From toms Wed Jul 28 00:10:09 1999
Subject: Re: TrueOrigin Feedback Response
To: twallace@trueorigin.org (Timothy Wallace)
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 00:10:09 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <379E6FAA.F6DE1ACD@trueorigin.org> from "Timothy Wallace" at Jul 27, 99 10:49:14 pm
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Tim:

> My apologies. I do agree to the terms you proposed.

Ok.

My original comlete question was:

| I find it amazing that you could write so much about the second law at
| http://www.trueorigin.org/steiger.htm and still not understand that the
| entropy of an unisolated system can increase, at the expense of the rest of
| the universe, of course.  dS >= dq/T can just as easily be written -dS <=
| -dq/T.

You asked in return:

|  I find it amazing that you could write so much about the 
|  second law ... and still not understand that the entropy 
|  of an unisolated system can increase, at the expense of 
|  the rest of the universe, of course...
| 
|  ...Are you intentionally ignoring this?
| 
| It isn't clear to me what has given you the impression that I do not
| understand that the entropy of an unisolated system can increase, at
| the expense of it's surroundings, or that I am ignoring the fact.
| 
| If you would care to site the specific passage(s) from my text in
| which it seems evident that I do not understand the above, I will be
| glad to address the matter with you, and (if necessary) adjust the
| text to eliminate any ambiguity concerning this issue.

Aha!  My mistake!  I meant to say:

The entropy of an unisolated system can DECREASE, at the expense of the rest
of the universe.

I presume you understood this error, or were intending to point it out.

The equations you deleted are critical, of course.  dS >= dq/T is a form of
the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

S is the entropy.  q is the heat put into the system (apparently the
direction harks back to the days when they were thinking about fires under
steam engine boilers) and T is the absolute temperature.  Multiplying both
sides of the equation flips the signs and changes the direction of the
inequality.  So -q is heat going out of a system, and it allows for the
decrease of the entropy of the system.

See:

http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/secondlaw/index.html

For more discussion.  I've put it into html for you today.

That small paper also shows that one can derive from the above equation that
the total entropy is greater than or equal to zero.  This is the common form
that people think about, but it is not the most general.  The Second Law has
a great variety of forms; this was written up by the late Jaynes some time
ago.  I'll see if I can get it on the web, because it is a wonderful
exposition ...  I found it at his web site!  :-)

Jaynes, E. T., 1988, ``The Evolution of Carnot's Principle'' in
Maximum-Entropy and Bayesian Methods in Science and Engineering, 1, G. J.
Erickson and C. R. Smith (eds.), Kluwer,  Dordrecht, p. 267;

http://bayes.wustl.edu/
http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/node1.html number 65
http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/ccarnot.pdf
http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/ccarnot.ps.gz postscript (56Kb) file.

I added the links to my little second law paper.

Also, the equation applies to non-equilibrium conditions.

So now we have the tools to look at some of the things that you wrote:

| Evolutionist theory faces a problem in the second law, since the law is
| plainly understood to indicate (as does empirical observation) that
| things tend towards disorder, simplicity, randomness, and
| disorganization, while the theory insists that precisely the opposite has
| been taking place since the universe began (assuming it had a
| beginning). 

The Second Law does indeed indicate that things tend towards disorder.  That
is the *total* entropy increases.  Evolutionary theory does not say the
opposite.  As you sit reading this message, you are burning food, and your
body is radiating heat, that is, -dS <= -dq/T.  This heat is spreading out.
Indeed, it is the very act of it spreading out that allows you to live at
all, or for car engines to run.  The heat eventually escapes to space.  Of
course, fortunately, the sun provides a counterbalance.

There are plenty of other places from that point on in your text that express
the same misunderstanding, but I won't list them unless necessary.  You can
clear them up yourself, and I can check your statements if you would like.

Regards,

Tom

  Dr. Thomas D. Schneider
  National Cancer Institute
  Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Biology
  Frederick, Maryland  21702-1201
  toms@ncifcrf.gov
  permanent email: toms@alum.mit.edu
  http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/