In the interest of keeping down the noise level in this discussion I have
elected to not address many of Stephen's provocations, accusations and
other noise. However, in spite of this the post still has become
unwieldy in size. For that I apologize and hope to be able to be more
ruthless in my excisions in the future should it be necessary.
<snip SJ's rehash of his excuses for not explaining himself>
SJ>Under those conditions, David could just reply to whatever I said: "Well
>I'm a qualified physicist, and you're just a layman, and I'm telling you that
>you are wrong and I am right"!
I would not do this. I do not like appeals to authority. I prefer
actual explicit explanations. The arguments stand or fall on their own
regardless of who makes them or what their 'qualifications' are.
<snip more SJ accusations>
SJ>I rest my case! Surely You're Joking, Mr Bowman!
If you rested your case then why were we subjected to another 18.6 kb of
the rest of your post?
<snip SJ accusation of me "bluffing", more quoting, etc.>
SJ>Granting permission to mention an error I made does not mean posting the
>entire post!
I'm sorry. I guess then I did not understand the qualifications you
meant to imply when you granted your permission. I understood the term
'this' in the phrase: "You may point this out in your reply" to refer to
the reply message that I had resent to you reminding you of its
existence. Since you had publicly challenged me on the reflector to
come up with evidence that it had been pointed out to you that the
arguments in question were bogus, and since the private message in
question was simply a reply of mine to a public post of yours on the
reflector it seems that you wouldn't mind if I posted the relevant reply
message I wrote whether or not I asked for your permission. Since you
*do* seem to mind, then I apologize for my breach for misinterpreting
your permission and for whatever distress my doing so may have caused
you.
<snip>
SJ>See above. The permission was only to mention my error, not to post the
>entire private message! If David disputes this, I request his permission to
>post my reply to him about this.
I certainly don't care what you wish to post from these messages. Post
whatever you see fit. It does seem to me, though, that your doing so
would only continue to subject the readers of the reflector to evermore
noise rather than bring in any substantive discussion of the scientific
issues. But that's up to you if you wish to keep to a very low signal
to noise ratio in your posts.
<snip more stuff>
SJ>I thank David for his permission for me to post this message, which I will
>do in its entirety, with additional comments where my position may have
>changed since 1996.
I hope the noise level will not be unbearable.
<snip more noise>
SJ>If they are "subtly false" I suspect that it will all turn on how each of us
>David define the terms "evolution" and "the second law of
>thermodynamics". There are multiple meanings of "evolution" and also of
>"the second law of thermodynamics". I state in advance that I do not grant
>David the unilateral power to define these terms.
That's nice. I don't even have or want that power. I only ask that when
discussing scientific issues we use the definitions that the scientists
in the relevant fields use when they are working in those fields. I
don't think this is an unreasonable request. In the case of entropy and
the 2nd law of thermo those definitions are found in the standard papers
and texts of the field of statistical mechanics. The definitions in
Freshman level intro books simply tend to be much to crude and
unqualified for the task at hand.
SJ>If I did, David would
>automatically win the debate. I have already quoted from physics and
>biology textbooks which define "the second law of thermodynamics"
>different from David, and he just rejects them out of hand. While he does
>this, I will *never* accept that he has shown my arguments to be "bogus".
