# Will They Never Tire Of the Second Law?

Secondlawapalooza has broken out over at Uncommon Descent, with a series of posts trying one more time to convince the thinking world that either evolution or abiogenesis violates the second law of thermodynamics. They are unmoved by the fact that the violation exists only in their minds.

One recent post, by Eric Anderson, is entitled, “Second Thoughts on the Second Law: Extending an Olive Branch.” He outlines what he sees as myths that each side holds about the other, and then imagines that he is laying down a little clear thinking and common sense. I'm afraid, though, that his olive branch is rejected. At times he is tantalizingly close to getting it, but then, sadly, he steps back from the brink. The first part of the post describes “Myths” he believes “abiogenesis proponents” hold about the ID folks. Let's have a look.

Myth #2: The 2nd Law does not present a problem for abiogenesis because Earth is an “open” system and receives energy from the Sun.

This myth is likewise based on a misunderstanding of the skeptics' arguments. If skeptics were wondering where most of the energy on the Earth comes from, then pointing out that Earth is an “open” system and receives energy from the Sun would be relevant. But that is not the focus of the skeptics' question. Nor is the skeptics' question about where energy is from generally or whether enough energy is available. Don't use the common Earth-is-an-open-system' refrain to try to explain why the skepticism about abiogenesis is silly, or to insinuate that skeptics are foolish because they aren't aware of energy transfer or energy availability or similar such matters.

The “Earth-is-an-open-system” refrain is meant to show that it is foolish to ground your skepticism of abiogenesis (or evolution) on the second law. That's it.

The second law is a specific, concrete, mathematical inequality about the change in entropy resulting from a thermodynamical process. In its classical form it says this:

$latex \Delta S \geq \int \frac{dQ}{T}$

This inequality applies to any sort of system. To claim of a proposed physical process that it violates the second law is to claim that this inequality is violated.

There are other ways of characterizing the second law, of course, but you cannot avoid its essentially mathematical character. If you prefer the statistical conception of entropy, for example, then you are going to need to talk sensibly about probability distributions over the relevant microstates.

If your argument is that abiogenesis violates, or at least appears to violate, the second law, but your argument makes no use of this mathematical machinery, then your argument is nonsense. Full stop.

Let's move on:

Myth #4: The 2nd Law does not pose any practical constraints on abiogenesis because it does not absolutely prohibit abiogenesis.

Those who entertain this myth make much of the fact that living systems exist, ergo, the 2nd Law does not prohibit such systems from existing. They may carry on about how the 2nd Law does not absolutely, as a matter of sheer logic, prohibit the spontaneous formation of far-from-equilibrium systems. This myth is, again, borne of a misunderstanding of the skeptics’ argument, although in this case, as discussed below, it is sometimes due to the skeptics’ poor efforts to make clear their argument. In either case, it simply does not follow that because the 2nd Law does not prohibit such living systems from existing, that it does not prohibit them from initially forming on their own from inanimate matter under natural conditions. Such formation has definitely never been demonstrated. Additionally, it certainly does not follow that because an absolute prohibition against naturalistic abiogenesis does not exist that the 2nd Law does not pose any serious or significant constraints on such an event.

Absolute prohibitions are precisely what the second law is about, at least in its classical form. In its statistical form it is about declaring certain sorts of things to be extremely improbable. Your proposed physical process either violates the second law or it does not. If it does not, then the second law exits the discussion. The only constraint the second law poses on your theorizing is the one that says you better not violate the inequality.

It's perfectly reasonable to ask how the tremendous influx of energy from the Sun fuels the various processes that lead to abiogenesis or evolution. But if that's what you're interested in, then stop talking about the second law. It's irrelevant to whatever point you think you're making.

Saying that a proposed physical process is consistent with the second law is very faint praise. Such a claim does not at all imply that you think the process is likely or plausible. There might be a hundred perfectly good reasons for thinking the process will not happen, but those reasons will have nothing to do with the second law.

