Evolution
and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
|
Author: Roddy M. Bullock |
Essays by Author |
Adapted from The Cave Painting: A Parable of Science (Access Research
Network, 2006), by Roddy M. Bullock.
Abstract: On its face, the Second Law of
Thermodynamics stands diametrically opposed to any theory, including biological
evolution, that requires matter to go spontaneously from a simple, random form
to a more complex, specified form. The stock reply from virtually all
Darwinists to this objection is that the Second Law applies only to closed
systems. In the case of evolution, Darwinists say, the Second Law’s tendency to
prevent the incredible ordering necessary for evolution is circumvented by
including the sun in our local earth system. Usually the Second Law is
dismissed flippantly and casually, as if its inapplicability to evolution is
hardly worth elaboration. Understanding the Second Law (and the evolutionist
response) is necessary for an understanding of how it is a powerful argument
against natural, unguided evolution. For this reason, the reader is urged to
consider carefully the following discussion, where every effort has been made
to avoid overly tedious detail.
“Available energy”
is required for any process to do “work”—a term having a
defined meaning in physics of “force multiplied by distance.”[i]
Directed work is required to drive a
process of any kind in a direction of increasing order—such as is necessary for
Darwinian evolution. Available energy is energy having the potential to exert a
force through a distance. Thus a water wheel (as on old mill houses) is driven
by the force exerted by moving water as it falls and applies a force through a
distance. Before the water fell it had a certain “potential” energy available
to do the “work” of turning the wheel. After falling, it no longer had
potential energy with respect to the water-water wheel system. Thus, within the
constraints of the system (and assuming the water fell to a flat, level
surface), the water is at its lowest available energy state, constrained by the
ground so that it can do no more work. If the water had anywhere else to flow
or fall, it could lose additional “potential,” which could likewise be directed
as work if harnessed.
What do work and
energy concepts have to do with evolution? The concept of available energy,
especially “potential energy,” has been well developed in science, and is
expressed by the laws of thermodynamics. There are two important laws of
thermodynamics, aptly named the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics. The Second Law of
Thermodynamics (the “Second Law”) in particular bears on evolution in a way
that must be understood, given that on its face it flatly contradicts the ideas
of evolution. Darwinists are predictable in their disregard and dismissal of
the serious problems presented by the Second Law. Understanding the Second Law (and the
evolutionist response) is necessary for an understanding of how it is a
powerful argument against natural, unguided evolution. For this reason, the
reader is urged to consider carefully the following discussion, where every
effort has been made to avoid overly tedious detail.
Water wheels rely
on a difference in water level to create the energy “potential” necessary to do
work. But falling water is not the only form of potential energy available for
work. Differences in temperature create a potential for heat engines, such as
the automobile engine. Electrical potential differences in batteries represent
available energy, as do chemical potential differences in certain chemical
formulations. In short, in whatever form energy exists, work can be obtained
only if the energy is present in a state of greater intensity in one portion of
the system and lesser intensity in another portion.[ii]
In a real sense,
the idea of an energy “potential” is the idea of energy being able to go “down
hill” to be useful. As long as energy can still go down hill, more work can
“potentially” be extracted. Thus, more water wheels can be placed downstream
from the first, each one driving more mill stones. Heat can be extracted and
used to run a heat engine, batteries can run radios, and chemical reactions can
drive to final products. But at some point, the river can no longer run down
hill, the temperature differences disappear, the electrical charges equalize,
and the chemical reactants are spent. At that point there is no more “available
energy” within the “constraints of the system.”
