Thermodynamics

Could you substantiate that this is indeed the second law of thermodynamics? The second law I'm familiar with says that, in a closed system, the avaliable energy to do work decreases over time. It says nothing of order and disorder. Evolution has no need to "get around it", in fact, evolution - or any life process - could not occur if the second law was not in effect:1) Life chemistry is entropic. The chemistry of living things uses energy to do work, leaving less energy avaliable for work when its done. That's the second law.2) Evolution requires imperfect replication of genetic material. An overall trend from order to disorder ensures this will be the case. Well, wait, now. Complexity and order are not the same thing. The second law says nothing about complexity. In fact, complexity and order are almost the opposite thing. Ordered systems are very, very simple. Complex systems are very disordered.A fully-constructed house may be complex, but its in a significantly less ordered state than organized piles of lumber on your lawn.

Because that's what order means. A dictionary is very ordered, but meaningless if read cover to cover. It's too simple. On the other hand, the words in Hamlet are disordered - nonalphabetical - and yet, it's one of the most complex works in the English language.I'm using very simple examples, but "order" and "complexity" are two very, very different things, and are often mutually exclusive. I don't see the order. Humans are composed of, roughly:

quote:

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# 65% Oxygen
# 18% Carbon
# 10% Hydrogen
# 3% Nitrogen
# 1.5% Calcium
# 1% Phosphorous
# 0.35% Potassium
# 0.25% Sulfur
# 0.15% Sodium
# 0.15% Chlorine
# 0.05% Magnesium
# 0.0004% Iron
# 0.00004% Iodine

---

Now, an ordered state would be all those elements in separate jars, in a row. That's order. "Complexity" is how they're arranged in the human body, but they're pretty evenly distributed throughout your body, and so are disordered.Don't conflate "order" and "complexity." The second law says nothing about complexity. Yet, the existence of an entire continumm of eyes in the natural world, from simple to more complex, is evidence that evolution is accurate.

That state is called "disordered." When things are all mixed up? Disorder.

Sure, but it's reasonable to suggest that a general trend towards disordered configurations exists in the universe. If objects are arranging themselves randomly, we would expect them to be more likely to arrange themselves into disordered, mixed-up configurations, not orderly ones, where different states or items are separated into groups.Of course, that's not even universally true - a bag of peanuts sorts itself by size, no matter how you shake it up - as long as the bag is affected by gravity.The second law makes no reference to order. Nonetheless, with randomness in the picture, we would expect disorder. Which is exactly what we find, all over the place. Living things are very disordered.

The thing about these odds, though, is that you only have to win once, and you get to try hundreds of times every second.At that rate, almost any odds becomes a certainty.

I wish you'd address Percy's posts and not mine. I'm just quibbling with your word choice and trying to how you how your argument doesn't follow from the first principles you've chosen.Percy's actually trying to show you what first principles are at work in the universe. You might have a good time talking to me, but if you talk more with Percy you'll actually learn something. I would think that would be your priority.

Evolution isn't a reduction in entropy, though.

I can think of two rhetorical responses:1) What makes you think that a law that operates within the universe applies to the universe?2) What is the total net energy content of the universe? How do you know its more or less than zero?

Not necessarily. If all the energy here is counterposed by opposite energies there, then the universe has a net energy of zero, and so it doesn't violate the first law.

Probably through the same quantum process that makes energy spring up out of the vacumn - pairs of opposing particles flit in and out of existence at every point in space, constantly. Each particle in the pair has non-zero energy; taken together they have net zero energy because they cancel out.You can pretty much have all the particles and energy you want so long as the sums cancel each other out in the end. Well, maybe that's an overstatement.

Evolution is a theory of biology; its developers and researchers are therefore biologists.The origin of the universe is a problem of cosmology. It's like you're asking a tax accountant for medical advice. Cosmic origins aren't an evolutionary field.