As it happens, though, Anderson has anticipated me:

Myth #6: The 2nd Law can only be applied or fruitfully studied in its initial, most basic formulation relating to thermal energy.

Again, abiogenesis skeptics are not the first to raise the idea of applying the 2nd Law – or at the very least the concepts of the 2nd Law as they relate to entropy – to other areas, including informational entropy and organizational entropy. These are intriguing areas that merit careful consideration, not handwaving dismissals by people who are unable to see beyond the initial formulation. These areas are clearly applicable to the problems of creating an information-rich, functionally-organized living system. (Furthermore, as noted above, origin of life researchers also recognize that the 2nd Law, even in its basic formulation relating to thermal energy, raises issues in the origin of life context that must be dealt with.)

The phrase “the concepts of the 2nd Law as they relate to entropy” is pure crackpotese. It deserves nothing more than a handwaving dismissal. The second law does not have concepts. It's a concrete statement about entropy change, and that's all it is. Of course, the concept of “entropy” has uses outside of strict applications of the second law, and the idea has, indeed, been extended to areas beyond classical thermodynamics. But using the word “entropy” does not mean you're talking about the second law.

There's plenty more to roll your eyes at in Anderson's post, so feel free to have a look and pick out your favorite bits. Also have a look at the comments, where “keith s” tries to talk sense to Anderson, only to have his efforts cruelly rebuffed. I'll give the final word to keith, since I think he sums it up perfectly:

The second law forbids violations of the second law. That's all it does. OOL and evolution don't violate the second law. They involve open systems which can export entropy into their surroundings. The second law is not a problem for them.

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If you ask me, the laws of thermodynamics point very firmly to a problem with supernatural creation. If it is the case that
1. All material objects come from preexisting matter (which follows from the first law of thermodynamics which states that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed)
2. Living organisms are material objects (which is firmly established by biochemistry).

Then it follows that the first living organism must have originated from preexisting matter (abiogenesis). Even if God exists, we can draw a firm inductive conclusion that God never violates the laws of thermodynamics, because we have never observed God doing that.

By Nicholas Covington (not verified) on 21 Mar 2015 #permalink

Anderson's basic misunderstanding is around the difference between the first and second laws. "Where does the energy come from?" would be a first law question. The second law is about what happens to the entropy.

A way to put that is "if evolution produces more order, and entropy increases, where is the negative entropy coming from?" The answer is that the negentropy is coming from the sun. Not the energy.

"Skeptics"? Have the anti-evolution folks been calling themselves skeptics a long time or is this a bit of wording they've stolen from the climate science deniers?

As long as it works, they will keep using it.

By Michael Fugate (not verified) on 21 Mar 2015 #permalink

"Don’t use the common Earth-is-an-open-system’"
Anderson might as well command "don't try to explain physics" - which is exactly what you are doing.

Why do they even need to dress up their arguments in 2nd law of thermodynamics reasoning?

Isn't it good enough for them to show abiogenisis is improbable to the point of impossibility? (I'm not buying this reasoning, but work with me...)
When they go and lay obviously faulty arguments down, it makes all their arguments look worse.

By MobiusKlein (not verified) on 21 Mar 2015 #permalink

Claude Shannon had the best of intentions when he characterized the information content of a message as its entropy. He surely had no inkling that by doing so he was trolling a generation of creationists.

The ID folks argue that abiogenesis is impossibly improbable. Hmm. OK. Let's see the math. Oops! Did they forget to do that part of their homework? The real inequality at work here is this one:
Evidence required for them to accept abiogenesis >> than any that could ever be physically produced, which, after rearranging terms simplifies to (Persistence is Futile).

It just occurred to me that if the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is true, then the answer to the question, "Will they never tire of the Second Law?" is "Sooner or later, they will tire of the Second Law."

Young Earth Creationists will tire of the Second Law when Biologists finally understand what it is. It has nothing to do with "order" or disorder. Chemists have clarified the definition by calling it "the tendency of heat to spread out if nothing stops it."

