Entropy and the immutable law of death

On another thread, we were discussing whether or not the theory of evolution had a general direction which, at least in the minds of racists, gave them some justification for rationalizing their ideologies.My antagonists immediately latched hold of a quote I provided concerning entropy. The quote was taken from panspermist enthusiast, Brig Klyce, who argues that much of the arguing over "entropy" between creationists and evolutionists are somewhat needless. The reason, according to Klyce, is that they are often using the term "entropy" to mean different states-- either thermodynamic or logical, but that these terms are not well defined.When I discovered this essay, it immediately struck a chord in me because I understood exactly what he was getting at.I have been a long time advocate for the naming of a natural law, that to my knowledge, goes on nameless. This seems almost impossible to me given how axiomatic the law is.The law I'm referring to is the law of death. Klyce opens with:

"Sometimes people say that life violates the second law of thermodynamics. This is not the case; we know of nothing in the universe that violates that law. So why do people say that life violates the second law of thermodynamics?"

He goes on to explain thermodynamic entropy, which is hardly contested. But is their another kind of entropy-- one that is well understood in our minds, and yet remains, for some odd reason, nameless? He further explains:

"Entropy is also used to mean disorganization or disorder... This sort of entropy is clearly different. Physical units do not pertain to it, and (except in the case of digital information) an arbitrary convention must be imposed before it can be quantified. To distinguish this kind of entropy from thermodynamic entropy, let's call it logical entropy.
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In spite of the important distinction between the two meanings of entropy, the rule as stated above for thermodynamic entropy seems to apply nonetheless to the logical kind: entropy in a closed system can never decrease. And really, there would be nothing mysterious about this law either. It's similar to saying things never organize themselves. (The original meaning of organize is "to furnish with organs.") Only this rule has little to do with thermodynamics... The rule that things never organize themselves is also upheld in our everyday experience. Without someone to fix it, a broken glass never mends. Without maintenance, a house deteriorates. Without management, a business fails. Without new software, a computer never acquires new capabilities. Never."

An excellent point. Yet classical entropy would assert that as long as energy is being introduced/replenished, a system won't deteriorate. Clearly that is only telling half the story. Yes, when we eat, we gain new energy, which is ultimately supplied by the sun. At some point, though, we are still dying in a very real sense, no matter how hard we try.Aside from which, the introduction of energy is not a sort of catch all reason for why life exists to begin with. You can't just blast sunlight on the earth and expect life to proliferate. If that were the case, then all of the planets in the solar system would be inhabited with life. Clearly that is not the case.There first must exist some mechanism which converts raw energy in to useful energy. For example: Sunlight blasts our roofs all of the time. The introduction of that energy certainly isn't improving the roof, now is it? In fact, it could be said that it is actually slowly deteriorating and dilapidating the roof. However, if we were to place solar panels on the roof, now we have a mechanism which converts that raw energy in to useful energy.The same is found within nature. Sunlight is only useful to a plant because the plant has a mechanism to convert that energy. The process of photosynthesis is only made true because of that catalysis. And yet, the plant will die regardless at some point.The big question is, why?Well, this is where evo's and creo's get to arguing. One side is arguing about thermodynamic entropy, while the other side is arguing about the other kind of entropy which stipulates that all systems tend towards disorder. Maintenance of that system only slows the inevitable process.Death... It happens. There is nothing that stops it. Life in the physical is intimately tied in to death in every way. Its a constant. And its as true of an immutable law as the 2LoT is. Why then is their not a specific name for it?Any thoughts?

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"It is better to shun the bait, than struggle in the snare." -Ravi Zacharias

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

There are a lot of potential topics here, but I think it just about holds together as a single thread. I went for ID rather than misc, mostly by accident - but it kind of fits. I'll move it if you want.

