The common sense law of physics
| July 29, 2010 | Posted by Granville Sewell under Intelligent Design |
I was discussing the second law argument with a scientist friend the other day, and mentioned that the second law is sometimes called the “common sense law of physics”. This morning he wrote:
Yesterday I spoke with my wife about these questions. She immediately grasped that chaos results on the long term when she would stop caring for her home.
I replied:
Tell your wife she has made a perfectly valid application of the second law of thermodynamics. In fact, let’s take her application a bit further.
Suppose you and your wife go for vacation, leaving a dog, cat and a parakeet loose in the house (I put the animals there to cause the entropy to increase more rapidly, otherwise you might have to take a much longer vacation to see the same effect). When you come back, you will not be surprised to see chaos in the house. But tell her some scientists say, “but if you leave the door open while on vacation, your house becomes an open system, and the second law does not apply to open systems…you may find everything in better condition than when you left.”
I’ll bet she will say, if a maid enters through the door and cleans the house, maybe, but if all that enters is wind, rain and other animals, probably not.
This is an application of the main point in chapter 5 of my new book : “If an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is closed, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering that makes it NOT extremely improbable.”
For a slightly more technical version of this story, complete with a mathematical analysis of the equations for entropy change, see my video .
(For those who don’t watch the video, or give up on it before the end, and thus don’t understand what this story has to do with evolution, I should include the punch line):
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.
130 Responses to The common sense law of physics
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Yes, I believe I called your attention to that.
aiguy,
The reason it is interesting to me is that in our hypothetical debate, Meyer has been forced to concede that ID theory cannot explain what Meyer claims it explains. In particular, it cannot identify a known cause of the origin of FSCI, and the origin of FSCI is the basis upon which he (and Dembski and others) argue for ID in the first place.
Actually, given this hypothetical reply, ID theory would still be doing exactly what Meyer aimed to do: Showing the inadequacy of accepting a non-intelligent, non-living cause for life on earth. I’m pointing out Meyer can go right ahead and accept your criticisms, and his argument still retains force and accomplishes much of what he wants it to. As for Dembski, he explicitly accepts numerous possible explanations for FCSI, included “complex physical” intelligent agents. I can quote him saying this explicitly if you wish, right on this site.
Calling proponents of panspermia a “crowd” is a bit of a stretch, no? These are interesting hypotheses, but they have indeed languished for lack of any evidence at all. If you disagree, please reveal the evidence that we have for the existence extra-terrestrial life (and I hope it does not include reference to “area 51? or links to “alien autopsies” on YouTube).
Here, among other places. Do you think “panspermia” means “omg spock”? If so, you don’t have a clue about the subject. Sorry to get mocking, but hey, just replying in kind.
What?
Huh?
Like I said, none of these “life comes from other life” theories have ever been much of a draw to anyone outside of Crick (for a while at least) and the Raelians I suppose.
The fact that you’re falling back to “Well, okay, but I bet that would be unpopular!” screams that you don’t have a real response here. What’s more, every ID major ID proponent – Dembski, Behe, etc – concedes straightaway that ID doesn’t prove the existence of God or such, so the crack about people pushing their “theological ideas” is based on a misconception anyway. Explicit embracing of metaphysics has always been required to get anyone from ID to their theological ideas, so the modified argument would change nothing.
Even if we create life, then the ET-descendent theory will still be more parsimonious than the ET-ancestor theory… but it doesn’t matter anyway.
I disagree on both counts – it would be one more way for life to originate and spread in the cosmos, and it would be an explicitly ID method. And the fact that both methods would be much stronger and more rational inferences than what Meyer is arguing against would itself be quite a development.
ID has the masses because the masses want ID to put the imprimatur of science on their (Christian) theism. Once that’s off the table and ID becomes the study of extra-terrestrial aliens, they will all abandon ID and return to good old fashioned Creationism.
ID’s proponents have always been justifiably restrictive with regards to what the success of ID could possibly show, as well as what it could not show. Neither Dembski, nor Meyer, nor Behe nor most of the others say that ID as ID gets one to God, much less the Christian God. I’m pointing out here that Meyer could accept your claims for the hell of it, and *still* his inferences go through. For those who accept given metaphysics, the options are even more broad – but they’re no longer purely scientific. I have the sneaky suspicion few will care.
But like I said – if this is all about secret hopes and fantasies for sociological trends, it’s pretty uninteresting. I’m interested in the arguments, not numbers.
CJYman,
I apologize if I missed your point or confused speakers here. My point remains that the designer of ID must either be a life form or not. If it is, then ID cannot claim to explain the first life form, as Meyer claims it does. Otherwise if the designer is supposed to be intelligent but not a life form, then ID cannot be offering a known cause as Meyer says it does. Either way, Meyer is wrong.
Yes, it is a possiblity.
I agree with you – on both counts (I’m not convinced of the details of Penrose/Hameroff but I’ve long thought something along those lines anyway).
That is how I interpreted “neither FSCI nor intelligence are defined purely by law+chance”. Materialists believe that the brain operates purely by law+chance and produces intelligent behavior and consciousness as a result.