Why is this discussion a debate? Must every discussion with you be
about 'winning' and 'losing'? I think you may have spent too much time
dealing with the work of lawyers. How about having a discussion whose
objective is to gain deeper understanding of the scientific issues
involved as well as of their implications and their non-implications? I
suppose you can accuse me of rejecting those intro level definitions "out
of hand" if you want to, but I *did* explain *why* those definitions of
entropy tend to be inadequate and need to be rejected. Again, it is
because they tend to relate the concept of 'entropy' to the term
'disorder' without carefully defining the extent of that relationship nor
carefully qualifying, just *what kind* of disorder is meant in that
relationship. It happens that the term 'disorder' is somewhat misleading
in relation to entropy anyway because it tends to have a primary
connotation of messiness. Messiness is not really necessarily a part the
relevant idea in entropy. Rather, the main idea is of a measure of the
size of the huge plurality of possible microscopic states. Better
analogical terms/phrases would be amount of microscopic uncertainty,
amount of missing microscopic information and/or amount of randomness at
the microscopic level. 'Disorder' would be ok if it was carefully
defined in an appropriate technical way (related to the microscopics of
the situation) to purge it of its distracting common connotations
(especially at the macroscopic level), but then we wouldn't necessarily
think that the refined concept as what we usually think of by the term
'disorder'.
<snip>
SJ>Indeed, I would ask David to state his understanding of what exactly *are*
>these "earth-based and cosmic arguments" which are "bogus" in the sense
>of "*subtly* false". And I don't ask David just to regurgitate my arguments
>back to me.
Do I have this straight? 1. You accuse me of misunderstanding your
arguments (which might actually be possible since you did not actually
explain them; you merely quoted Ratzsch and others and apparently
expected those quotes to speak for you). 2. You want to test my
understanding or misunderstanding of these arguments by telling back to
you what I think they are, but I'm not actually allowed to tell you
precisely what those arguments are based on whatever meager explanations
of your own position you may have happened to have mentioned. What kind
of test is this? I think the Ratzsch quote is pretty self-explanatory as
to what the cosmic argument is that I object to (and I thought was
yours). If this is not your argument, why did you repeatedly throw out
the quote to people on the reflector in a way that suggested it *was*
your argument?
Just in case that your interpretation of the cosmic argument mentioned in
the Ratzsch quote is different than mine I give my interpretation here:
The 2nd law (in its simplest form) applies to closed systems. In such
systems the entropy cannot decrease. The entropy is a measure of the
amount of disorder in the closed system. The whole universe is a
closed system. Cosmic evolution has the universe generating evermore
order and organization as time goes on. Therefore cosmic evolution and
the 2nd law are incompatible (i.e. either cosmic evolution violates the
2nd law, or the 2nd law precludes cosmic evolution).
The above argument is subtly and deceptively wrong and is therefore
bogus.
Regarding the earth-based arguments, they typically state that the 2nd
law is incompatible with biological evolution on Earth. There seem to
be a greater number of permutations of this main argument (than the
cosmic one above) but a typical such argument is given below:
The 2nd law says that entropy can only increase with time. Entropy is
a measure of disorder. Things must decay with time and not generate
any new order. Evolution has living things becoming more complicated
and ordered over geological time and therefore evolution is impossible.
The evolutionists often claim that we creationists are neglecting the
fact that the Earth is an open system and that it receives energy from
the Sun so that evolutionary processes can create more ordered
organisms by using the energy of the Sun as long as there is more total
entropy or decay going on elsewhere. But their argument ignores the
fact that for such an open system that generates order there needs to
be a pre-existent energy conversion system that creates the order out
of the chaos. Raw energy coming from the Sun can't create the order.
A bull in a china shop provides energy to the shop's china pieces, but
it doesn't create order; it only destroys any order that is already
present. The energy has to be properly directed and focused by the
energy conversion system. Biological evolution is supposedly blind and
random and happened without any such guiding mechanism. The chance of
this happening spontaneously is like that of a tornado passing through
a junkyard and leaving behind a 747 airplane.
I should mention that there exist some other mutations of the above
Earth-based argument (possibly of some of the more recent ones) that
may either add to or replace the supposedly needed pre-existent "energy
conversion system" with a needed directing process whereby an externally
supplied source of specified information needs to direct and orchestrate
the generation of order in nature. I think other versions of the
argument may just try to apply it to only the case of abiogenesis and not
necessarily biological evolution per se.