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First off the bat: The law of death has been discussed here before, it might be useful to take a look to remind ourselves of that exchange: Message 5. No - classical entropy would not assert that. Classical entropy would say that as long as workable energy is added into the system at an equal or greater rate than the amount of workable energy is leaving the system, then there will remain a steady amount of workable energy in the system.It doesn't say that the system won't deteriorate. If the workable energy is doing work, then that work may well continue being done, depending on how the energy is put into the system. As discussed above: we aren't dying like a machine that wears out is dying. Our cells are making clones, the clones aren't exact - they change according to DNA, so that we develop, grow older and die. We die because there is no selective pressure on the system to change it so that we live longer. Only folk like Hovind say that kind of thing - scientists don't say 'life got here because of the introduction of energy'. Without energy, there'd be no life - but energy is not the only thing required and no scientist has said otherwise. I even remember the slides Hovind used to pull up, with peeling car paint and roofs, followed by solar panels. Heh. Anyway, yes - obviously workable energy can be used to do work in destroying paint - as well as giving us cancer. It can be used to do other things too, like generate electricity, wind, melt ice and form clouds, it can be used to warm up a catalyst in a chemical environment so that certain types of reaction can take place.Workable energy is great! The link above I gave should answer that question. Let me do it again here. Let us assume that x is how long a plant lives assuming it never dies of old age. We can assume x is not infinite since the plant is likely to die of other things long before an infinite amount of time has passed. Let us say that after 5 years the plant is almost certainly going to have been eaten, starved to death, frozen in a harsh winter, or some other plantish type of death.Now - let us assume plants do die of old age. Let us assume that system is in place that is in charge of the development and cycle of the plant. We also assume that this system was generated through evolutionary means. The conclusion we reach here is that the system is unlikely to develop in such a way so as to provide the plant with infinite life (assuming not getting killed or starving etc) since it will eventually die through some other measure anyway. Such a system is not needed, and thus: the system of growth comes to an end and the plant now has a maximum lifespan imposed upon it. There are various 'laws of Mortality' such as Gompertz-Makeham law of mortality or the Compensation law of mortality and the proposed Universal mortality law. Yes, systems tend towards disorder. Systems tend towards the most probable state. That's the thermodynamic entropy - and it's not really different than the second. Any other laws are generally pulled out of someone's ass. The issue that escapes 'creos' is that work can be done to change the tendency temporarily. That is what is happening on earth. The problem might be that creos see the earth as the be all and end all whereas 'evos' see the earth (and especially life on it) as a tiny tiny blip on universal time scales. Yes, eventually the tendency for disorder will be realized and life will end. Either because the fuel will run out, or the atmosphere becomes too toxic. Whatever the cause - life is going to become extinct, and relatively soon.So evolution, biology - doesn't go against these laws in anyway - they conform to it with a bloody mindedness that is frankly, indifferent. We are all going to die - life will come to an end, and there will be nothing to remember us by.

I agree that this thread has the potential to go in all sorts of different directions. We'll just keep an eye on it.As far as placement goes, Misc Topics is probably most appropriate, IMO, but don't move it now. The Intelligent Design forum isn't a bad placement.I'm really curious to see what contributions everyone will be making.

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"It is better to shun the bait, than struggle in the snare." -Ravi Zacharias

You must have a memory like an elephant. Apparently I participated on that thread and don't even remember it. Okay, then steady. If there is an abundant supply of energy, why must we die? And why is not such a prevailing, constant law, such as this, named? Whatever the reason is seems almost unimportant here though. We know that we all will die, since there is no one who has remained immortal in a temporal body. I want to know why this remains unnamed, and couldn't this reasonably be considered entropy, even if we are not directly discussing thermodynamics as Klyce as gone and described?

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Aside from which, the introduction of energy is not a sort of catch all reason for why life exists to begin with.

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That's not true. The general speculation about how life began simply and ambiguously starts with energy. Well, for however misguided most people think of him, he's right about that. Isn't that evidence of irreducible complexity? You can't have one without the other, since raw energy does nothing without something to convert it. Yes, all that is understood. But why must it be without invoking this principle of "logical entropy" described by Klyce which is separate of Boltzmann's constant? But this model only goes in to how mortality rates can be quantified with specific reasons of death. I'm curious to know why it is that while we continue to supply new energy, that we still die anyhow, no matter how we try. Yes, we have found ways of achieving longevity, but only for so long. The inevitable cell-death will afflict us all. Could not this law be attributed in entropic terms-- that all things tend toward disorder? And what exactly prevents this disorder while we are still maturing before adulthood? What biological systems determine these things? Would you be inclined to agree with Klyce that much confusion may be averted if we simply understood one another through the naming of a new law? No, I'm not asserting that evolution, or more broadly, biology, goes against any such law. I mean, how could anyone?