Keeping in mind
the example of the water wheel, it is easy to see that you can never expect the
water wheel to turn faster than the water is falling. Nor can you get the wheel
to turn if the forces of friction are too great for the force of the water to
overcome. In general, it is clear that one cannot extract from a system more
energy than the total energy present in the first place. This is, in fact, is
the essence of the First Law of Thermodynamics (the First Law).[iii]
In addition to the
First Law, the Second Law states that it’s impossible to extract more work
(i.e., useful, directed energy) from a system than the quantity of available
energy will permit. The idea here is that you “can’t get something for nothing”
or, “you can’t get more than you started with.”[iv]
The practical implications of the First and Second Laws are that no matter how
the energy is supplied, for any system the
amount of unavailable energy always increases with time. We might say that
the unavailable energy in any system can remain unchanged under ideal
conditions, but always increases with
time under actual conditions.[v]
The term “entropy” was invented to
serve as a measure of the unavailability of energy.[vi]
Therefore, as Asimov states:
We
can say then that the entropy of a system can remain unchanged under ideal
conditions, but always increases with time under actual conditions. And this,
too, is an expression of the second law of thermodynamics.[vii]
The Second Law and
entropy are each expressed in various ways depending
on the particular discipline of science to which they are applied. But in any context,
entropy is in essence a measure of disorder, or the “evenness” of energy
distribution. For example, when an electrical battery discharges, its
electrical energy is more and more evenly distributed over its substance and
over the material involved in the electrical flow of current.[viii]
The increasing evenness with which energy is spread out is one manifestation of
increasing disorder.[ix] This
“evenness” is an invariable result of the Second Law and
its effects are universal to all aspects of nature. As Asimov states:
For
this reason, when we shuffle a neatly stacked deck of cards into random order,
we can speak of an increase in entropy. And, in general,
all spontaneous processes do indeed seem (in line with the second law of
thermodynamics) to bring about an increase of disorder. Unless a special effort
is made to reverse the order of things (increasing our own entropy), neat rooms
will tend to become messed up, shining objects will tend to become dirty,
things remembered will tend to become forgotten, and so on.[x]
It’s the “special
effort” referred to by Asimov that is the problem for Darwinists. As
mentioned previously, the universality of the Second Law is unquestioned; it is
sometimes referred to as the basis for our perception of time itself. The
Second Law says that in the absence of directed energy (the “special effort”
Asimov referred to), natural laws and physical
constraints in the system will always result in a “winding down”; systems
always go from a relatively ordered to a relatively more disordered state; from
high energy to low energy; from hot to cold; from organized to disorganized.[xi]
On its face,
therefore, the Second Law stands diametrically opposed to any theory, including
biological evolution, which requires matter to go spontaneously from a simple,
random form to a more complex, specified form. The stock reply from virtually
all Darwinists to such an objection is that the Second Law applies only to
closed systems. In our case, Darwinists say, the Second Law’s tendency to
prevent the incredible ordering necessary for evolution is circumvented by
including the sun in our local earth system. Usually the Second Law is dismissed
flippantly and casually, as if its inapplicability to evolution is hardly worth
elaboration.[xii] For
example, in evolutionist Ernst Mayr’s 318-page book What Evolution Is, fully one paragraph
of seven lines is employed on page 8 to assure us:
[T]here
is no conflict, because the law of entropy is valid only for closed systems, whereas the
evolution of a species of organisms takes place in an open system in which
organisms can reduce entropy at the expense of the environment and the sun
supplies a continuing input of energy.[xiii]
The idea referred
to by Mayr, which is the
standard refutation invariably flashed like a fake ID to get past all but those
who actually care, is that the Second Law applies only to systems closed to
external sources of energy input, and our earth system has unlimited energy
input from the sun. Therefore, because the earth is not a closed system, the
sun can supply energy for local entropy reduction on earth at the expense of an
increase in entropy elsewhere. Other Darwinists agree. For example, with
respect to the Second Law and closed systems Richard Dawkins refers with typical condescension to:
[A]n
irony in the claim, made by lay opponents of evolution, that the theory of
evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics …
within any closed system.[xiv]
In typical “up is down” thinking, Dawkins explains:
If
anything appeared to violate the law (nothing really does), it would be the facts, not any particular explanation of
those facts! The Darwinian explanation is the only viable explanation we have for
those facts that shows us how they could have come into being without violating the laws of physics. [xv]
It’s difficult to grasp Dawkins’ point here, at
least rationally. Without question the facts
appear to violate the Second Law—that is the reason for the inquiry in the
first place. We are seeking to understand how any natural process could make
water go uphill, so to speak, in the way Darwinism requires. To simply presume
as a fact that Darwinism is the only
viable explanation for these facts is a bald, question-begging
assertion—putting forth as a conclusion what is actually the question under
consideration.
Other
Darwinists inadvertently prove themselves wrong while pretending to give a
scientific answer to the question. For example, Dr. Tim M. Berra addressed “Some Creationist Claims” including the claim that
“evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics” in his book Evolution and the Myth of Creationism.[xvi]
Clumsily brandishing his fake ID, he answers:
These
statements conveniently ignore the fact that you can get order out of disorder if you add energy. For example, an
unassembled bicycle that arrives at your house in a shopping carton is in a
state of disorder. You supply the energy of your muscles (which you get from
food that came ultimately from sunlight) to assemble the bike. You have got
order from disorder by supplying energy. The Sun is the source of energy input
to the Earth’s living systems and allows them to evolve.[xvii]
Berra’s blunder is easy to see;[xviii]
it doesn’t take a PhD. to see that Berra’s science is
doctored with philosophy. Obviously, it is not only energy that is supplied to
the bicycle parts; a large dose of intelligent direction is also necessarily
present. If Berra wants to use the bicycle analogy, he must
explain how raw, undirected energy might combine with chance processes to do anything but cause the bicycle parts to
decay, rust, or otherwise deteriorate. As he has set up his illustration, Berra has succeeded in proving that an intelligent being is necessary to
direct energy (even if all the parts are in existence, and the energy
ultimately comes from the sun). Like Berra’s bicycle, living
organisms also need a “maker” otherwise the component parts would simply bask
in the sun until they break down into even greater and greater disorder.