OK then – I stand corrected regarding your position, apologies again. (My position is called “neutral monism”, tending toward “mysterianism”, which entails that I think that we don’t know what we mean when we talk about “physical” or “material”).
OK: I think “intelligence” is too ill-defined in this context to have a useful discussion about. Meyer talks about “conscious, rational thought”, which I think is much more meaningful and specfic. I think consciousness requires particular physical mechanisms in order to exist. I have no theory about how those mechanisms came to exist in the first place, but I see no reason to suppose it had anything to do with the sort of conscious experience that human beings have. And finally I believe that consciousness is not causal. So that’s what I think about all this… but none of my arguments here depend on the truth of any of that.
I think ID requires that mind preceeds FSCI, which seems to violate your “closed loop” idea. It would appear you need to figure out a way for this loop to bootstrap?
I don’t think that we have good reason to believe that extra-terrestrial life forms were involved in consciously designing life on Earth. Nor do I think we have good reason to believe that something which is not a life form could consciously design life either. These are the only two possibilities ID presents, and so I don’t think there is good reason to believe ID in any form at all.
I have no theory as to how it got started.
Yes.
I have studied artificial intelligence for more than three decades, and what we have learned is that we do not understand how human beings think. You call it “foresight”, and you think you know what that means, but you don’t know what that means. Our ideas come to us, somehow, and we become conscious of (some of) them. But is it our consciousness that causes these ideas to form? Perhaps huge numbers of ideas are constantly being generated at random in our brains, and through a selection process only certain ideas enter our conscious perception. In other words, our thoughts arise via “blind”, random generation and selection. If this were true (and various scientists included Nobel-award-winning Gerald Edelman believe so) then reifying “foresight” as something which created FSCI is clearly mistaken; in this view, foresight is no more “intelligent” than Darwinian evolution!
Again, perhaps “foresight” is our name for physical processes operating via random generation & test – purely law+chance. Maybe so, maybe not… we don’t know.
Again,I think Meyer’s theory is completely counter to your idea regarding this closed loop. In his view, intelligence is something that stands outside of law+chance and creates FSCI, and so he claims that intelligence is a known cause of FSCI. In your view, intelligence may be nothing more than law+chance, and so any sort of law+chance process may be capable of producing FSCI – even law+chance processes that are not associated with conscious awareness.
Do I have you right now?
KF:
I suppose it would be uncivil to point out that evolution and common descent require that offspring not vary much from the parent.
No squirrels evolving directly from fish.
But everyone already knows that.
But while we’re waiting to have all the gaps filled, it’s interesting that the evolution of an actual self-replicating biological population can be modelled by software.
And that the error catastrophe is a function of population size and mutation rate, not something inevitable in all populations.
I find these things interesting.
Null,
Oh, no, this isn’t true at all. What Meyer says he wants to show is that conscious mind is the best explanation for the first living cell, and he says so explicitly, over and over again. If you doubt me I will provide a dozen citations… but only if you promise to concede the argument totally once I go to the trouble.
In that case you’ve just changed his goal for him. What I’ve demolished is Meyer’s argument, not yours. Meyer argues that ID presents a known cause that could account for the first living cell. I’ve shown he is mistaken, which is what I set out to do.
I know he does, but he’s in the same boat. Meyer and Dembski lump life forms & gods into one big ambiguous “intelligent agency” basket, so they can equivocate on what they mean… and then refuse to provide an operational definition that would allow us to identify what things actually belong in that basket and what things do not. All I’ve done is to unmask their equivocation. Either they’re talking about life forms (which are known, but can’t be the cause of the first living cell) or they’re not (in which case their cause isn’t known).
QED
Hey, null – I hope you know I like your thinking and respect your arguments. I was just trying to keep it light with you!
No, my response is that “life on Earth comes from pre-existing life” is not just an unpopular theory, but it is a bad theory because we have no evidence that it is true. As I’ve said, that is why these old ideas have never garnered much support.
I know both what major ID authors say and also what is true of the vast readership of their books. But let’s just drop that part, OK?
I misspoke – what I meant to write was “ET-ancestor theory is more parsimonious then ET-designer theory”.
ET-ancestor theory is distinctly not an ID method, because biological reproduction is not “design”, right (in the sense that organisms are not consciously designing their offspring). So if ET-ancestor theory is true, then ID is wrong. And if we imagine that ET life existed prior to life on Earth, why would ET-designer theory be commended over ET-ancestor theory?
For him to deny my argument would require him to claim that the first living organism could have been designed by another living organism (a logical impossibility) or that disembodied intelligence is part of our uniform and repeated experience (which isn’t true).
aiguy,
Oh, no, this isn’t true at all. What Meyer says he wants to show is that conscious mind is the best explanation for the first living cell, and he says so explicitly, over and over again. If you doubt me I will provide a dozen citations… but only if you promise to concede the argument totally once I go to the trouble.
And you’ll concede the argument totally to me if I provide a dozen citations of Meyer explicitly arguing against an unguided, unintelligent abiogenesis event? To hear you explain it, Meyer would regard powerful or successful arguments against an unguided abiogenesis event on earth as a defeat. I’m calling that ludicrous.
