Evolution and Entropy

Before beginning, my position on evolution is not Creationism, as others try to pitch for me. My attitude toward the Bible and Genesis is that these symbols reflect the evolution of the modern human mind and consciousness leading to civilization. I do not take symbols literally, but symbolically. Symbols are a collective human language and not a specific cultural language. This is the trap some religious members and all of atheism seem to fall into.

The formation of life from basic chemicals and the subsequent biological evolution is a separate issue with science providing plenty of good data, but partially erroneous theory. The genetic side is strong, but the natural selection side is out of touch with cause and effect. What I hope to do is go through cause and effect logic to help this humanistic side of the theory of evolution, evolve.

The reason my approach differs is because my education is chemical engineering and polymer science and not biology. I look at the same observations in a different way. I like to do energy balance around a cell to see where the engine is and how energy is distributed. This allows me to see things other have missed. It also places practical limits on empirical reality.

Let me redevelop my first premise, which is natural selection is an effect resulting from a cause.

If you look at a group of animals, natural selection will reduce this information and biological complexity to fewer alternatives, such as through breeding and survival. This loss of complexity, from a larger group, reflects lowering entropy. After breeding, the next generation increases entropy again via genetic diversity and more offspring. Then natural selection thins this down to less complexity, etc.

In terms of entropy, higher entropy reflects the spontaneous direction of entropy. Lower entropy is not spontaneous, but requires work to achieve. Since natural selection lowers entropy in nature, it can't be a fundamental cause of evolution, but needs to be an effect. Another cause has to apply work to create the affect which we call natural selection.

This inference may seem backwards, relative to the traditions of evolution, but this is only because the current version of natural selection is mythology; mother nature. Again, the genetic side of evolution is fine. However, knowing cause and effect for natural selection has even implications at the genetic level.

The question becomes, if natural selection is an effect, what is the cause?

 

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If you are not a Creationist, why bash science and atheism over the question of evolution? You may say you don't believe in intelligent design, but your stated principles say otherwise.

Proof?

You are going to help the atheists evolve?

Warning Will Robinson
Danger Danger

Proof?

Definitions? Theorems? Proof? Math? Anything?

Unsubstantiated.

you call that an inference? It sounds like mumbo jumbo.

Your Creation Science fangs are showing.

Definitions? Proof? Anything other than mumbo jumbo?

Wrong IF.

You are supposed to ask if evolution is the result, what is the cause. The causes are mutation and natural selection.

Under what delusion of understanding nature by promulgating your structures on to it do you arrive at the conclusion that natural selection is an effect rather than a cause?

:shrug:

 

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Loss of complexity is associated with increasing entropy, not decreasing it.

Are you sure you understand the terms you are using?

 

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The easiest way to understand entropy is with a simple hypothetical example. I will begin with a hypothetical blob of matter. To increase its entropy, we need to add energy. As we add energy, the blob of matter expands, vibrates and might even change phase into ever increasing complexity. These changes require more and more information to model the progressing states. This complexity is due to more and more degrees of freedom into which the energy is being conserved but transformed into entropy.

Entropy defines the variety of states into which matter will unfold as we add but conserve energy. Sometimes this is very predictable, such as boiling water. Natural selection by constantly reducing variety (only a fraction is selected) reduces the entropy.

The first postulate for the evolution upgrade, is natural selection lowers entropy by reducing the number of possible living entropy states. The natural direction of entropy is increasing. Since entropy is lowering due to natural selection, natural selection has to be an effect and not a cause.

The second postulate for the evolution upgrade is, life is the cause for the effect called natural selection. The idea of mother nature being a cause, when she is really is an effect, has a religious unconsciousness to it, since it allows one to violate cause and effect. This reversal of cause and effect explains why evolution is defended so irrationally by atheism and remains forever empirical.

Regardless of atheist religion rituals, life creates the effects called mother nature and natural selection. Since natural selection is lowering entropy, this requires work and also requires that entropy needs to increase elsewhere. This high entropy for the cause is provided by life through metabolism, reproduction, system complexity and mobility to name a few things which increase system entropy.

The way life provides work, so the natural selection and mother nature effects can lower entropy is connected to boundary conditions. If we had an infinite earth with endless food and opportunity, natural selection would be entirely different since there is nothing to fight over. Life would expand to fill in the infinite earth since this is the direction of increasing entropy.

If we shrink the size of the earth and therefore set a limit on the available resources, competition becomes increasingly necessary. This finite boundary does not allows for continued expansion to express entropy. The work applied is connected to the increasing entropy of life being applied against the boundary.

