Seeing as how I doubt that Spurious will toot his own horn on this subject, I'll toot it for him (does that make me gay???) Anyway. Valich, you're talking to one of the few phd's on the forum. Developmental biology. Right, Spurious? (Good to hear that you're not wasting that education, by the way. Good luck with your new job.)
You were right in saying that natural selection and genetic drift are forces in Nature. This is staying within evolutionary context. What made me think that things were going adrift was: Hipparchia
I just thought it was nitpicking about the 'forces'. People were talking about forces earlier in the thread to discover what causes evolutionary change. I think it is well within the acceptance level of normal discussion to continue using force. We are not after all writing a scientific paper here that is under peer review. What causes diversity of life as we know it. I pretty well dare to say that natural selection is one of the causes. And invert...a PhD means nothing. Not even mine.
What complicates the matter is root's initial posting: looking for some sort of "driving force." And root clearly rejects survival of the fittest, and probably natural selection too. Root stated: "If not "Survival of the fittest" then what is the driving force behind "sexual selection". It seems like root is striving to discover a "force" - or a possible explanation? - above and beyond that which we use to describe evolutionary processes in this field. I would think that "Survival of the Fittest" is - or at least was - the driving force behind "sexual selection." Sexual selection accounts for the evolution of traits such as peacock wings and tail feathers and bright attractive ornamental-like colors, but with humans now that's all changed. In the all-encompassing perspective I would think thermodynamics is the underlying force.
Well, I haven't thoroughly read the relation to thermodynamics to evolution in the journals, but I know that some evolutionists do think about it in this way, and there are a few articles within evolution journals that do address the connection. Off the top of my head, the way I see it is that as the 2nd Law states: any transformation loses energy, and leads to disorder - entropy can never decrease. Hasn't evolution resulted in an increase in disorder by the diversity of life that it has created? And look how many lineages have gone extinct - poof! Lost and gone for ever: more disorder. If we consider the Earth as a closed system, then the diversity of life has led to an increase in entropy: an increase in the number of possible internal configurations available to the Earth's system. As I said, I know that some evolutionists are considering this within the field of evolution, so the explanation of this being a force would not be out of context, and I'm just wondering if this is the type of an explanation that root is looking for?
Indeed, the earth is everything but a closed system. Most of life gets their energy from the sun, with a few exceptions. That energy is used to create order and form.
Ophiolite, if you've read much about the Second Law of Thermodynamics, then you would be familiar with the fact that scientists often initially postulate the Earth as a closed system, for the sake of simplicity, and so as to not make the explanation so complex by introducing a host of yet-to-be-explained astrodynamic phenomena that no one could possibly understand, making the hypothesis worthless.
I refer to my posting above. Your statement simply serves to avoid the explanation. You're missing the point and going off on a tangent unrelated to the purpose why the hypothesis is being presented. That's being unscientific.
The essence of life is that it isn't a closed system. The essence ! Then it would unscientific to me to assume for theory sake that it isn't.
Okay, Consider the Earth as an open system and our universe as the closed system. After all, we're not out to disprove the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and any attempt to do so belongs on a different thread in the physics forum: it's not a hypothesis, it's not a theory, it's a "Law." The direction of evolution to create diversity of life on Earth, using up energy in the process, energy through life's metabolisms and extinctions, some of that energy of which is lost forever and can never be reused or recovered, is a perfect example that shows the Second Law of Thermodynamics in action. These transformations of life forms resulting in a vast increase and diversity of species leads to disorder and increased entropy. Evolution results in an increase in disorder by the diversity of life that it has created. By definition, this is in increase in entropy: an increase in the number of possible internal configurations available in the system. The more life forms evolution creates (and as I stated on a different thread, the number of species present on Earth today represent only about 0.1% of all species that ever existed on Earth: the other 99.9% went extinct), the more diverse the life forms get, the more disorder there is in the system, and this is an increase in entropy, or stated in another way: an increase in the number of configurations in the universe.
I think you got things all mixed up. The energy of the sun is used to create order and form out of disorganization. When an organism dies he cannot maintain order anymore because there is no input of energy anymore. Furthermore, other organisms usually help disorganizing the organization by sucking out energy in a dead organism. They temporarily use the suns energy that was stored by another organism in for instance tihe form of muscle or bark for maintaing and creating order. But it can never last. If the sun would stop shining life as we know it would end very quickly. There are a category of organisms that use other sources of energy then the sun, but they are in a minority. But still they use external energy which is not infinite. So life only temporarily changes the state of order in the universe and not in a way you think I postulate.
No I do not have "things all mixed up." Refer to what I stated about. What you are stating is actually also in support of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, i.e., the tendency towards disorder, even more so when an organism dies and decays. Yes, it is ultimately that energy from the sun that allows this diversity of life on Earth, the diversity of function and form of muscles in an organization, and the diversity in creating and maintaing types of bark. Consider a more down-to-earth example, so to speak. You have an army of soldiers spread out in all directions, just like the diversity of life is. This is an increase in disorder, an increase in entropy, and an increase in the total number of possible configurations available. Now consider the same army of soldiers marching in step, single file in line. They are now in order, there is a decrease in entropy: a decrease in the number of configurations.
Go on then. Amuse us all. What do you think the difference between these three is. While we are on the subject of Laws, does the Law of Conservation of Energy ring a bell? How exactly does energy become 'lost', or 'unusable' or 'unrecoverable'. Oh, dear. Valich, you are living proof that a little learning is a dangerous thing. I mainly worry about the dangers to innocents who read your oh so superficially plausible explanations of phenomena, based upon your eclectic reading habits, superficial reading skills and resultant farcical interpretations of reality. You described me in another thread as opionated and argumentative. Correct: my opinion is that half the time you are talking out of your ass; I shall place that argument in front of forum members and visitors as often as I deem necessary.
A well nigh perfect example of your gross misunderstandings. In order (pun intended) for the soldiers to come together in an orderly manner (how many of the soldiers are orderlies, do you suppose?) they have to expend energy. (No vallich the energy is not lost.)The entropy of the system will increase, not decrease as you suppose.
The energy used in creating the diversity of life on earth leads towards a permanent disorder. All reactions and transformations use energy. Although energy cannot be created or destroyed, all transformations involve reactions that are not 100% efficient. Some energy is always lost to a form associated with disorder. When the sun burns out, the result is not an increase in order. All those previous transformations resulting in the diversity of life cannot be reversed. That energy is not then recreated. The contribution towards disorder and the increase in entropy has already been done: permanently.
Now your getting things a bit mixed up. Energy is always lost in every reaction. Yes, they have to expend energy. Therefore, yes, the entropy of the system will increase, not decrease as I suppose.
