 23. May 2006, 17:51: Message edited by: Christopher D. Beling ]
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kyle7
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Member # 191
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posted 23. May 2006 20:10
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kyle7: "One is that a large number of controlled and interacting parts are required to enable local decreases of entropy, where the local system is moving significantly far from equilibrium and the system is preforming a number of functions."
This is false. Nothing precludes local decreases in entropy when energy moves through a system. Snow is one example. Lightning is another quite dramatic example and can provide whatever level of ionization you need to drive any reaction.
Zach you don't get it! Yes when systems are out of balance (not in equilibrium) they will tend to move back toward equilibrium. These are expected processes. Yes, lightning is a system moving toward equilibrium. Excessive charge build-up will discharge from the negative to the positive ion region. As I said before, there are some natural mechanisms, such as lighting, but they don't have the ability to accomplish "useful work". According to you lighting should hit Jack's beanstalk and cause it to grow high into the sky! But this doesn't happen! Why? Because you need to harness the energy by the use of a thermodynamic mechanism that has the complexity to enable the processes to occur that need to occur! At the molecular level, you are talking about billions and billions of specified applications of energy for Jacks beanstalk to grow. Not just any energy will create a functioning cell!!! The reason why Jack's beanstalk does not grow when lighting hits it is the same reason why molecules doen't naturally migrate to one side of the room.
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kyle7
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posted 23. May 2006 20:29
Dr. Frank Lambert article is misleading at best. Every therodynamics book that I have read has always discussed the notion of order related to the second law of thermodynamics. A simple thought experiment can show Dr. Lambert to be in error. Take two gases and statistically calculate the entropy for two cases: 1) where the two gases are divided -- one gas on one side and the other gas on the other side; 2) where the gases are mixed together. If lambert is correct then the two entropies should be the same. But he is wrong for the more ordered state of the separated gases has a lower entropy!
The "Journal of Chemical Education" should be ashamed that they allowed this paper to be published!
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