The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics - Irrelevant to Origins

This second law discussion is popping up all over the web at the same time as it is being discussed here. This debate now has that exciting real-time quality to it! (If you need a layman’s refresher on basic 2nd Law principles, check this one out (PDF).)

For the history of the discussion on this site, this post talked about an American Spectator article by UTEP mathematics professor Granville Sewell that reformulated the argument that the process of evolution violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. On the Panda’s Thumb, retired Cal Fullerton physics professor Mark Perakh wrote an extensive critique of Sewell’s idea. My conclusion on my first post was that Sewell’s argument, stripped of its complexities, breaks down to this statement:

There is no process that can decrease the entropy of an undeveloped earth in such a way that would result in the biological complexity around us without violating the second law of thermodynamics.

Thus, I perceive that we are back in the realm of biology, discussing whether evolution is a reasonable mechanism to produce biological complexity. This does not really seem to augment the ID/evolution discussion; it just gets us to the starting point of the debate in a novel way.

But much more has recently been said! Let me lay out the most interesting points of discussion here, and let the reader wrestle with them along with me. (Come up with your own opinions and read the articles yourself. Frankly, my opinion on these matters means little, for my formal training in physics has reached its expiration date.)

First up, Arthenor, a former home schooler and current community college student (both experiences I have shared), posts a detailed response to Perakh's argument. However, Arthenor gets mostly tied up in parsing both Perakh’s and Sewell’s spurious and confusing analogies. His conclusion does not progress the discussion:

[I]t is EXTREMELY IMPROBABLE that such an outcome [the order found in nature] should occur or be expected and the fact that the system is open does not change that any more than the system being open allows me to fly by flapping my arms. The point, again, is that while entropy may decrease in an open system, that does not suddenly cause miracles.

Once again, the question left unanswered is whether evolution is a plausible mechanism to account for this local decrease in entropy without violating the 2nd Law. And once again, we must look to biology for the answers, and we’re back at the starting point of the ID/evolution debate – not a conclusion.

Much more interesting than Arthenor’s discussion were questions raised in comments on my site by “A Friend,” who is a mathematical physicist nearing the end of his PhD studies. He reformulates Sewell’s conclusions into a set of questions:

I'd like to follow up for a moment on my first comment where I mentioned the interaction of different "kinds" of order. If there were only thermal order, and the thermal distribution follows a diffusion equation as is commonly accepted, then there would be no escaping the implications of the 2nd law for the development of life. However, our universe doesn't work like that. There are different kinds of particles, different chemicals, and all sorts of intricate interactions that can occur between them. So, the question that is important in the evolution debate is not one of equilibrium thermodynamics (dominated by the diffusion equation, entropy increases, and the second law) but rather one of non-equilibrium dynamics (where the interactions of the various types of distributions is taken into account mathematically). Can the large thermal gradient generated by the sun drive the entropy (of some non-thermal parameter, like the distribution of carbon atoms) down? Will it be driven down sufficiently for "rare" reactions to occur spontaneously? Specifically, can it drive the biochemical reactions necessary to produce life?

The answers to these questions are perhaps not given but at least framed, by Jason Rosenhouse, a mathematics professor from just up the road at James Madison University. He has just published another response to Sewell. This one, like Perakh’s, does not honor Sewell’s request for respectful discussion sans personal attacks, but he much more effectively and concisely frames the problem with Sewell’s argument:

[F]ormulating the second law mathematically makes it clear that Sewell cannot merely assert that some process (evolution by natural selection in this case) violates the second law. There is a very clear test to pass to show that a given process really has a second law problem.

You see, any claim that evolution violates the second law must be backed up with a calculation. Sewell believes that the second law is a problem for evolution? Very well. Let him evaluate the integral I mentioned [see the article] and show that the change in entropy has been smaller than it should be. Anything short of that is no longer an argument based on thermodynamics. It is just ye olde argument from personal incredulity, in which Sewell is expressing nothing more than his own disbelief that biological complexity could have evolved naturally. Since every formulation of the second law allows for local increases of order and complexity, the mere observation of such increases does not constitute an apparent violation of thermodynamic principles.

His discussion, in a way, supports my assertion that we have once again reached the starting point of the ID/evolution debate. Sewell’s argument makes no comment – except the argument from incredulity – on the quality of evolution by natural selection as an explanation for the observed order in nature.

This begins to provide answers to A Friend’s questions. Until Sewell can accomplish the virtually impossible task of proving that abiogenesis and evolution definitively violate the 2nd Law, we must rely on other observations to inform their plausibility. While it is well beyond the scope of this post to list them, there are enough observations in favor of evolution that many are convinced that it did occur and that, being the concrete law that it is, the 2nd Law must not have been violated.

This is somewhat like arguments for the existence of God. Theists put it on the atheists to prove that God cannot exist; atheists put it on the theist to first prove that He does. Here, the evolutionists are putting it on the creationists/IDers to prove first that evolution violates the second law before they will throw away a theory that is otherwise well supported. The creationists/IDers prefer to claim that it is likely that it does violate the second law, and ask that the evolutionist prove that it does not before claiming it is true. Given the impossibility of a formal proof or disproof in this matter, I think it is better that we look elsewhere for evidences for or against evolution, realizing that the arguments of Sewell and his detractors can never ultimately comment on the question of whether man’s origin is explained best by naturalistic or divine causes.

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A few articles for future reading:

• The comments at Thermodynamics, Again
  
• Jacob Bronowski’s “Thermodynamics and the Arrow of Time,” another evolutionary rebuttal to the creationist 2nd Law argument.
• Granville Sewell’s 2004 article “Evolution and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” (PDF), an extended discussion about his earlier theory of evolution’s violation of the 2nd Law. This includes rebuttals to Rosenhouse’s early claims. I haven’t read it yet, but it may be worth more comments in a future post.