JohnF: The second law deals with entropy, and entropy is a property; that's a technical term that means its value depends only on the current state of the system and not in any way how the system got to that state.
Yeah, so what? You’re confused. You see, I am not talking about only thermodynamics: I am talking about thermodynamics as it applies to the origin of life — more than one field of science is involved here.
It doesn't matter how many fields of science you are talking about, it doesn't matter if you are talking about thermodynamics as it applies to the origin of life or as it applies to steam power plants or as it applies to anything at all.
Entropy is a property and its value depends only on the current state of the system and not in any way how the system got to that state. Until you realize and accept that your thermodynamic claims are gobbledygook.
Explaining how life could arise from nonlife requires explaining the mechanism by which a decrease in entropy - associated with the formation of biological polymers and systems of such polymers - could have plausibly occurred in a prebiotic context.
From the point of view of thermodynamics, absolutely not. If you wish to claim (as you have) that there is a thermodynamic problem with abiogenesis, the only way you can support that statement is with
calculations that demonstrate an overall decrease in entropy.
Of course, from the point of view of abiogenesis research, explaining the mechanism is key ... but we're not discussing that, we're discussing your claim of a thermodynamic problem.
Simply saying sufficient energy was available because the Earth is an open system is insufficient.
Agreed, but irrelevant to
your claim of a thermodynamic problem.
In the absence of calculations we
don't know if there is a thermodynamic problem. As I said in my earlier message, I think such caclulations have been made for some scenarios; but the relevant item is
your claim that there is a problem. Simply saying that it hasn't been proved that there is no problem is insufficient; you claimed there is a problem, support that claim.
For example, we know that the change from free monomers to polymers involves a decrease in entropy (increase in order) and is endergonic (which is why OOL researchers preactivate their monomers). And we know this without having to know exact values. So polymer formation goes in the wrong direction and is thus a nonspontaneous process. Therefore, some sort of process or mechanism must be present in order for such an uphill process to occur (for example, cells couple endergonic reactions with exergonic reactions, usually using ATP as an energy intermediate).
Agreed. However, in order to determine the thermodynamics of the situation
we do not have to have the slightest idea of what that process is or was. All we
have to know is the starting state of an appropriate system and the ending state of that same system. It may be convenient to calculate the changes by integrating along a process path from the initial to the final state, but it is not
required to do so, and that process path can be
any physically possible path; it need not be the actual path and it can be a ludicrously unrealistic path.
So relying on just vauge appeals to "open system thermodynamics" for translation is insufficient in more than one way - same goes for OOL.
True; but appeals to open system thermodynamics do demonstrate that it's
plausible that there may not be a problem. However, it's still irrelevant to your claim that the second law of thermodynamics poses a problem for abiogenesis. You need to supply positive support for that claim, not just vague appeals to a supposed lack of support for other's claims.
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