Neither of these above arguments actually indicate any incompatibility
with the 2nd law of thermo. To the extent that one may be led to by
these arguments to believe that that biological evolution *is*
incompatible with the 2nd law, to that extent the arguments are deceptive
and thus are bogus (i.e. subtly false) besides being plain incorrect.
[BTW, I fail to understand the depth of the reaction that Stephen has had
to my use of the term 'bogus'. I still can't follow Stephen's reasoning
about the term having "emotional" connotations and implications of
"immoral" motives, etc. I truly didn't see my explanation of my choice
of the word as being any sort of "damage" control". Maybe the word has
more a more sinister and depraved connotation down under than it has
here. In the US the term is not so *personally* perjorative. It is used
more in an impersonal sense about things, not about people or their
motives. Since Stephen seems to have (for whatever reason) taken its use
so personally I apologize for having chosen the word. (It just seemed
such an apt characterization of these arguments.) So, Stephen, please
accept my apology here for any offense my characterization caused you.
This apology *is* an attempt at damage control.]
I don't know my above versions of the cosmic and earth-based arguments
actually represent Stephen's (current) view or not. I had assumed that
his repeated use of the Ratzsch quote indicated that he did not agree
with such an earth-based view and only agreed with the cosmic argument
described there. But Stephen seems to talk out of both sides of his
mouth on this without explicitly and carefully giving his position, and
sometimes it seems that he agrees with it, and sometimes it seems he does
not. For instance, in his two posts to the reflector that I had
responded to him pointing out how both (Earth-based and cosmic) arguments
were bogus (er, sorry, 'subtly false') we read him saying:
http://www.calvin.edu/archive/evolution/199608/0201.html
Re: TE is an oxymoron 1/2
Stephen Jones (sejones@ibm.net)
Sun, 18 Aug 96 21:43:48 +0800
> ...
>NR>*Evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics:
>>producing order from disorder is possible with the addition of
>>energy, such as from the sun.
>
>Too simplistic. Energy alone is insufficient. There must also be an
>energy conversion mechanism:
>
><snip yet another extensive quote>
and
http://www.calvin.edu/archive/evolution/199707/0193.html
Re: Origin of life, thermodynamics 2/2 #1A
Stephen Jones (sejones@ibm.net)
Thu, 17 Jul 97 18:42:30 +0800
> ...
>1. The second law of thermodynamics cannot be ignored in evolutionary
>theory bercause Evolution and entropy are headed in opposite
>directions; and
>
>2. Naturalistic evolution is contradicted by the second law of
>thermodynamics, *unless there is a pre-existing energy-conversion
>system*:
> ...
But, OTOH, more recently we read in Stephen's 27 MAR 00 post on this
thread:
SJ>See above re David's strawman claim that I "conclude that evolution
>violates the 2nd law". I actually say the *exact opposite*.
and likewise in his 01 APR 00 post we read:
SJ> ... This shows in his repeated claims
>that I am saying that "evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics"
>when AFAIK I have never said that, and in fact have said the exact opposite.
And in his latest 06 APR 00 post we read:
SJ>I do not even accept that what David calls generically "the earth-based and
>cosmic arguments", are necessarily the same as what I am arguing.
(Why then did you bring up the Ratzsch and other quotes? Why are we
having this discussion? Again, please explain what you *are* arguing.)
SJ> For
>example, David still seems to perceive that I am arguing that "evolution
>violates the second law of thermodynamics" when from the beginning I
>have never said that.
I guess I don't know how to put these various excerpts together in a
compatible way which could possibly describe a noncontradictory position.
I expect that Stephen would attach some great significance to the fact
that the exact quote of the phrase "evolution violates the second law of
thermodynamics" doesn't explicitly appear in his quoted claims. However,
I fail to see how this makes any real difference. The thrusts of the
various claims in the various quotes separately seem clear. But not when
one tries to consider them all together. It certainly doesn't make the
task of trying to understand Stephen's position any easier when he
refuses to carefully and explicitly explain himself.
