I have responded at the blog.

Onlookers are invited to go take a look.

GEM of TKI

PS: It is probably worth excerpting here as a closeoff at UD, an excerpt I used from Sewell’s main presentation of his case as he cites above:

The second law is all about probability, it uses probability at the microscopic level to predict macroscopic change: the reason carbon distributes itself more and more uniformly in an insulated solid is, that is what the laws of probability predict when diffusion alone is operative. The reason natural forces may turn a spaceship, or a TV set, or a computer into a pile of rubble but not vice-versa is also probability: of all the possible arrangements atoms could take, only a very small percentage could fly to the moon and back, or receive pictures and sound from the other side of the Earth, or add, subtract, multiply and divide real numbers with high accuracy. The second law of thermodynamics is the reason that computers will degenerate into scrap metal over time, and, in the absence of intelligence, the reverse process will not occur; and it is also the reason that animals, when they die, decay into simple organic and inorganic compounds, and, in the absence of intelligence, the reverse process will not occur.

The discovery that life on Earth developed through evolutionary “steps,” coupled with the observation that mutations and natural selection — like other natural forces — can cause (minor) change, is widely accepted in the scientific world as proof that natural selection — alone among all natural forces — can create order out of disorder, and even design human brains, with human consciousness. Only the layman seems to see the problem with this logic. In a recent Mathematical Intelligencer article ["A Mathematician's View of Evolution," The Mathematical Intelligencer 22, number 4, 5-7, 2000] I asserted that the idea that the four fundamental forces of physics alone could rearrange the fundamental particles of Nature into spaceships, nuclear power plants, and computers, connected to laser printers, CRTs, keyboards and the Internet, appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics in a spectacular way.1 . . . .

What happens in a closed system depends on the initial conditions; what happens in an open system depends on the boundary conditions as well. As I wrote in “Can ANYTHING Happen in an Open System?”, “order can increase in an open system, not because the laws of probability are suspended when the door is open, but simply because order may walk in through the door…. If we found evidence that DNA, auto parts, computer chips, and books entered through the Earth’s atmosphere at some time in the past, then perhaps the appearance of humans, cars, computers, and encyclopedias on a previously barren planet could be explained without postulating a violation of the second law here . . . But if all we see entering is radiation and meteorite fragments, it seems clear that what is entering through the boundary cannot explain the increase in order observed here.” Evolution is a movie running backward, that is what makes it special.

THE EVOLUTIONIST, therefore, cannot avoid the question of probability by saying that anything can happen in an open system, he is finally forced to argue that it only seems extremely improbable, but really isn’t, that atoms would rearrange themselves into spaceships and computers and TV sets . . .

Go to the link to follow up on the significance of that and how it develops.

All the best.

4] Evolution can be considered a targeted search; the target being a species that flourishes in the given environment. Closeness to that target is rewarded by survival (that may be tautological, but that does not make it wrong)

Several notes:

a] First, an equivocation. “Targetted” in GAs is intelligent, not blind. (E.g. Set up antenna performance specs and randomise parameters to get the heuristically “best” outcome etc. Do a Monte Carlo pattern of runs on a model, etc. Trial and error by PC . . . ) By definition, NDT style evolution is precisely not based on a targetted, configurationally constrained search that rewards closeness to the identified target.

b] Second, “natural selection” is a term not a creative force of reality. In the real world, what happens is that relatively well adapted individuals are more likely to thrive and reproduce, so their descendants dominate the population. There is no necessary tendency to drift. [Cf the discussion under the Blythian thread to see this.] NS is consistent with minor changes as observed [often oscillating, like Galapagos Finch beaks], it is consistent with stasis, and with loss of genetic information – how the founder principle often leads to new varieties and even “species.” [NB how some of the Galapagos Finch species are interbreeding successfully now . . .]

c] The tautology issue comes up when the above is confused with a creative force. That the least unfit or better fitted survive and reproduce does not mean that they are innovative, adaptable to future unforeseen environmental shits, etc. Frontloading is intelligently targetted by contrast, with local adaptability across multiple environments a major objective of the optimisation. (I am not advocating this, just noting.)