Of course, anything will spread out if nothing stops it. Any force will tend to stop it. The force called gravity is why our planet and bodies are not dispersed throughout the universe.

In chemistry, the dispersal is not only in space, but in microstates and compounds. Any chemical reaction has an equilibrium, in which the reaction proceeds in both directions. This will lean heavily toward one side of an equation or the other depending on the energy balance.

The nature of carbon is such that a near-infinite number of compounds are possible. The enormous number of chemical reactions in the sea ensured that many compounds were and are formed. Some of these are much more stable than others.

When high school biologists understand and teach that entropy is the chief driving engine of evolution; while natural selection eliminates unstable results, then the young-Earth Creatiosts will tire of the second law. There won't be many of them left, either.

By Esther Cook (not verified) on 22 Mar 2015 #permalink

In today's episode of Simple Answers to Simple Questions:

Q: Will They Never Tire Of the Second Law?

A: No.

:-)

@8: Ironically, under Shannon's definition of information (or negative entropy), natural systems can produce information without intelligent design. Which is why IDers had to go out and claim to develop a new definition of information - they couldn't use Shannon's definitions, his work doesn't support design as being necessary to produce it. Send a wireless signal of 111111, and if some interference in the atmosphere turns it into 111101, then you've got more Shannon information than you started with.

One of the more obvious differences is that IDers often claim that making a duplicate of something doesn't increase the information. They have to say that because we observe duplication mutations to occur. But under Shannon, changing 111 to 111111 certainly increases the information because the second string requires more bits to describe.

You may be familiar with the fact that thermodynamics can be taught without any regard to the details of the “internal states” of a system. One can divide up the energy budget into “heat” or “internal energy” and energy that goes into doing mechanical work. The “working medium” can hold energy, and we can do empirical measurements to determine how much the medium can store energy in the form of “heat”. Then the entire subject can be reduced to a set of partial derivatives on multivariable functions that give the relationships among things like temperature, volume, pressure; all macroscopic parameters of the system. Some courses can be taught in an almost axiomatic fashion. i believe the second law of thermodynamics is not a myth

By Tracy 13167482 (not verified) on 23 Mar 2015 #permalink

Tracy 13167482,

Nobody is claiming that the second law of thermodynamics is a myth. Of course the second law is not a myth; it is a valid law of physics to which no exceptions have ever been found. What we are claiming is a myth is the notion that the second law of thermodynamics somehow rules out the theory of evolution.

The following seems reasonable to me; if there are any flaws please point them out:

The 2nd law describes the dissipation of energy from a source to a sink, such as from the sun into open space. Earth intercepts a tiny fraction of the energy dissipated from the sun, and the intercepted fraction drives chemical reactions on Earth. Those reactions eventually produce self-replicating molecules and then cells, and then the rest of life via evolution and selection. Organisms convert ambient energy and nonliving matter into an increase in living matter through growth and reproduction, and into stored information such as in DNA and in learned responses to stimuli.

To my mind the difficult part is the transition from self-replicating molecules to cells: how it occurs that amino acids manage to organize lipids into a membrane to isolate them from the ambient. I don't doubt that we'll find a naturalistic explanation for that and be able to do it in a lab, but I don't have the knowledge to see the path from here to there. Anyone here want to fill me in on that?

---

Forgive me if I'm missing the obvious, but it appears that Anderson is objecting to _naturalistic_ abiogenesis, and that his (and others') creationism is asserting _supernatural_ abiogenesis. If that's all it boils down to, then there is no need to torture the physical sciences to assert a matter of faith, any more than an artist has to torture cognitive science to claim that his/her artwork is "objectively" beautiful.

Anderson appears to know the "open system" arguement. I'm inclined to believe that if he understood dissipative structures (Prigogene et.al., and lately Jeremy England), he would have to admit that the game is over and all creationists really have is an assertion of faith.

---

Re. Nicholas @ 1:

Agreed. Honest creationists could assert that abiogenesis itself _is_ supernatural creation, and accept all of the known science, adding only the element of an act of will by a deity to launch the transition from complex chemistry to life. To my mind that's acceptable since no science is tortured to make the end-product: only an untestable premise is added as an element of faith.