In that case you’ve just changed his goal for him. What I’ve demolished is Meyer’s argument, not yours. Meyer argues that ID presents a known cause that could account for the first living cell. I’ve shown he is mistaken, which is what I set out to do.
Changed his goal? I offered an argument that I explicitly said was a hypothetical response from Meyer – I at no time said Meyer was making the response. No surprise moves here. I pointed out Meyer could grant your criticisms for the hell of it, and still he’d be accomplishing much of what he wants to. You are the one saying that Meyer would regard successful arguments on the front mentioned as a defeat for him. I’m pointing out that’s ridiculous.
Either they’re talking about life forms (which are known, but can’t be the cause of the first living cell) or they’re not (in which case their cause isn’t known).
And again, Dembski & company don’t argue what the “Designer” is – and by their measure, they do not have to, because the particular identity (This or that particular designer) is irrelevant for their purposes.
No, my response is that “life on Earth comes from pre-existing life” is not just an unpopular theory, but it is a bad theory because we have no evidence that it is true. As I’ve said, that is why these old ideas have never garnered much support.
“No evidence”? Baloney. I went ahead and provided some – or are you going to say that tests regarding bacterial viability in space aren’t evidence? Or possible empirical results indicating the possibility of simple/bacterial life on comets or on other planets aren’t evidence?
Insufficient evidence? Sure. No evidence? That’s fantasy.
ET-ancestor theory is distinctly not an ID method, because biological reproduction is not “design”, right (in the sense that organisms are not consciously designing their offspring). So if ET-ancestor theory is true, then ID is wrong. And if we imagine that ET life existed prior to life on Earth, why would ET-designer theory be commended over ET-ancestor theory?
First, it’s not that simple: Crick’s directed panspermia – which I’m not arguing for here – relied on ET-ancestors as a method. That would be a midway point between the two. But that’s just a technical point.
Second, if ET-ancestor theory is true, ID isn’t necessarily wrong. There are ID proponents who rely on panspermia and ET-ancestor theories – it would be partial confirmation of their views. And again with Meyer, it would be partial confirmation of his own views – even if life didn’t originate on earth, it would skunk the abiogenesis views he has in his sights.
Third, it would depend on what we uncovered about the earliest life on earth, or on there being no way to discern created life from ancestral life. To say nothing of the fact that putting panspermia on the table as an explanation for life on earth would have some serious repercussions across the board, since there’s no way to accept it while at the same time regarding earth as a kind of hermetically sealed off environment where biological development takes place.
For him to deny my argument would require him to claim that the first living organism could have been designed by another living organism (a logical impossibility) or that disembodied intelligence is part of our uniform and repeated experience (which isn’t true).
That’s an oversimplification, like saying that providing powerful reasons to believe that Neo-Darwinism is false/inadequate wouldn’t be an ID success on the grounds that a negative argument itself doesn’t demonstrate or strongly infer a designing agent. But there are arguments ID proponents sign on with that are negative arguments, just as there are positive arguments.
I see aiguy has kept every busy here!
@aiguy
-“ Now THAT is an ontological assumption…[etc] is true!”
I went to great lengths to specify that one’s prior assumptions serve as the underpinning of their perspective. For you to come here and accuse me of doing otherwise is just disingenuous. And it’s you that is doing the projection, not me. Sorry.
And here is why… You said: “Under dualism, we have dual natures – one is our material body and one is our immaterial mind.”
So I used that as a hypothesis. A typical “for the sake of argument” proposition(i.e. if this then that). There is a difference. So your accusations are undue and irrelevant. All that for what? So that you can divert attention elsewhere and refrain from commenting on the plethora of examples I gave you? What is to become of science without logical inference? Without abstract theorizing? Tell us.
No, you should address it if you disagree then because the criticism applies to both paradigms (ID and darwinism). You can’t berate on ID and then refuse to comment on darwinism, especially since you disagree. Tell us then, when did your uniform and repeated experience observe randomness or a mindless materialistic cause giving rise to FSCI?
- but it is confused to believe that evolutionary biologists – or anyone else – considers “chance” to be a cause, rather than a description of the independence of effects”
What exactly do you mean by that? Independence of effects from what? And how does this fit into a materialistic ontology? Can you elaborate?
-“ ID only makes sense if you adopt a particular metaphysical stance – one which denies physicalism.”
More accurately: “ID makes sense if you adopt one of a plethora of metaphysical stances, namely those which deny materialism”
Now let’s go back to what I said days ago in my first response to your objection: “I believe this will be a huge problem specifically for materialists and logical positivists but not so much for others who embrace a different metaphysic/epistemology.”
Funny isn’t it?
*every=everyone
@aiguy
One last thing. You keep talking about science proving this and that. What is your operational definition of science? The more I follow this discussion, the more I feel I am vindicated in asserting in my very first (maybe 2nd) post that science is not free of metaphysics and is theory laden. Is your definition of science free of metaphysics? If it isn’t – and I’m confident it probably isn’t – then your criticism applies to your own notion of science as well.
@nuallasalus #112
-“Just yesterday I was reading yet more claims that our universe is at heart information, not “material”.”
Can you provide me with a link to that? I would very much like to read it.