As an analogy, picture a balloon that we heat up. As we apply heat, the balloon will expand bigger and bigger as entropy increases. Next, we put the same balloon in a box and apply the same heat. Now it can only expand to the size of the box. But since there is extra heat, but no way to express this as an expansion, work is applied against the gas in the box. The box will stay hotter than the expanded balloon. The process that results is natural selection.

Another way to model this, which is not in touch with cause and effect, is to start with the expanded balloon that we heated. We then apply work to stuff it into the box. This will lower entropy. In this case the work is provided by mother nature to achieve her compression effect. But in reality life is applying pressure against a boundary to create an entropy lowering affect.

The third postulate of the evolution upgrade is, the many boundary conditions within life result in lowering entropy. There is a type of natural selection effect even inside the cell due to a boundary.

 

to understand the definition.

a. (on a macroscopic scale) a function of thermodynamic variables, as temperature, pressure, or composition, that is a measure of the energy that is not available for work during a thermodynamic process. A closed system evolves toward a state of maximum entropy.

b. (in statistical mechanics) a measure of the randomness of the microscopic constituents of a thermodynamic system. Symbol: S

.
for the evolution of species.

mutation.

species fill their niche, based on genetic mutations that confer traits more favorable to that particular niche than conferred by their ancestral DNA.

 

I am a chemical engineer and from reading your non-scientific and non-technical posts I can only come up with 3 scenarios to explain this strange disconnect between education and knowledge:

1. "education in chemical engineering" means you do not have a degree in chemical engineering - it means you read a book or took a course.
2. You went to the worst college imaginable, where a ChemE grad does not even understand what entroy is.
3. Your religion has lead you to abandon reason and preach that evolution is wrong.

I cannot think of any other explanation. Maybe tramatic head trauma?:shrug:

 

@origin --

Furthermore, why does Wellwisher seem to think that an education in chemical engineering magically makes one an authority on evolutionary theory, which is firmly in the realm of biology? This baffles me.

 

You would think that to take chemical engineering, he would first have to take Physics 101 and learn what entropy is.

That seems not to be the case.

 

@Alex --

We seem to be in agreement on that, but I'd go further to state that though I haven't taken a physics course in years(and have forgotten most of what was covered in that course), that hasn't stopped me from using this wonderful resource called "the internet" to learn what entropy is(it also helps that I have the Feynman Lectures).

 

I actually agree with this premise. The cause of natural selection would be reality (i.e. the laws of physics).

Natural selection doesn't reduce biological complexity. It weeds out information variations that would produce organisms less equipped to adapt to the present environment and it refines / propogates information variations that would produce organisms better equipped to adapt to the present enviornment.

I can't really comment on this because it is dependent on the incorrect assertion that natural selection reduces biological complexity.

The cause is reality.

 

A chemE degree devotes the same amount of time to evolution as it does to art history.

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A chemE learns too much about entropy - relative to thermodynamics and heat balances, so his complete misconceptions means he can't be a ChemE unless his degree is from clown college.

I started learning about evolution when is was about 10 years old when my parents got these series of time life books about nature. One of the series was simply titled evolution. It seemed so intutive to me. It really opened my eyes to the complexity and beauty of nature.

 

Yes, this is apparent. I liken it to an astronomer thinking that electrons orbit around a nucleus like planets around a sun. It's an approach that's elegant, simple - and wrong. But if the astronomer does not know anything about quantum theory he might convince himself that he's right and all physicists are wrong.

Correct. That work comes from either chemical energy in food or light energy from the sun. It occurs by increasing entropy in the food.

Of course it can. As demonstrated above, life processes can both decrease and increase entropy.

 

Let me outline a few basic entropy experiments so you can touch reality and not depend as much on talking points. These involve entropy, energy and work. The first experiment will require a can of spray air used for cleaning computer equipment. All you do is spray the air at your keyboard. You will notice that the can gets cold. In this case, the spontaneous direction for the entropy is higher to lower pressure. Since an entropy increase needs energy, the entropy increase takes heat from the can so it gets cold. Try this before spouting, the sky is falling.

Next, what we want to do is put the same amount of air back into the can. This will not happen spontaneously. This is not the natural direction of entropy. To prove this, wait a few days to confirm, that this is not how spray cans form in the factory. Gases don't spontaneous flow toward higher pressure and lower volume. It is not a matter of statistics and odds.

To get the air to lower entropy, we need to apply a work cycle, such as with a compressor. As we put the air back into the can the can will now get hot. The lion's share of this heat comes from the decrease in air entropy. The entropy needs energy to increase and will release energy when entropy decreases.

