The second law of energy, the one about thermodynamics.
It says that Energy is always going toward disorder.
This explains so much in life.
People strive to watch, participate, or learn about death, disorder, anarchy, war, murder. The chinese thought it was just a dualism. But i feel since energy is at the lowest level of atoms, and since things are made of a large number of atoms that we take on our engergy’s behavior.
The rule continues to say that to go toward order(the reverse from energy’s natural diffusion) it requires energy to be put into thigns.
Just as our society and order requires maintenence and revolutions, or a forrest fire require controled burn to continue heathily.
So the dualism extends from 1 our basic need to go toward disorder, and 2 since we must have order to disorder(a room to mess) we require capitol(energy) to maintain the order.
interesting that everything is as basic as its most basic and lowest thing.
If the second law of thermodynamics is true, then why does life evolve in the opposite direction, from simple states (unicellular organisms) to complex states (man), from no organization to organization, from disorder to order?
Umm, so that means I can kill you right TGI? I mean I’m just ACTING on my engery’s behavior, right!? How can I stop my energy’s behavior?
Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2002 12:45 am Post subject: naturaldynamics in nature/humans
Umm, the only thing it explains is how much pot you be smokin.
Mr lee, Yes you can kill me, but be prepared for the circumstances. Ill try to stop you, and society will punish you.
And as to your attitude, if you dont understand it say so, just because you dont understand it doesnt mean you can call me a pothead or go well and beyond the insane.
Anonymous, Yes but look at other basic actions in lower things and how it affects the larger organism. Such as sex drive and humans/humanity. Lower basic emotions, and wants power others in a broader scale. So this shouldnt be excepted.
Now. as to Imagistar, Well look how much energy is required in evolution. and thats basically because of need to multiply. And is life a criminal enterprise. please refine the question, im sure it probably is but want to know for sure what your asking.
Entropy (the second law of thermodynamics) and evolution contradict each other. The problem was stated so well (and succinctly) by Dr. Pierre Lecomte du Nouy in Human Destiny that it would be a shame not to quote him:
"One of the greatest successes of modern science was to link the fundamental Carnot-Clausius law (also called the second law of thermodynamics), keystone of our actual interpretation of the inorganic world, with the calculus of probabilities. Indeed, the great physicist Boltzmann proved that the inorganic, irreversible evolution imposed by this law corresponded to an evolution toward more and more “probable” states, characterized by an ever-increasing symmetry, a leveling of energy. The universe, therefore, tends toward an equilibrium where all the dissymmetries existing today will be flattened out, where all motion will have stopped and where total obscurity and absolute cold will reign. Such will be the end of the world – theoretically.
"Now, we men, at the surface of the earth, are witnesses to another kind of evolution: that of living things. We have already seen that the laws of chance, in their actual state, cannot account for the birth of life. But now we find that they forbid any evolution other than that which leads to less and less dissymmetrical states, while the history of the evolution of life reveals a systematic increase in dissymmetries, both structural and functional. Furthermore, this trend can hardly be attributed to a “rare fluctuation” destined to be ironed out statistically, as it has manifested itself steadily for over one thousand million years (probable age of life on this globe), and as the dissymmetries, gloriously unconcerned about the law set by man, became greater as eons passed by until they culminated in the brain of Man.
“This formidable contradiction stands today as an insurmountable obstacle in the path of materialism…”
I am not sure that you are considering the energy balance properly. In ordering one part of a closed system, another becomes disordered - the bias being towards disorder - hence life processes are just another chemical means of reaching the end.
You are saying that life evolves by increasing the entropy around it.
Nobody doubts that the second law works. The question is, why does evolution produce a coordination of complexities in diametric opposition to the requirements of entropy?
Thanks for avoiding the usual answer, namely, that life is not a closed system and borrows energy from some other system. That explanation mistakes energy for order. It is tantamount to saying that the “open system” of Miami resolves its entropy problem by “borrowing energy” from hurricanes.
I also thank you for avoiding “someday,” as in, “Someday, science will resolve this anomaly.” There is no gap, no matter how vast, that science cannot bridge with a singsong “someday.”
Until recently, the “dissipative structures” of Belgian physicist Ilya Prigogine were all the rage as a possible source of new complexity in nature. Indeed, “dissipative structures” won Dr. Prigogine a Nobel Prize in 1977. Then Dr. Prigogine warned that his theory, which applies to molecules, cannot be extrapolated to species.
It might be equally pertinent to ask why are stars born, or why chemical reactions occur as life is no different, and if anything would only be considered more efficient at increasing entropy - by creating structured “machines” to dissipate G rather than relying on less ordered reactions.
The simplest answer to your question is that more G is released breaking few “high energy” bonds than many of “lower energy” ones (so nature goes higher yield ones).
NOW I GET IT(why i was confused.) No imgistar. i was asking for you to elaborate on:
And as to the rest of the posts. Then basically, we need New scientist to study Older questions To get answers that Can be extrapolated to living things.
Knowing what we know about matter. Then Are you saying that Our universe was created by the destruction of a Higher one? We know that the energy in the Big Bang was tremendous and flows from More complex to less complex.
Physics breaks down at the Big Bang - or at least has not been fully explained yet.
I dont think that the study on new questions will shed light on the older, “unanswered” ones to which I think you refer. In terms of the reason for life, I think we have the answer already.
You`ll need to get into the quantum physics to understand it, as it is not straightforward to explain in a digestable post. My point is that life is nowt special - just another means to the end. You cant impose on its presence some sort of mystical pseudoscience.
My comment about life as “a criminal enterprise” simply refers to the fact that the organizing principle of life – evident in the record of the rocks – runs counter to the entropy of the second law of thermodynamics.
For brevity (as opposed to art), it is hard to beat Dr. Henry M. Morris: “(U)ntil someone can demonstrate some kind of naturalistic comprehensive biochemical predestinating code and a pre-existing array of energy storage-and-conversion mechanisms controlled by that code to generate increased organized complexity in nature, the entropy law seems to preclude evolution altogether.”
Guest
I am sure there are points of similarity between the origin of stars and the origin of life. But we are not talking about life’s origin (perhaps explicable as a “negligible fluctuation”). We are talking about the progressive invention of complexity of evolution, which entropy flatly prohibits.
Dr. du Nouy had three doctorates (law, philosophy and science) and headed the biophysics department at the Pasteur Institute while serving as a director at the Sorbonne. Was he a pseudoscientist?
I quoted his book, Human Destiny. Of this book, Dr. Robert A. Millikan said, “A book of such fundamental grasp and insight as cannot be expected to appear more than once or twice a century.”
Dr. Millikan won a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923. Between 1921-45, he was president of the California Institute of Technology. Another pseudoscientist?
In Human Destiny, Dr. du Nouy quotes the British philosopher Alfred Whitehead: “…Scientists who spend their life with the purpose of proving that it is purposeless constitute an interesting subject of study.”
I wasnt actually addressing your point there, and I havent read the text from which you were quoting - so cannot judge its quality. I would say, however, that being an eminent scientist does not always prevent a person from indulging in pseudoscience.
Back to the point in hand, I wasn`t really refering to the origin of life either. Evolution is not prohibited by entropy (obviously). At the very least you can argue increasing complexity increases entropy in another part of the system or, as I said above, you can regard the molecules of life as efficient “entropy increasing” machines that process the entropy of planetry matter. Were it not for life, entropy on this planet would increase more slowly.
The problem I see in this thread is that we lack a detailed understanding of the mechansims over which we are arguing. That is why I termed it pseudoscience. I wasn`t trying denigrate your sources.
