Evolution, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and do things evolve faster in sunlight!

As soon as you explain one misunderstanding to a creationist they come up with another.

The idea that evolution is in breach of the 2nd law of thermodynamics has been though ally debunked many times now and most creationists seem to have grasped the concept that the entropy of the Earth can decrease because of energy supplied from outside, primarily this means the sun.

So now they ask things like why havent Army Ants evolved since they live in the sun.

They seam to have got it into their heads that we think that the sunlight is directly responsible for evolution just because of the second law and that the theory of evolution predicts that things will evolve faster in sunlight.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

There are so many misunderstandings here that its difficult to sort it all out. There are misunderstandings of Physics, misunderstandings of Biochemistry, misunderstandings of Genetics, and misunderstandings of Evolution.

Lets start with the 2nd Law Itself.

I am going to show you an example of a system decreasing in entropy as a result of energy from the sun. Well, mostly from the sun anyway.

This kettle is at room temperature, in terms of the classical version of the second law the entropy of the system containing the water in the kettle and the air in the room is at a maximum and will remain so unless energy is added from outside the system.

Add electricity however and it boils. The entropy is going down. Where is the energy coming from to make this possible? Well most of it came from the sun. The sun is ultimately responsible for electricity generated from wind power since energy from the sun drives the winds, its responsible for electricity generated from fossil fuels since sunlight millions of years ago gave the micro organisms the ability to live and grow and it is that energy we are taking out if the ground in the form of oil, gas, and coal. Electricity from Solar energy obviously comes from the sun via a more direct route.

There are exceptions. Electricity generated from nuclear power plants does not come from our sun but from another star, or stars, which exploded eons ago. Electricity generated from geothermal sources comes from the formation of the earth, in other words the accretion of matter falling 4 and a half thousand million years ago into the gravitational well in which we now live.

Of course the Sun and other stars got their energy from the accretion of matter due to gravitational anomalies as well, and those anomalies in turn come from anomalies in the Big Bang.
But the vast majority of the worlds electricity comes from the Sun directly or indirectly.

Here is another example of a system decreasing in entropy as a result of energy from the sun.

Red wine contains about 80 kilocalories (thats about 360 kJ) per 100 grams. That energy comes indirectly from the Sun. Pretty much all food which you me and every other animal on this planet consumes contains energy which came from the sun, even if it is a steak the cow ate grass which absorbed sunlight whilst it was growing.

This glass contained 100 grams of wine before I started drinking it. About 80 kilocalories as I said. I recon thats probably enough right there in that one glass to account for all the genetic differences between me and my parents.

This brings me to another misunderstanding. People seam to be confusing the entropy changes in genes with the entropy changes in the phenotypic effects of those genes.

Take for example my opposable thumb. If you want to calculate the entropy change implicit in the evolution of my opposable thumb where do you start? Is it the entropy of my thumb? Obviously not since that entropy is required to grow the thumb not to evolve it. Its not even the entropy of the DNA in the cells which grew my thumb because DNA is copied within you body as part of the process of living. No, as far as I can see, to calculate the entropy required to evolve my personal opposable thumb you would calculate the entropy of the genetic payload of two theoretical cells (one egg, one sperm) which could have created a theoretical version of me identical in all ways apart from the opposable thumb, and then subtract that from the entropy of the genetic payload of the two real cells which did actually create me.

Thats really not a lot of entropy. Although I had to consume a certain amount of food to grow my opposable thumb my ancestors would have had to consume practically nothing at all to provide the entropy decrease necessary to evolve it!

Cheers! More in part II.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• evolution
• 2nd
• law
• of
• thermodynamics
• creation
• sun
• sunlight

[MaxGravitas]

Seems to me you're conflating energy entropy with genetic information entropy. What do you make of John Sanford's material? He quotes other leading geneticists who have published similar conclusions.

[kandtell]

@MaxGravitas

I was thinking of doing another video on the different "entropies" to address this point. But it's a difficult subject.

The first, and perhaps biggest problem with Sanford's "Genetic Entropy" is that new genetic information has now been observed many times in genomes and once in a spectacular and reproducible speciation event (I'm talking about Nylonaise).

So he can't be correct any more than engineers last century were correct when they said Bee Flight was impossible.

cont..

[kandtell]

(Of course the engineers were not being serious).

The second problem is that better men than I have refuted him.

My final point is my own, and therefore not to be treated with any respect:

He's trying to apply Shannon entropy to DNA. Shannon entropy is not yet fully worked out and needs to be synthesised with von Neumann and then we need a consistent way to apply them to open systems. Only then will we be able to properly apply it to DNA. That's my personal opinion.

[russellwarner1]

of course evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. living things never exert more energy then they need to simply sustain its present state. not to mention the problem of where the information is coming from. complex digital code cant appear by sheer magic

[kandtell]

@russellwarner1 Satire? (wiki/Poe's_law)

Assuming it's not satire, on the first point "living things never exert more energy then they need to simply sustain its present state" not only is that not true (I go to the gym to try and obtain a different state) more importantly what does it have to do with the 2nd law?

On your second point: What about Nylonaise? Only creationists say code can appear by magic.

[kandtell]

@CATMAHAT

np, the only thing I'd add is that Physics does not really recognise the "Order" description. It's an unfortunate dumbing down of the 2nd law with knock on consequences which make me feel it would have been better if it had never been mentioned.

The classical version is mostly about useful work. The quantum version is about possible states. The law is not really about "order".

Thanks again for the sub BTW :)

[CATMAHAT]

@kandtell Umm, you can scratch that last question. On re-reading your answer I realize that with a little thought on my part, your answer was sufficient. My bad.

[CATMAHAT]

@kandtell Thank you for the reply. On 3. what I meant to ask is if a drop in temp can increase order or complexity, as in the snowflake. (Not after homogenation of the system of course). am I wrong in this and if so could you dumb it down for me a bit? If you have explained this in another vid, just point the way. :)-- Subbed

[kandtell]

@CATMAHAT

2. agreed, we can imagine something approaching a closed system though.

3. "Cannot entropy decrease in both directions in this process? (snowflakes losing heat and photosynthesis gaining energy?)" - No, that would violate the 2nd law. Note that the classical law breaks down when you move away from homogeneous systems, it is unwise to try and apply it to a single photon for example.

[kandtell]

@CATMAHAT

1. It depends on the formulation. Classical entropy can be formulated so that the 2nd law applies to open systems. von Neumann entropy is more difficult, but I understand that people have created formulations for von Neumann entropy that work for some open systems.

As far as I know there is no agreed formulation for von Neumann entropy that works for all open systems, so people tend to want to talk about closed systems wherever possible.