So noted, Chris - and thanks. He’s right, @SixDays. Let’s all try to avoid attribution of bad motives.
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Well they are stating something that is incorrect- open systems don’t apply to the second law of thermodynamics. Basically, they are parroting something they heard from a group advocating evolution trying to shoot down the thermodynamic issue with a lie. And you are going to push their argument when they can’t even get basic facts straight about thermodynamics! I find it rather humorous.
You’re free to argue that some kind of machinery is needed to harness the energy of the sun – but that’s not the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics . There is nothing in any statement of the 2nd Law that says ‘except in the presence of machinery’.
Look at the Clausius statement and it would appear that refrigerators are impossible. The “sole result” implies having an auxiliary device that harnesses energy, constrains boundary conditions, enabling the nonspontaneous process. These systems typically contain ID because natural systems don’t have the ability to do this. You might find water dripping over the walls of a cave where wind blowing through the cave experiences evaporative cooling, but you will never find a refrigerator with all the functional parts because naturally it just won’t happen.
I stated above, the 2nd Law applies to open, closed, and isolated systems, so I do indeed have the basic facts right.
I’ve looked at it and it says nothing of the sort.
‘Sole result’ says absolutely nothing about any device, auxiliary or otherwise. It talks only about the result. The sole result of a refrigerator running is not the transfer of heat from a colder body to a hotter body, therefore refrigerators are not impossible by the Clausius statement.
Which is to say, caves – and human bodies, and puddles – do transfer heat from a colder body to a hotter one without violating the Clausius statement of the 2nd Law and without requiring intelligent design.
I’m afraid you’re not succeeding in making a point here.
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Here’s what I find humorous: a guy with no discernable scientific training at the graduate level is upbraiding a physics Ph.D. on a topic in physics.
Is it possible, just maybe, that during his several years of physics training at leading undergraduate and graduate institutions – including a Ph.D. in Particle Physics at Yale University – @glipsnort learned something about the laws of thermodynamics that you have not yet discerned?
You’re having a conversation with an extremely talented scientist. (And he’s also humble, as you might infer from the fact that he has not pulled rank in this conversation.) Maybe, just maybe, you could learn something from him if you took a different approach.
Best,
Chris Falter
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True. Both sides need to back up their position with evidence; evolutionary biology has done so with valid evidence.
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You just can’t resist attributing malicious motives, can you? And you just got warned by one of the @moderators !
If you want to say all the scientists, tens of thousands of them – each with decades of work in labs and/or ridiculously expensive sensors and advanced math that you and I do not even understand – and all of them working collectively to correct errors and misunderstandings – are wrong, and you, with no discernable scientific training, understand the equations and theories better than they do, you’re free to make that claim. But to call their statements lies can easily be perceived as attributing a state of mind and motive to them.
And the rules of the forum do not allow you to do that.
Best,
Chris
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@SixDays
Our forum guidelines do require that you interact civilly without being derisive of people you don’t agree with. You are going to have to change your debate style accordingly.
@everyone else
So it appears Thomas is a YEC who intends to portray scientists as deluded and incompetent and bent on destroying Christian faith. If engaging with such people annoys you, then scroll on by.
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Yes, you did and I commend you for that, but there are many others who have doctorates who are pushing this notion that the second law doesn’t apply to opened systems. This started over 20 years ago at “talk origins” pushing this view which is wrong.
‘Sole result’ says absolutely nothing about any device, auxiliary or otherwise. It talks only about the result. The sole result of a refrigerator running is “not” the transfer of heat from a colder body to a hotter body, therefore refrigerators are not impossible by the Clausius statement.
In a strictly classical thermodynamic perspective we ignore the device - one of the powers of the second law. For example, I used to use the classical perspective to size jet engines in software that I developed. It can get you into the general ballpark of where you want to be for these engines, but you need to be careful because you can find design solutions that are totally unrealistic. For example, you can input unrealistic pressures or temperatures which will get you a really smoking engine, but if you would try to build it you would not find materials able to function and your engine would just blow up should you attempt to develop it. The point is that you need a viable thermodynamic mechanism.
This is where the engineering thermodynamic perspective comes in where we work at developing machines that function enabling nonspontaneous processes. This is what engineering is all about and some spontaneous processes too.
Which is to say, caves – and human bodies, and puddles – do transfer heat from a colder body to a hotter one without violating the Clausius statement of the 2nd Law and without requiring intelligent design.
Natural systems have limited ability to produce nonspontaneous processes. How much cooling will your puddle produce? Let us all get rid of our refrigerators and get a puddle to cool our food. How smart would this be? Not too bright! Intelligent Designed systems can constrain boundary conditions and utilize energy, enabling very efficient machines. A refrigerator will cool food down to a safe temperature and it works because it was designed to work.