For a serious
evolutionist perspective on the difficulties of reconciling evolution with the
Second Law, the reader should consider Paul Davies’ treatment in The Fifth Miracle.[xix]
Subtitled The Search for the Origin and
Meaning of Life, Davies’ book treats this
critical topic with the attention it deserves. In Chapter 2, entitled “Against
the Tide” Davies notes that, rather than simply being ignorant
nonsense among the “lay opponents of evolution,” serious evolutionist thinkers
see problems with evolution in light of the Second Law:
Some
eminent scientists have been deeply mystified by this contradiction [i.e., natural examples of an increase in
order]. The German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, himself one of
the founders of the science of thermodynamics, was one of the first to suggest
that life somehow circumvents the second law. … Eddington likewise perceived a clash between Darwinian
evolution and thermodynamics, and suggested either that the former be abandoned
or that an “anti-evolution principle” be set alongside it. … Even Schrödinger
had his doubts. In his book What Is Life
he examined the relationship between
order and disorder in conventional thermodynamics and contrasted it with life’s
hereditary principle of more order from order.[xx]
To be clear,
Davies is an unequivocal evolutionist, and to the
question “Is there a problem with the second law of thermodynamics when it
comes to biological evolution?” he answers forthrightly, “No, there isn’t.”[xxi]
Unfortunately, Davies’ justification
for this conclusion falls short of being persuasive. Discarding the
standard-issue fake ID, Davies has a custom-made ID with a more realistic
background that requires a little closer inspection. He begins by stating the
standard “the second law applies only to closed systems,” argument and gives
the example of a refrigerator, which decreases entropy inside at the expense of an increase in
entropy outside.[xxii] This, of
course, is a correct characterization of the Second Law, and when applied, as
Davies does, to existing
organisms it explains how they can exhibit entropy-decreasing characteristics
because they are designed to do so.[xxiii]
For example, Davies’ explanation
accounts for how things designed to direct energy, like refrigerators and
rhododendrons, can process raw energy into increased order in
entropy-decreasing processes such as refrigeration or photosynthesis. Unfortunately,
this line of thought misses the point of explaining how the photosynthesis
process, much less the rhododendron itself, got there in the first place—and
that’s what Darwinism must account for.
Nevertheless,
Davies does
make an honest attempt to apply the entropic principle to biological evolution,
rather than deny its applicability:
The
appearance of new species marks an increase in order, but Darwin’s theory
identifies the price that is paid to achieve this. To evolve a new species
requires many mutations, the vast majority of which are harmful and get
eliminated by the sieve of natural selection. … The carnage of
natural selection amounts to a huge increase in entropy, which more than
compensates for the gain represented by the successful mutant.”[xxiv]
This argument is almost persuasive. However,
it fails by falling short of explaining how
the ordering of specified complexity came to be in the lucky mutant. The
“carnage of natural selection” is nothing more
than the death of already-existing (if not unlucky) complex living things. But
the death of the unlucky does not explain the creation of the lucky—the
information-rich, complex, entropy-decreasing order
necessary for Darwinian survival. Davies’ line of
reasoning is a specific instance of the general argument that the Second Law
permits a local decrease in entropy as long as there is an offsetting increase
in entropy somewhere else in the system. This is accurate, but equally accurate
and required by the Second Law is that a
decrease (local or otherwise) in entropy comes about only in the presence of
some ordering force or principle. That is, just as photosynthesis locally decreases entropy due to the
programmed instructions in the plant, an entropy-decreased organism must have
some ordering principle to account for local decreases in entropy. Like trying
to claim water can locally run uphill
if there are enough offsetting downhill runs, such a claim requires an
explanation of how the uphill run
happens.[xxv]
Including the sun in the system does not suffice.
