John (Neufeldt),
There has been some discussion alleging that the 2nd law of thermodynamics makes evolution impossible. This is simply not true.
It is, of course, common to experience that things left to themselves eventually become disordered: cars rust, dead things rot, etc. This tendency is explained by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which states that disorder in the universe (or in any isolated system within the universe) can only increase.
It is clear that all living organisms appear to exist in constant violation of this law on a second-by-second basis. The raw materials, for example, which organisms consume are "ordered" into stable forms which the organism needs to survive. Atoms acquired from the environment are ordered in every part of every living thing. We are all, at every instant, in constant "violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics" as you put it.
This "violation" is possible because living organisms are not "isolated systems" in the thermodynamic sense. Their order is made possible by the release of heat energy. The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that the amount of order in the universe (that is in a living organism plus its environment) must always decrease. The way around this is to offset increased order within a living organism by increasing disorder in the organism's environment. A living organism accomplishes this increase in surrounding disorder by the heat which results from the chemical reactions it uses to order itself. This heat is released to the environment where it increases the random disordered motion of molecules in the environment surrounding the organism. The organism creates a more disordered universe by the release of the energy used to order itself. In this way the organism can order itself because the very process leads to greater disorder in the universe as a whole. This is the fact which brings all life into compliance with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Because evolution is an event intrinsic to the structure and function of living organisms as passed from generation to generation (if indeed evolution is fact), it can proceed for the same reasons (thermodynamically) that life itself can proceed.
Evolution, therefore, is no more difficult to accept thermodynamically than life itself.
Evolution does not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Environmental energy can order molecules even in the absence of life (think electromagnetic energy here) so that you do not even necessarily need the chicken before the egg if you catch my drift.
I am not promoting the idea of evolution, rather, I am simply pointing out that evolution, if indeed it is fact, is NOT made impossible by the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Good Night,
BENNETT |