But the torturing of science appears to be nothing more than the means to the end of forcing their denominational beliefs into public school curricula. That's fundamentally dishonest, which also makes it a violation of religious morals ("bearing false witness" and equivalents in other traditions). Here's a place where we of the empirical and rational persuasions can rightly ally with religious progressives: calling out "creation science" and suchlike attempts, as being dishonest and thereby un-Christian.

The place where _we_ should draw the dividing line is: We don't have a problem with people having untestable beliefs as articles of faith, but we do have a problem with people abusing science and engaging in dishonesty as a means of imposing their will upon the public. Drawing the line there will give us common cause with the largest segment of the public (theistic as well as atheistic) and isolate our adversaries as a small fringe group.

The 2nd law describes the dissipation of energy from a source to a sink

Well it depends on how you define source and sink. Since entropy is a measure of a distribution of energy, it is theoretically possible to have a system in which no energy is lost but entropy still increases. Put a dead rat in a bomb calorimeter and it will still decay - the entropy of the system in the bomb calorimeter will increase - even though there is no mass or energy being dissipated from the bomb calorimeter to the outside world.

As others have pointed out, it's really not a law in the normal sense of a rule the universe follows, its more a predictable outcome of statistics. Basically its the observation that interactions will cause energy and matter to distribute in a wide variety of ways, typically more ways than in the original system. The 'number of ways' for energy is the entropy; a positive delta S means the number of ways in which energy is distributed has gone up. The distribution of matter is not strictly entropy. Talking about the ways matter is distributed is an extremely common analogy, used by a lot of scientists as well as laypeople, but its not entropy and can sometimes lead to misunderstandings, as in cases where a wider distribution of energy would require matter to 'sort' itself. Which brings us to a very good example of that...

To my mind the difficult part is the transition from self-replicating molecules to cells: how it occurs that amino acids manage to organize lipids into a membrane to isolate them from the ambient. I don’t doubt that we’ll find a naturalistic explanation for that and be able to do it in a lab, but I don’t have the knowledge to see the path from here to there. Anyone here want to fill me in on that?

Lipids self-organize without any need for amino acids at all, and this has already been observed (often, under a variety of conditions, and producing many different shapes including walls, spheres, etc.). Its actually quite simple to understand; lipids have an "oily" end and a "water" end. Just as chemically, oils will form spheres in water or a separate layer because separation in energetically favored, lipids will form bilayer walls with their oily ends "in the wall" because separating the oily ends from the surrounding water is energetically favored. These bilayer wall structures then often bend and from into spheres because, again, doing that minimizes the contact area between the oily part of the molecules and the surrounding water.

Anderson appears to know the “open system” arguement. I’m inclined to believe that if he understood dissipative structures (Prigogene et.al., and lately Jeremy England), he would have to admit that the game is over and all creationists really have is an assertion of faith.

He seems to have a problem with the open system argument and maybe dissipation, as he complains a lot about how the "compensation" argument is "irrelevant." Frankly I am not sure how or why he can draw a line between organic synthesis reactions involved in OOL which are "compensatory" and every other endothermic chemical reaction. IIR my thermo correctly, all endothermic reactions "compensate" by moving entropy 'out" of one subsystem and "into" another.

Eric,

I can confirm for you that your memory of thermodynamics WRT chemical reactions is absolutely correct. In chemistry, the second law is reshaped in terms of a quantity called Gibbs free energy. Reactions with a negative Gibbs free energy are ones that favor products; those with a positive Gibbs free energy favor the reactants. Mathematically, the Gibbs free energy is expressed as dG = dH - TdS, where G is the Gibbs free energy, H is the enthalpy, T is the absolute temperature and dS is the change in entropy of the reactant/product system. If a reaction is endothermic, dH is positive. Therefore, for the reaction to favor the products, TdS must be positive and of greater magnitude than dH. That means that the entropy of the reaction system must increase in an endothermic reaction.