Nevertheless,
Davies’ in-depth attempt
is appreciated as a good-faith effort to reconcile the Second Law with
evolution, rather than all but ignore the inquiry as if it was just a
misunderstanding among “lay opponents of evolution.” Davies clearly comprehends the problems of
explaining evolution in the face of the Second Law, and his various theories on
the subject, particularly with respect to the origin of life, are worth
considering. And while his attempts at “reconciliation” strike an
anti-evolutionist as contrived and somewhat far-fetched, at least he’s making
an honest attempt instead of denying the conflict.[xxvi]
One of Davies most important contributions to the inquiry
of the Second Law is his acknowledgment of the role information plays in living organisms. Davies is particularly interested in finding an
explanation for the source of information as it relates to the origin of life
in the first place, but his comments and insights are equally applicable to the
Darwinian process of evolution, that must (if it is to be science-based)
explain increasing, directional, specified complexity.[xxvii]
Specifically, the contribution Davies makes to the inquiry is recognizing that for
origin of life, we need to “explain, not the origin of material stuff, but the
origin of information.”[xxviii]
Specifically, he realizes:
We
seem to be faced with a disturbing contradiction. The second law forbids the
total information content of the universe from going up as it evolves, yet,
from what we can tell about the early universe, it contained very little
information. So where has the information present in the universe today come
from? Another way of expressing the problem is in terms of entropy. If the universe
started out close to thermodynamic equilibrium, or maximum entropy, how has it
reached its present state of disequilibrium, given that the second law forbids
the total entropy to go down?[xxix]
The fact that
Davies recognizes the problem in terms of the
universe (i.e., the ultimate “system” of interest) is noteworthy. Equally
notable is the fact that he also recognizes that simply attributing the energy
of the sun to our “earth system” as an explanation for an information-building
process falls short of being an explanation—scientific or otherwise. He clearly
admits, for example, that protein formation from amino acids requires an
“uphill process” that “heads in the wrong direction, thermodynamically
speaking.”[xxx] And it is
not simply for lack of energy input into the system that such a process is in
the “wrong direction.” As Davies notes:
To
be sure, there would have been no lack of available energy sources on the early
Earth to provide the work needed to forge the peptide bonds, but just throwing
energy at the problem is no solution. The same energy sources that generate
organic molecules also serve to destroy them. To work constructively, the
energy has to be targeted at the specific reaction required. Uncontrolled
energy input, such as simple heating, is far more likely to prove destructive
than constructive.[xxxi]
Again, not to
misrepresent Davies, he is discussing
origin of life in the first place, not Darwinian descent with modification. However, the
same considerations come into play with the Darwinian
simple-to-specified-complex origin of species. The Darwinian process requires
massive amounts of entropy-reducing gains in
specified complex information to be generated naturally (albeit over long
periods of time, but the Second Law is not any less applicable over long
periods of time).[xxxii] Simply
attributing such entropy-defying requirements to “energy from the sun,” as
Dawkins and Berra do, suffers from the same defects as Davies’ origin of life
explanations would if he also took such a lazy, circumspect route.
To reiterate,
simply “throwing energy” at the problem of the Second Law’s applicability to
evolution is not a solution—natural laws based on chance and necessity are
incapable of converting raw energy into information-rich, complex, specified
structures.[xxxiii] Simply
invoking the sun into the earth’s system as a cure-all for evolutionary
complexity ignores the fact that raw, undirected energy is not known to be
capable in itself, i.e., in the absence of a directing law or process (or person, such as Berra’s bicycle maker),
of providing order out of disorder, much less specified order, and further much less specified complexity. As mentioned previously, and confirmed by
Davies, the undirected
energy of the sun has the opposite effect—in the absence of an imposed ordering
principle (like photosynthesis), the sun’s
radiation tends to break down matter into less ordered states.
The British
astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington regarded the Second Law as occupying the
supreme position among the laws of nature. He once wrote:
[I]f
your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give
you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.[xxxiv]
To this sentiment Darwinists have yet to
answer. That is, Darwinists have yet to propose any natural law, process, or
mechanism that can “get something for nothing” as evolution requires.
Specifically, what Darwinists have yet to explain is the origin of the
information-rich, specified complexity exhibited by living organisms. Appealing
to the sun to explain Second-Law-defying phenomena is like assuring us that
somewhere a water wheel is pushing water uphill on its own simply because the
sun is shining brightly.
With rare
exceptions humility is not a selected trait among leading Darwinists.
Nevertheless, Eddington is correct; and, like water running downhill
against an earthen dam, the unyielding reality of the Second Law will continue
to build up against the leaky dike of Darwinism. Therefore, it is only a matter
of time before Darwinism is washed away by a flood of inviolable truth.
Roddy Bullock, Executive Director of Intelligent Design Network of Ohio (www.idnetohio.com), is an engineer, lawyer, and the author of The Cave Painting: A Parable of Science (Access Research Network, 2006), from which this piece is adapted. Copyright Roddy M. Bullock 2006, all rights reserved. Citations and quotations permitted with attribution.
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