I’m afraid you’re not succeeding in making a point here.
If you were cognizant of the limitations of natural systems then you would understand why we have the statements of the second law. If there are no limitations, then why would we have the statements?
Chris, putting forward false statements like the second law of thermodynamics doesn’t apply to open systems is a lie or reveals complete ignorance on the subject. Having seen this statement put forward all the time by advocates of evolution year after year, I am left confounded why somebody would have to resort to false statements on science to push forward their points supporting evolution if the theory was so strong.
Please get off my back Chris.
The theory is all there is, like the theories of gravitation and electro-magnetism, there is no rational alternative. No recourse to thermodynamics is necessary at all, unless a disinterested materialist raises a question with regard to chemical and biological complexity for some reason. And none have. Even if they do and a gap is established, it doesn’t matter. Nature does abiogenesis and evolution, as it does creation itself ex nihilo. If one has to believe a four thousand year anti-Christian folk tale to filter reality, billions will be OK with that. Scientists are certainly interested in the psychology of that, it sheds great light on the evolved human condition.
If you were able to demonstrate that evolution violates the 2nd Law (as described by any of its formal statements) you would have done so. You haven’t.
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I wonder if this helps as a reference. Thanks
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But does the second law impose any limitations? If not then why do we even have the statements of the second law of thermodynamics?
These are the relevant questions!
How are they relevant to the facts, the absolute rational certainties, of abiogenesis and evolution on an insignificant 4.54 ± 0.05 ga world?
It “imposes” a recoverable energy limit in the form of
Emax (maximum possible efficiency) = 1 - Tcold/Thot
Where Thot and Tcold are hot and cold reservoir temperatures respectively.
But ‘impose’ is probably a wrong way to look at it (as if it were an arbitrarily imposed thing like a speed limit on a highway that you could easily ignore if you wanted.) It (like other ‘laws’) is more of an observed way that things work. Since heat never [spontaneously] flows from a colder region into an adjacent hotter one (another simple statement of the 2nd law), it stands to reason that I cannot utilize any heat removal from my heat source that would reduce its temperature to below its surroundings.
Refrigerators and air conditioners in fact depend on this heat flow (from hotter toward colder) in their various significantly separated components (coils in the condenser, and the coils in the house) in order to accomplish their cooling. So in the end, such mechanisms not only are not violating the 2nd law (or ‘zeroth’ law) - they are even depending on it to work as they do.
A common argument against biological evolution is that the theory contradicts the second law of thermodynamics. The second law says that disorder, or entropy, always increases or stays the same over time. How then can evolution produce more complex life forms over time? The answer is that the second law is only valid in closed systems with no external sources of energy. Since the Earth receives continual energy from the Sun, the second law does not apply.
We already went over this where the statement demonstrates ignorance of the second law of thermodynamics (I won’t call it a lie since it would be uncharitable). To say the second law doesn’t apply to opened systems is just incorrect. If it doesn’t apply for opened systems, why do we use it for jet engines? Why do we even have have the statements of the second law if they don’t apply to open systems?
And again, what has this got to do with the facts, the absolute rational certainties of abiogenesis and evolution?
[Deferring to the @moderators, with apologies. No amount of ‘reasoning’, Walrus and Carpenter fashion, about the second law of thermodynamics, which is about the movement, work of heat, energy, order in epicycles with disorder can deny the less abstruse incontrovertible facts and rationality of nature.
The ‘reasoning’ is from the fundamentalist fear of being wrong in the face of arbitrary, dogmatic ‘moral’ judges; parents, teachers, peers, cult shamans, social influencers, ‘God’. This is predicated on our extremely narrow evolved genetic ‘moral’ base as a hive monkey.]
You accuse yourself here Thomas.
Processes of evolution increase the total entropy of the universe. Relentless competition for energy is the gist of life and promoter of evolution. That is basic observational science.
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Great question. It is confusing.
Maybe this will help.
It is, you will see, a standard definition, not made up by an obscure branch to support their position.
If you look at the Answers in Genesis website, they also acknowledge this. (Search for 2nd Law on their site).
Thanks for your discussion. Keep it up.
Thanks.
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The Encyclopedia Britannica reference you provide is a good summary. This except is especially pertinent to the present discussion:
Living systems, however, do not really contradict the second law. They increase their organization in regions of energy flow, and, indeed, their cycling of materials and their tendency to grow can be understood only in the context of a more general definition of the second law that applies to open as well as closed and isolated systems.
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