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"It is better to shun the bait, than struggle in the snare." -Ravi Zacharias

I suppose the biggest problem I am having with this is trying to parse what this is an argument for or against.Traditionally, this argument has been brought to bear against evolution. There is this idea that is not well defined amongst critics called logical entropy and subsequent laws saying that it cannot decrease as a supposed barrier to "macroevolution".Yet in your OP, you seem to concede that if there is a way to convert "raw" engery into "useful" energy that there is a pathway for the decrease of this so-called logical entropy which suggests that this argument in only leveled at origins of life and not subsequent modifcation of the mechanism for converting energy. Once you have a single cell that replicates, mutates, and has the machinery capable of doing the energy conversion then there is no argument against evolution.Fundamentally, I take issue with the entire concept of logical entropy for a couple of reasons.1. No one ever produces a metric for determining how much of this kind of entropy a particular entity has.2. Because of the lack of ability to measure logical entropy, all claims about so-called "laws" that drive the conservation or tendency of the quantity of this entropy are completely and utterly baseless.Depending on how you define logical entropy and how measure it, it very well may be that the tendency of logical entropy in a closed system is toward 0 rather than infinity, completely opposite that of thermodynamic entropy. The key with the definition is that you must be able to derive a metric from the definition.WE just don't know because no one will define it. The only thing we have are these claims entirely based on analogy (sun hitting solor panels, etc) and personal opinion.It is just not convincing assuming that is even what you are arguing about anyway.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Hehe - it's a knack. Not much of a useful one, but Percy has harnessed it. You know when the search engine here doesn't work? It's because I'm sleeping. The question really should be - why should we live forever? We die because we are a delicate piece of kit that can get broken very easily. We are after all a bag of chemicals (mostly water), disturbing that bag significantly can interrupt all those chemical processes that are called life. Without them, there is no life.We die because we are killed or die of old age. We die of old age for the reasons I gave. It has been named mortality. It isn't entropy because we aren't one thing. If we were made up of cells that never cloned themselves those cells would eventually break down through damage or whatever and you can call that 'entropy' of a sort if you like. However, the cells reproduce - meaning that we are not the same stuff we were 20 years ago. That stuff as degraded, worn out etc long long ago. Ageing then, is not entropic. No - it requires certain chemicals and often a catalyst of some kind is postulated. Energy is also needed, but is not the only thing. The workable energy is needed to do work, otherwise the system reverts to its most thermodynamically probable state. So he knows some examples of workable energy being used for causing certain chemical reactions that we define as 'damage'. That does not mean all chemical reactions fuelled by energy would be regarded as 'damage'. Not irreducible complexity no. Raw energy doesn't do a lot until it interacts with something, then work happens. What that work is, depends on the interaction. It might be classed as destructive or constructive. The 'conversion' you speak of is just interaction of energy. But how does entropy of information come into at all? We grow and develop because of our DNA. Our DNA develops us from blastocyst to embryo to child to adult to elderly to dead. It does this because there is no reason for it not to. I'll try and word it in a way an IDist might, though I don't necessarily agree with it:In order for the information in DNA to change so that we don't age as rapidly some 'logical work' is needed to be done, similar to the work that needs to be done to overcome thermodynamic tendencies. Since we are likely to be killed by predators or starve to death at some point, being able to develop for a thousand years is not much better than living as only developing as long as is needed. The amount of 'logical work' that can be done decreases the longer we want to increase lifespan. So we have a lot of logical work to keep us alive until we are 16, there is a little less logical work available to get us to 40 and a lot less to get us to 60, almost no work available to get to 100 and basically no logical work to get much beyond that. Logical work is done by natural selection and is normally called 'selection pressure'Think about it like this. Let us assume a world exists where the only death is through car accidents (and old age) and everybody drives. Let us say, the average person gets into a fatal accident once every 150 years. How would DNA evolve to develop these beings for 500 years? DNA that develops them for 200 years would be almost exactly as succssful. Indeed - the older we postulate - the more likely it is that the being will never survive to that age. The probability of survival goes down by the year. 70% of people don't survive past 150 years or so, 90% will be dead not long after that.Let us say that a mutant came along whose DNA allowed to live for 500 years. What is the probability that this will ever be exploited? Very small. If this being survived to 500, they'd have lots of children - let us say 40. Let us say that half of them do not inherit the long life genes. Do they have an disadvantage over their kin? A tiny one - and it will probably not make a difference - the disadvantaged kin will still be able to reproduce, and will in all probability do so about the same amount as the long lifers (since the long lifers are still massively likely to die by the time they reach 150 anyway).There is thus no selective pressure to continue developing for that long.Life doesn't just work towards creating an adult, and then maintaining that adult - it develops the body continuously over time, but not forever since there is no reason it should and doing so would require mutating in a way that won't make a significant difference - and it makes less difference as the time factor gets larger. Eventually the difference any mutation would make is so small that it is overwhelmed by the forces of chance (ie getting into a fatal car accident). The 'disorder' affects us as children as much as it does adults. Hopefully I have explained sufficiently that this process is all part of development. DNA determines what proteins/enzymes are produced and basically when. As the being gets older, different chemicals are manufactured. Eventually their comes a point when the chemicals being produced aren't quite the right ones, or not as much of them - the DNA is doing what it says to do, but that DNA doesn't have a lot of selection driving it towards making a spritely young and strong body - so it doesn't bother. No. Why not name a new law now, describe it and try to avert confusion? I think the confusion can best averted by studying the subject. There are theories of sensecence and mortality, why not stick with those?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