SJ>David is making a general claim that *all* the "earth-based and
>cosmic arguments" regarding the SLoT that creationists post are "bogus".
No, I don't think so. I was only objecting to the ones mentioned in the
Ratzsch quote. I certainly have not scoured the literature to find
all possible creationist arguments regarding the 2nd law to see if
every one of them could reasonably be characterized as bogus (subtly
false).
Now in his 01 APR 00 post we also read:
SJ>I have *not* conceded that either my "earth-based argument" or my
>"cosmic one" were incorrect. Indeed, I still believe they are *both*
>correct.
So here it seems that Stephen *does* apparently make both an Earth-based
and cosmic argument about evolution and the second law. I suppose that
whatever these arguments actually are they must effectively claim that
evolution is compatible with the 2nd law in both the cosmic and earth-
based cases. Otherwise, it would not be the "exact opposite" of the
claim that the 2nd law is violated. But if this is the case, then what
kind of argument is that? It would not be much of an argument against
evolution now would it? What would the point of such an argument be?
<snip>
SJ> One could argue that
>Newton's Laws were "subtly false" but that does not mean they were
>"bogus". They are true under most conditions, but start to break down
>under special conditions. Indeed, since no scientific theory is absolutely
>true, one could argue that *all* science is "bogus" in the sense of "subtly
>false"!
I don't think Newton's laws *are* bogus/subtly false. They are quite
clearly correct in the the proper limiting domain of their asymptotic
validity, and are quite obviously incorrect outside that asymptotic
domain. (Although what is obvious to me might not necessarily be so to
someone else, and vice versa.)
SJ>But David only says that of *creationist* arguments, so I suspect that there
>is a not-so-hidden agenda behind David's choice of terminology.
What "not-so-hidden agenda" is behind my terminology? It seems to be
hidden from me. Please help me out here?
SJ>I would
>not mind so much if David said that my arguments regarding the SLoT
>were "subtly false" and carefully explained where they were incorrect.
I thought I *did* carefully explain why the arguments mentioned in the
Ratzsch quote were subtly false.
>But
>his claim that my arguments on the SLoT are "bogus" is emotional and
>counterproductive.
Where is this hypersensitivity coming from? I'm not even sure what your
arguments *are* any more. If you think my explanations did not refute
your arguments and that I misperceived them then why have you taken my
characterization so personally of what you say is only of a "strawman"
argument that doesn't represent or apply to your position. I
characterized what I understood as the cosmic and earth-based arguments
described in the Ratzsch quote as "bogus". If those arguments don't
represent your position then why are you upset? Sheesh, I'm sorry I
picked the term.
<snip>
SJ> I wonder
>what David would think if the first post he ever got from me charged that
>something he said was "bogus"?
I don't think I would care how many times someone had or had not
corresponded with me first. If (and when) I ever say something that is
bogus, I sure want to know about it so I can correct my thinking and any
misinformation I may have spread. I do not like to pass on
misinformation. I want to be stopped if I do so. I would only ask that
the reason(s) why what I said was bogus be carefully explained to me so
I could see how it was actually bogus.
<snip more noisy stuff>
SJ>And if the physics is "incorrect", then David can always try explain why,
>*in terms that a layman like me can understand*, and not dismiss out of
>hand counter-arguments from authorities who may not agree with him.
I thought I *did* explain them, both in my original posts pointing it all
out to you and subsequently in this recent thread. How many more times
do you want it explained? I'll try again.