The way to prove that to yourself, insulate the can so all the heat is retained. Next, spray this hot pressurized air. It will cool back toward room temperature as the entropy increase gains energy from the hot can. Rather than circle the wagons try this, so you can touch reality and not depend on talking points.

The next two reality experiments are variations of this and involves an air piston such as a shock absorber. For the first experiment compress the piston with work. This will reduce volume and increase pressure, which is not the natural direction of entropy. You could stare at it and run an empirical experiment over several years. If you have common sense, you can move on. Since we have reduced entropy, you should feel the heat as the energy is extracted from the loss of entropy. If we release the piston, the entropy increase will absorb energy and the piston will cool.

The next, experiment will be to pull the relaxed room temperature piston so its volume expands. This will pull a vacuum. In this unique case, we will actually need to apply work to increase the entropy of the air, since we need to fight against a forming vacuum. In this vacuum, air has more freedom and will increase entropy, but we need to apply work to increase the entropy.

If we did this in space, the piston would expand by itself since this is the direction of higher entropy. But at atmospheric pressures, to increase the entropy to the level of space, we would need to apply work to the gas, since the external pressures, due to external air entropy, will resist this.

This last experiment is important because it cuts to the heart of natural selection, using this analogy. Life increases entropy to beyond what is natural for the background, loosely analogous to applying work to pull the piston into a vacuum. If we let go of the piston, the piston will spontaneously lower entropy and return back to the relaxed state.

Relative to life, life creates more offspring than needed for evolution. There is more entropy in this output than is necessary, due to bio-work cycles. If left alone, natural selection reduces these alternatives back to the natural background level, which in this case will lower this entropy.

As a chemical example of this, and the precursor of this unique effect inherent within life, let us start with water and oil in a jar. These will phase separate into two layers, with the lighter oil on the top and the water on the bottom. Try this for yourself instead of depend on talking points. Engineering requires you touch reality and not depend on hearsay.

Next, we will apply work and shake the heck out of the jar. The result will be an emulsion. We have increased entropy, as the original two phase simplicity becomes a complex emulsion. This increase in entropy will not remain long, since the water and oil will lower the entropy back to the simple two phases layering, away from the complexity of the emulsion.

This is easy to explain. The definition of work is force acting over distance. In the water/oil case, the force is the Electromagnetic force in the form of hydrogen bonding and van der Waals. The phase separation is due to force acting over distance creating work at the molecular level, lowering entropy.

Life is water and oil (more or less) with this setting our background for entropy. It is like the piston in the atmosphere instead of space. Proteins can do their own work cycles increase entropy beyond this background. The result is the direction of entropy needs to lose entropy. Natural selection is this same effect at all stages of life, from organelles, all the way to the way the mind works.

In this discussion, I am increasing entropy within information by added additional ways of thinking. The natural selection reaction is a need to partition this away from the existing traditions. If entropy was always increasing, we would all head toward a uniform blend of ideas. But if the entropy becomes too high for assumed equilibrium, the reaction will be so reduce the entropy.

 

Isn't it just greed for energy? Although we get hungry, and eat animals, I don't think that hunger was always part of biology. You don't need hunger, but you need a way to chase after energy. So hunger is a good cause to chase after energy. I suppose however that a kind of blotting version was the original cause.

 

I tried your experiment with compressed hydrogen and it didn't get colder it got hotter - please explain.

 

I wonder if wellwisher will ever learn what entropy is?

 

No you don't! You know he never will.

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Mod note:

wellwisher,

Enough is enough.

I am no longer prepared to host your constant misapplication of thermodynamic concepts to biology. I consider your non-stop entropy ramblings posts that you apply to anything and everything to be merely pseudoscience spam, and it’s gone on long enough. The hundreds of posts in the Cells and entropy thread are testament to this. You may continue to discuss entropy in biology but you are no longer allowed to do it in the Biology & Genetics sub-forum. The Alternative Theories sub-forum is the appropriate venue for your material.

Please carry on your entropy discussions in Alternative Theories from now on. I have issued a formal yellow card warning for spam. Given that you have now been formally warned, if you continue to post entropy-related material in B&G you will be issued a temporary ban as per Sciforums policy.

 

When I started this topic I was looking at entropy frmo the POV of the chemical engineer which deals with entropy in open systems. From Wikipedia:

I was trying to develop the more difficult engineering concept of open system entropy that is more like a cell; work, volume changes, mass flow, heat/energy and chemical reaction entropy, but the resident lynch mob decided it was useful to trump that with freshman level entropy. I was being patient but I got blamed for the confusion. The staff let the lynch mob have their way. I expect an apology or we can talk libel.

 

Wellwisher, you really are a hoot!:roflmao: