Thermodynamics

When i said like the wind or an earthquake, i was just giving examples. I meant ANYTHING that wasnt intelligent. And when i said monkeys i wasnst associating them with humans in any way. I was just thinking of random animals and the image of monkeys playing with housing materials amused me more than the image of say, a cow walking on them. But you did have some other serious points that i would like to go into after i have had some sleep. Talk to you guys tomorow
(And please dont swamp me while im at work with posts guys, i know that just because i started this thread doesnt mean that it has to involve just me relating to you blokes (and women), but im the one curious here! So please, wait for me.
-Jordo

OK.You are coming pretty close to pressing some standard buttons; the "I didn't evolve from no monkey" button, the "If we evolved from monkeys why are there stil monkeys?" button, and the "Evolution is like expecting a tornado in a junkyard to produce a 747" button. Many of us have seen these buttons pressed many times and we're thoroughly sick of them ... and possible oversensitive to someone who may well be innocently raising their spectres in our minds without realizing it.

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:

---

# 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.

I thought JonF's post made it clear that isn't what the 2nd law is about.In addition, Jordo goes on about "violating the 2nd law" for a temporatry time then it seems to overpower something and it dies.The 2nd law is not violtated when free energy is available. That is one of his fundamental misunderstandings.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 02-14-2005 17:39 AM

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.

I think this thread may be getting confusing because Jordo continues to engage 2LOT on an incorrect level.Two approaches are being applied in this thread. One is represented by JonF and me by insisting that the correct definition of 2LOT be discussed. The other by Jar attempts to engage Jordo at his current level of understanding by using analogies to the order and disorder of everyday objects like nails and houses. I think Crash is trying to follow a middle road, though I'm not sure.I think analogies are only useful as aids to understanding for those who accept what you're trying to say, but are having trouble with comprehension or visualization. To someone who thinks you're wrong an analogy is only for picking apart.Jordo, you've been fed an incorrect definition of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Here's the correct definition from Widipedia (there is more than one way to state 2LOT, but this is one of the simplest and most easily understood): The key to misunderstanding 2LOT is to look up entropy in the dictionary and see that is a measure of disorder. For example, this is definition 2 from GuruNet: But while not exactly wrong, that's a misleading definition of entropy if you're trying to understand thermodynamics. The order referred to in that definition is not the order of a neatly ironed and folded handkerchief versus a wrinkled one. It's a measure of disorder on a molecular level. A much better definition of entropy for 2LOT is definition 1 from GuruNet: It's one thing to be skeptical and openminded, but quite another to work hard at rejecting extremely well understood and accepted scientific principles. As you get older you do not accumulate increasing entropy until you die. As species evolve over time they do not gradually use up a reservoir of order that is eventually exhausted. The process of evolution is too complicated to be interpreted as a thermodynamic process anyway. You're doubting the explanations of scientists and putting your faith in those who object to evolution on religious grounds because it has implications that falsify some of their deeply held myths, and not because they've conducted any science themselves.Life is just complicated chemistry, and there is nothing in chemistry that we know of that violates 2LOT. The entire history of life on this planet has faithfully obeyed 2LOT.--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, 02-14-2005 19:36 AM

Ha ha nah i wasnt trying to push any buttons or anything. I was just providing examples that i thought were fairly innocent. Sorry bout the missunderstanding (and yeah im sure you guys must be sick to death of the statements you just raised)

Ok for the record, i do not believe that anything violates the law. Im saying that a single cell to a fully grown adult seems to because it is building up instead of heading for chaos. But this is only a temporary thing, so in the end no law has been violated.And yes with all the free energy imposed on an organism it has the potential to do anything. Every time we walk out into the sun we are feeling some of that energy. But as i said before, all the energy in the universe is usless if there is not something harnessing it and directing it. Plants can harness sunlight to extract food. We can do the same to get vitamins. But original life? I would think that they would have just been burnt in sunlight.But yeah, just to make it clear i do not beleive that anything can violate the law.

When I took graduate thermo, it was taught by two professors, each doing every other lecture. One was a hands-on guy -- steam, turbines, engines of all types, refrigeration, what's the enthalpy, and so on. The other was a Greek (many theoretical thermodynamicists have been Greek), whose name I forget; he wrote the Britannica article some years ago. He was Dr. Theory. Non-equilibrium systems, definitions stripped to their absolute minimum need for axioms and maximum generality. He once spent an entire lecture deriving the concept of temperature from first principles (and was not pleased when I pointed out that he had assumed that a function for which all x0 yields f(x)>0 necessarily has f(0)=0 ... he hadn't established the requisite continuity or differentiability or some such, and it would have lengthened the derivation considerably).You can probably imagine that bouncing back and forth between these guys was a little disconcerting. Each didn't think much of the other and tried to hide it. I did really well; I have no idea how.Anyhow, with that background, the theory guy's first law was "Any interaction between two systems, in which either of the systems could have been replaced by a weight falling in a gravitational field, is work". Alas, I have forgotten his definition of the second law. I do remember that it was a doozy.

But you were suggesting that the 2nd law was a problem for evolution. In what way is there any problem what-so-ever if there is free energy available to do work?The 2nd law is simply NOT an issue under those circumstances. The 2nd law is not violated even temporarily. This is not an sensible statement to make. Why are we discussing "original life"? We were discussing what the 2nd law has to do with evolution. Can you explain why this is relevant in anyway?

Percy, first things first. I am NOT reading creationist works. It has been years since iv touched one. From what i understand there is a law that states that everything in the universe moves from order, to disorder. That is what my dictionary says, thats what the science teachers taught me back in school. Now at face value that defies evolution in my mind because evolution requires the building up of organisms. But thats at face value. So now i am interested in what you guys make of this.And please dont mention closed systems to me. The world is not a closed system. Even my evolutionist teacher told me how misleading it was when closed systems are referred to in a 2nd law discussion.

Im not saying that it gets violated temporarily. Im saying we grow into something bigger and better during our life times before we begin to degrade.So are you telling me that the 2nd law doesnt apply to the original lifeforms?

No, I agree it applies all the time. Any suggested chemistry for the origin of life or the survival of the original replicators has to be thermodynamically resonable.That is, of course, understood and taken into consideration by the chemists working in that area.It can't be that you think they wouldn't have understood that from day one can it?If by "original life forms" you mean early life on the planet I don't know why you think there is any special issue. Would you like to explain?ABE Ah, looking back I think I see what the problem is.Why do you think that direct sunlight is the only way that any form of life can make use of the free energy? It isn't; in fact we know know that there are life forms that do not depend on sunlight for their energy at all.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 02-14-2005 20:32 AM

Nope. We're saying that nobody has been able to come up with any violations of the second law involved in the natural origin of the first self-replicating forms, in any of the many hypotheses that have been proposed. Nobody would propose a hypothesis that violated the second law.