The fact is that the 2nd law per se has nothing necessarily to say one
way or the other about any 'order' or 'disorder' that may or may not
appear at the macroscopic level for a thermodynamic system. What it
*does* have to say is that for an isolated system its entropy does not
ever decrease. In such a system the entropy monotonically rises with
time reaching its maximal value in thermodynamic equilibrium. What the
entropy *is* that has so increased is the total amount of further
information necessary to identify, with certainty, which of the system's
possible microscopic states is the actual microscopic state the system
happens to be in given that the collection of conceivable possible
microscopic states is only the set of those microscopic states that fit
(within experimental error) the observed macroscopic state. IOW, as the
isolated system equilibrates the number of possible microscopic states
that the system could be in and still have the same macroscopic state
(same within the detectability of macroscopic observations) grows with
time. It takes more information to identify which possible microscopic
state is the actual one since there are so many more of these possible
microscopic states to choose from as the number of them increases. To
the extent that all the possible microscopic states are equally likely
the entropy is (in some particular units) then just the logarithm of the
number of these possible microscopic states. To the extent that the
probabilities of the various possible microscopic states differ among
each other then the entropy becomes a more complicated function (i.e.
S = SUM{i, p_i*log(1/p_i)} where p_i is the probability of the i-th
possible microscopic state compatible with the relevant macroscopic
state.).
Any order or disorder that might appear at the macroscopic level is not a
necessary concern of the 2nd law. It concerns what goes on at the
*microscopic* level in terms of the mumber of allowed microscopic states.
If the system is open then as time goes on then the sum of the entropy of
the system and the contribution to the entropy of its surroundings due to
their interactions with the system increases. It may happen that either
term in this sum may increase or decrease as along as the total sum
itself doesn't ever decrease with time.
In the case of the cosmic argument there is no problem with the 2nd law
because any order that develops in the matter of the universe does so at
the macroscopic level rather than the microscopic level, and any local
decreases in the entropy of that matter that *might* happen to occur
concomitantly with the generation of that local order is more than made
up for by the increase in entropy elsewhere. Usually the electromagnetic
field with its 2.7 K Cosmic Microwave Background is the ultimate heat
sink of any dissipated energy and its entropy capacity completely dwarfs
that of the matter degrees of freedom. Over time the matter in the
universe develops a very complicated hierarchical organization at the
macroscopic level. This organization comes about from an instability
related to the interplay of gravitation and the 2nd law. It does not
violate, go against, oppose, etc. the 2nd law. It is a (partial)
consequence of it (along with some other laws of nature, esp.
gravitation).
Open systems (such as the Earth's near surface environment) which have a
sufficiently strong disequilibrium maintained across their boundaries
(such as an externally maintained imbalance in one or more of such
intensive quantities such as temperature, pressure, chemical potential,
etc.) may sponteneously develop quite complicated and organized behavior
at the macroscopic level even without the help of the instability
provided by gravitation at the cosmic level. Such organized behavior is
a result of the spontaneous development of (what Prigogine has called) a
dissipative structure. The development of such things does not oppose,
go against, circumvent, or violate the 2nd law. The development of such
things is driven *by* the 2nd law.
SJ>BTW does David actually read all the posts looking for "incorrect physics
>arguments"? Or does he have a filter set up so that whenever
>"thermodynamics" is mentioned he is alerted? Either way it suggests he is
>acting like a kind of vigilante and he might be motivated to find fault where
>there was none.
The answer to both questions is no. I normally lurk on this list in
order to learn from others about origins-related things that I do not
know about as much they do. Such things tend to be related to biology,
geology, paleontology, anthropology, etc. I would hope that when someone
spouts some misinformation about one or more of these fields that someone
else who knows better would step in and correct it--seeing that I would
not be in much of a position to be able to detect it. I happen to know
some things about physics, and when I notice someone misusing physics I
might step in and correct it if I happen to have the time, and I deem it
important enough to bother correcting. It is more likely when I see the
same serious errors repeated without correction by others. My field
happens to be in statistical mechanics so I'm more sensitive to errors
in that area than maybe in some others. Also, most of the physics-
related stuff that goes by on this list tends to be related to such
things as thermodynamics, cosmology and general relativity, quantum and
particle theory. Of these areas, I'm probably most sensitive to problems
with thermodynamics beause of my background and the frequency with which
the subject comes up here. I have certainly been known to have
discussions with others and post corrections when the topic involves
these other areas of theoretical physics as well.