Note, the Gibbs free energy is really just an expression for the total change in entropy that occurs in the reaction system plus its surrounding environment. The enthalpy is a measure of the heat emitted into or absorbed into the surroundings during the reaction. The entropy change of the surroundings is then -dH/T. The entropy change of the reaction system is dS, by definition. -S total = dH/T - dS, and G is simply defined as T * -S total = dH - TdS. Thus, negative values of G imply that the overall entropy increases; positive values imply that the overall entropy decreases. Therefore, reactions where the value of G is positive do not occur spontaneously.

Eric & Sean T: Thanks for the explanations. Hopefully we're far enough down the thread here that it's not a hijack to go into more "teach basic science to laypeople" stuff (apologies if this is sloppy but I'm seriously sleep-deprived at the moment):

"Source and sink," I was thinking "within the universe which is a closed system," cold ambient space relative to the hot sun.

"...interactions will cause energy and matter to distribute in a wide variety of ways, typically more ways than in the original system. The ‘number of ways’ for energy is the entropy; a positive delta S means the number of ways in which energy is distributed has gone up." Well said, that makes immediate sense, and (correct me if this is mistaken) it also seems to be a bridge to Shannon, in the sense of "the number of possible configurations of values of a set of bits."

"Distribution of matter = measure of entropy" as erroneous usage of "entropy": Yep I've been making that mistake too, which I'll stop doing.

"Lipids self-organize without any need for amino acids at all..." and that entire paragraph: Aha, that solves that issue nicely (and points to another gap in my knowledge). In which case: amino acids form, and then entirely independently, lipid spheres form, and sooner or later, lipid spheres happen to form around proteins and amino acids and a few other things, and you get the first cells. I know I'm still missing a big chunk there, but self-organizing lipid spheres are a crucial part of naturalistic abiogenesis. (Theists can still postulate a deity as a prime mover, and atheists still have no need of that hypothesis, but in any case it's a naturalistic mechanism, which is what I was looking for.)

Question re. "bilayer walls," is this correct?: The "water" ends of the lipids face the interior of the walls. The "oily" ends face the outside environment of the respective walls. Thus a cell membrane is "oily" on its outside-facing surface and on its interior-facing surface, and the interior of the wall itself is the contact point between the water ends of the lipids that face outward from the cell and those that face inward toward the interior of the cell.

If endothermic reactions export entropy from a subsystem to the ambient, that definition appears to coincide with one of the criteria for a dissipative system, doesn't it? I've been accustomed to thinking that nonliving chemical reactions that qualify as dissipative systems are relatively few and of very specific types, but it would appear that I've failed to make the connection to a much larger number of examples. If anything, this demonstrates that one of the properties needed to develop life, is very very common in nonliving chemistry. Which to my mind reinforces the conclusion that life is an inevitable and common outcome of the processes that operate in chemistry at-large. The chemistry that develops into primitive organisms is not extraordinary at all, it's inevitable given the time available on a new planet.

Eric, the way you laid out those equations is very helpful and I'm going to follow up on that stuff tomorrow after I've had enough sleep. I have a serious lack of knowledge of chemistry as compared to physics, but it's clear that it's crucial to understanding the mechanisms of abiogenesis in more detail.

By now y'all have probably figured out that my academic background is in the social sciences;-) but the thing is, if you ask "how do humans interact?", you inevitably get to "how do brains work?," and from there, to fundamental questions such as about the origins of life, which go right to the physical sciences.

(The over-use of the word "awesome" by the consumer-tech industries today really debases that word to the point of profanity, and grates on me bigtime. Apple Watch isn't "awesome." Physics, chemistry, and biology are awesome.)

G,

I am a chemist, with just enough biochemistry knowledge to get me into trouble, but I think your understanding of the lipid bilayer may be just a bit confused. To understand the lipid bilayer think of TWO long sheets made up of molecules with one end being "oily" and the other end being "watery". In such a configuration, in an aqueous environment, the "oily" ends will tend to join together because it's more energetically favorable for the "watery" ends to be exposed to the aqueous environment. Thus you form essentially a sandwich-type arrangement with the "oily" ends essentially sandwiched between two "watery" sides.