I think you're confusing "energy" with "workable energy". Workable energy can also be thought of as usable energy.It's the difference between having lots of gas for your car. And having lots of gas for your computer. There may be plenty of energy all around us, but only certain parts can make use of certain kinds.There are also many different parts to our bodies. The same way you can have lots of gas for your car, but your tires can still go flat. You're still left with a dead car. Or your gas tank itself can get a hole in it. You can have plenty of energy, but without a way to utilize it, it's useless.Adding enery itself isn't always a good thing either. I mean, you can add energy in the form of a nuclear bomb and things definitely tend to get a lot less organized But I think that what you're talking about is why our bodies break down. And it's not really entropy at all. It's more that our bodies are just plain made with stuff that rots easily. It's like our bodies are a bucket with holes in it. And as we age, more holes are put into the bucket. We can keep filling the bucket with water, but eventually it doesn't matter, the holes are just going to be too much for any amount of added water to make a difference. That doesn't have anything to do with entropy, just shotty building materials.

Its not really argument either for or against anything. If anything, its just an exercise in brainstorming. I'm just trying to gather peoples opinions on the matter. There are no evolutionary ties in to this particular argument. At the least, as far as it relates to that, is that perhaps a lot of confusion could be ameliorated if we simply defined terms better. As far as it relates to biological function, the argument is designed to refute the poor argument that entropy only corresponds to closed systems. I believe there is a basis to discuss the little discussed notion that life does not organize itself without something necessitating the action.IOW, you can't just supply energy and, voila!, life, without something to first convert that energy in to something useful. Nor will the abundance of energy stop death. I think quaint terms don't tell the whole story. I think we need to distinguish terms of entropy. Sure, once you have ________. (insert arbitrary rule here). The problem is, how do you get there to begin with. Its a chicken/egg problem.I really wasn't intending for this inquiry to be a question of life's origins so much, but I'll play along for the time being. To quote Klyce quoting others:

In Evolution, Thermodynamics and Information, Jeffrey S. Wicken also adopts the terms "thermal" and "configurational." But here they both pertain only to the non-energetic "information content" of a thermodynamic state, and "energetic" information is also necessary for the complete description of a system. Shannon entropy is different from all of these, and not a useful concept to Wicken. Nevertheless, he says that evolution and the origin of life are not separate problems and, "The most parsimonious explanation is to assume that life always existed"
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Roger Penrose's treatment of entropy is worth mentioning. In The Emperor's New Mind, he nimbly dodges the problem of assigning physical units to logical entropy:
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In order to give the actual entropy values for these compartments we should have to worry a little about the question of the units that are chosen (metres, Joules, kilograms, degrees Kelvin, etc.). That would be out of place here, and in fact, for the utterly stupendous entropy values that I shall be giving shortly, it makes essentially no difference at all what units are in fact chosen. However, for definiteness (for the experts), let me say that I shall be taking natural units, as are provided by the rules of quantum mechanics, and for which Boltzmann's constant turns out to be unity: k = 1."