d] The biggie issue is information generation beyond the Dembski-type bound by in effect random processes, say 500 – 1000 bits, or about 250 – 500 monomers. Body plan level innovations to account for the Cambrian revolution on require three or five or more orders of magnitude more than that. The whole gamut of the observed cosmos, 13.7 BY and 10^80 or so atoms [on a generous estimate!] are insufficient to credibly cross that threshold once much less dozens or more times.

e] The issue comes back to the point in my jet in a vat, or TBO’s protein in a prebiotic soup. The bridge to cross is the gap from scattered components to complex integrated functional whole where a high threshold of functionality is required for minimal function to occur. Intelligent agents do this routinely. Random forces for excellent reasons linked tot he underlying analysis of stat thermodynamics, do not do so credibly within the gamut of the observed cosmos. So, absent a back way up Mt Improbable there is an unanswered problem. And, as Ch 9 in TBO points out, it’s slim pickens on back paths up Mt Improbable.[Shapiro's recent Sci Am piece just underscores the point . . .]

5] It seems your original post was approved and has already gone through . . .

GEM of TKI

Got through! Now on points:

1] 0 K:

You can’t get there – and that’s important. [And at any accessible temp, Sconfig is a function of the number of states that pass the functional/macroscopic state test, random states in effect having a no-test test. For a unique code, once it is specified, its Sconfig is already zero. But of course it has thermal entropy etc. Recall for a system that can be so comparmentalised, Wsys = W1.W2. [This now standard trick, I believe, was originally used by Boltzmann to derive s = k ln w itself, using a hypothetical physical partitioning of the system. That is comparmentalisation of statistical weights based on physical processes is an underlying assumption of the whole process. Thence my vats and nanobots again.]

2] Modes and degrees of freedom

Of course,we have freezing out effects that on a quantum basis do separate modes “naturally.” In TBO’s case and my Vat exercise, once we see that the energy of bonds is more or less the same for any configuration, and there is no effective pressure-volume work being done, the enthalpy term is quasi-neutral across configurations. But, when not just any random or near random config will do [TBO discuss this on proteins in Chs 8 and 9], programmed work is normally indicated to get to the specified one. Prebiotic soup exercises end up requiring more probabilistic resources than are available in the credible gamut of the observed cosmos.

BTW, from the discussion and refs made in TMLO, the usage of configurational work and entropy they make is in the OOL lit from that time, i.e. this is again not a design thought innovation as such.

3] Wiki note:

It is often useful to consider the energy of a given molecule to be distributed among a number of modes. For example, translational energy refers to that portion of energy associated with the motion of the center of mass of the molecule. Configurational energy refers to that portion of energy associated with the various attractive and repulsive forces between molecules in a system. The other modes are all considered to be internal to each molecule. They include rotational, vibrational, electronic and nuclear modes. If we assume that each mode is independent (a questionable assumption) the total energy can be expressed as the sum of each of the components . . .

TBO’s usage is of course in this spirit, bearing in mind that the molecules in view are endothermically formed so the work of clumping and that of configuring can reasonably be separated as mere clumping is vastly unlikely to get to the macroscopically recognisable functional state. Thus too, my vats example.

Pausing 2 . . .

I sympathise on the comment filtering issue — having had some mysterious swallowings myself. On the other hand, in another thread this AM Dave Scott informed me they have had something like 90,000 spam messages in recent months, and very few of these have been filtered off improperly. [I think there is a two stage filter or something . . .]

I have posted a thread for onward comments.

Pausing [get the link out of the way first] . . .

Having big problems getting the next bit though, so I apologise for breaking it up so.

Pix: “S is zero at 0 K. Which agrees with the third law. For everything, no matter how complex.”
Correct and that is in part why you cannot get there, according to Nernst was it. One consequence would be perfectly efficient heat engines.