Now you can imagine that this long, straight, "sandwich" folds in upon itself to form a circle. (Or in three dimensions, more accurately, it forms a sphere). In this way, you get a structure that has a "watery" inside area, a "watery" outside area, but the two "watery" areas are separated by the "oily" inside. That's a rudimentary cell membrane. The "watery" outside can interact easily with the aqueous environment. The "watery" inside can interact easily with the aqueous cell interior, but the "oily" space in between can regulate the flow of materials from the outside of the cell to the inside.

BTW, in actual references, you'll see the terms "hydrophilic" in place of "watery" and "hydrophobic" in place of "oily". It is more energetically favorable in the lipid bilayer to have the hydrophobic ends isolated from both the aqueous outside and the aqueous inside environments. Thus the hydrophobic ends tend to be sandwiched between the hydrophilic ends.

Well said, that makes immediate sense, and (correct me if this is mistaken) it also seems to be a bridge to Shannon, in the sense of “the number of possible configurations of values of a set of bits.”

Yes, Shannon entropy has the exact same mathematical form as the Boltzmann entropy equation. The symbols obviously mean different things, but they behave in exactly the same way with respect to distribution and probability.

I will take this opportunity to again point out that no intelligence is needed to produce Shannon information. :)

In which case: amino acids form, and then entirely independently, lipid spheres form, and sooner or later, lipid spheres happen to form around proteins and amino acids and a few other things, and you get the first cells.

Well, that's one possibility. Its also possible the replication machinery came first and part of what it 'coded for' was the production of lipid molecules. AFAIK nobody is yet sure how cell wall formation and cell interior formation came together.

Question re. “bilayer walls,” is this correct?: The “water” ends of the lipids face the interior of the walls. The “oily” ends face the outside environment of the respective walls.

I believe its the opposite. In an aqueous environment (like our cells), lipids will self-organize so that their hydrophilic ("water") parts will face out and their hydrophobic parts are in. Wikipedia has a couple of basic images. You might have been thinking its analogous to 'charge' where opposites attract, but in fact with polar vs. nonpolar chemical structures its the reverse: it requires less energy for covalent structures to be next to other covalent structures and ionic/polar structures to be next to other ionic polar structures.

it would appear that I’ve failed to make the connection to a much larger number of examples. If anything, this demonstrates that one of the properties needed to develop life, is very very common in nonliving chemistry.

In principle, exactly half of all possible chemical reactions in the universe have this 'dissipative' property, because any reaction that is exothermic when its run in one direction will be endothermic when its run in the other direction. In reality, kinetics often matters more than thermodynamics. When there's enough energy in a chemical environment for two competing reactions to both go, reaction rate tends to matter more than energy released (or required). To make up a notional example, let's say you have some reactants and they can go through a 2-body reaction which costs energy (i.e., is endothermic), or a 3-body reaction which releases energy. If the energy required for the 2-body reaction is available in the environment, you will likely see that happen 100% of the time or close to it because of the statistical likelihood of the 2-body interaction is higher than the likelihood of the 3-body interaction, even though it 'costs' energy while the other one doesn't. So not only are local-entropy-reducing reactions fairly common, in some high energy environments they may completely dominate reactions that locally increase entropy, if that's the way the kinetics work out.

Eric, the way you laid out those equations is very helpful

To give credit where it's due, that was Sean T.

It occurred to me that if the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is true, then the answer to the question "Will they ever tire of the second law?" is sooner rather than later as it is proved. However if it is false they will tire of the law later and begin a new thesis. u14301815

By Arthur Grüner … (not verified) on 07 Apr 2015 #permalink

the second law of thermodynamics is a solidified law in physics. so as long as it proves true, it will never tire.

By u15025935 (not verified) on 08 Apr 2015 #permalink