And yet we know for certain that it exists. Attach whatever coefficient seems fitting. The point is, it is as axiomatic as the 2LoT is. Very interesting. We see that they are not the same thing, yet, its almost that they need each other to make complete sense. In informational theory, what is the common metric in understanding lose information? Anyone know? Yes, which is why I'm astonished that no one really has. Claude Shannon certainly began going that route, but he never assigned any physical units. Ronald Fisher talked a bit about it, but he never defined it. Penrose and Fenyman briefly talked about it.I'm wondering why.

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"It is better to shun the bait, than struggle in the snare." -Ravi Zacharias

We're in competition with other organisms for the same resources. "Our" bodies are just a food supply to somebody else. We die when we can't rebuild faster than we're being eaten.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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Thermodynamic entropy IS entropy. Perhaps some people have latched onto the word to try to claim a scientific basis for why life cannot evolve. Then when someone calls them on it they say "Oh I didn't mean THERMODYNAMIC entropy, I meant some other kind of entropy." "Locigal Entropy" as you call it, is giving a name to what your intuition tells you is true. However, it has no foundation in science. In fact we see all kinds of instances where order arises from chaos. Life arising from non-life is the most obvious. But I've seen stratified rock formations and beautiful natural rock arches which are very ordered and arose where previously there was no order. To be clear, there is no universal law which states that everything everywhere must move toward disorder.

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As far as it relates to biological function, the argument is designed to refute the poor argument that entropy only corresponds to closed systems. I believe there is a basis to discuss the little discussed notion that life does not organize itself without something necessitating the action.

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Entropy does not only refer to closed systems. However the idea that LOCAL entropy must increase refers only to closed systems (IIRC technically "isolated" is more accurate than closed). So the argument you refer to - when your misunderstandings are removed is a correct reply to assertions that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. There is no equivalent law for information theory, so such arguments do not apply - because there is nothing for them to refute.The second sentence of the quoted paragraph seems to have nothing to do with the first. Nor is it sufficiently well-defined to deserve much comment.Your answers to the other points raised are also poor Your answer to these does not address the question. The quote from Penrose shows that Penrose DOES have a metric and even shows that the entropy he is measuring is not Klyces "logical entropy". He just doesn't bother putting any detail into the units of measurement. The relevance of Klyces references to Wicken are also in question - and on doing a little reasearch I would say that I cannot trust Klyces representation of Wicken.Wicken's book is apparently "approaches evolution as an expression of physical laws and thermodynamic theory". It "explains how genetic information is organized, how it evolves..." That doesn't sound as if it offers any hope for your views or even Klyce's.Further investigation uncovers the fact that Wicken argues that the 2LoT will cause abiogenesis to occur. I suppose it's not surprising that Klyce tries to mislead on that point. See p4-5 of the thesis available here (pdf)

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And yet we know for certain that it exists. Attach whatever coefficient seems fitting. The point is, it is as axiomatic as the 2LoT is.

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We don't know for certain that it exists - I am all but certain that Klyce's "logical entropy" does NOT exist.The 2LoT is NOT axiomatic.And we can't attach units to a number that we DON'T HAVE. Shannon entropy has a metric, but no units. Penrose simply used the "natural" units rather than worrying about conversion into more commonly used standards. They had metrics. You can have a metric without units - but you can't apply units without a metric.

So far as I know, no-one has ever argued that "entropy only corresponds to closed systems", a phrase which doesn't actually mean anything, and which gets no google hits whatsoever. So there's some law which you can't define, but you know it to be "axiomatic"?No Nobel Prize for you, my lad.

I have seen many an "evolutionist" argue that "the second law only applies to closed systems" without the appropriate caveats. That bare statement is, of course, false, as an appropraiate formulation of the second law applies to all systems.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.