<snip more stuff>
SJ>I appreciate David's apology. I look forward to him being "more
>circumspect and polite in the future".
I'll try.
SJ>But I don't know though what David
>means by "just who has been abusive...in this matter". I have not abused
>David but have simply tried to defend myself against his attacks.
Of course you have.
SJ>BTW I don't even know what David's qualifications are. I gather from the
>following website that he is probably an astrophysicist:
<snip extract from Sky & Telescope site>
No. It just happens that one of the hats I wear here is being in charge
of the campus planetarium. Astrophysics is definitely not my field,
although I do teach undergraduate introductory astronomy and some general
relativity at the upper division level.
SJ>I would appreciate David's clarification of this, so I can give due weight
>(or otherwise) to his claims to "speak with authority and not as the
>scribes" on the SLoT.
Why do you care about my background? What I said about entropy can
easily be checked out by consulting nearly any modern stat mech book. I
prefer to let each of us demonstrate what we know and what we are
ignorant of by what we actually post. If someone says something that is
incorrect, then someone else ought to correct it. We ought not make
our points by saying "I'm the authoritative expert and you are to
believe me because I said so". Neither ought we quote someone else and
expect that to settle the issue because the person quoted "said so". I
do not like appeals to authority. I want to actually understand *why*
certain things are the way they are, and would hope others do too. I
would like us to have what we say be judged by its actual content--not by
appeals to authority. My preference would be to have us all relatively
anonymous except for our posts, and have our posts speak for us. To
'speak with authority and not as the scribes' is to let our own actual
words do the convincing, rather than continually quoting and hiding
behind the opinions of some other 'scribes' or 'rabbis' on some
particular matter.
Regarding more of Stephen's inquisition:
>Is David a Professor of Physics at Georgetown (or any)
>University?
If you simply must know, I'm an associate professor of physics at
Georgetown College in Georgetown, Kentucky, USA.
>Has David written physics textbooks?
No. I have toyed with the idea of writing a thermal physics text
though. If I ever do write one it would probably be based on my notes
for the thermal physics course that I teach here.
SJ>Has David any special
>expertise on the SLoT?
Well, I got my PhD from the University of Minnesota in theoretical
physics in the area of the statistical mechanics of disordered media. My
thesis research related to certain models of spin glasses. Since then I
had post doctoral research appointments at the James Franck Institute at
the University of Chicago and The Ohio State University where I did
further work on various models of disordered media. Since then I have
done some numerical simulations of various statistical mechanical models
and have taught at the University of Akron, Knox College, and Georgetown
College.
SJ>I also would also appreciate David stating
>(or restating) what his position is on the creation/evolution spectrum,
Stephen, I *did* state this a couple of posts ago. Please pay attention
if you are so curious about this. After you claimed that the "whole
problem with this second law of thermodynamics/evolution debate is that
evolutionists like David don't try to understand what the other side is
saying" I explained that I did not consider myself an evolutionist.
Rather that I was *undecided* between a TE/EC position and a particular
PC position very similar to your so-called mediate creation model (but
without any of the Johnsonesque IDism). I also gave my reasons for my
indecision. I am not an IDer in the sense that it is usually used by
those who flaunt their IDism. I think methodological naturalism is the
proper methodology of science.
SJ>and
>what his personal `religious' position is, i.e. is David and atheist or
>an agnostic, or even a Christian? I must say that I don't know much about
>David, although others seem to.
I happen to be a Christian who is currently a member of a moderate
Southern Baptist Church.
Does this help you pigeon-hole me better now? What else about me do you
want to know, marital status, race, age, politics, tax bracket maybe?
<snip>
David Bowman
David_Bowman@georgetowncollege.edu
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