Systems left to themselves invariably tend towards disorder

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Contents 1 Claim 2 Source 3 Responses 4 Fallacies contained in this claim 5 Related claims 6 Acknowledgments

Claim

Systems or processes left to themselves invariably tend to move from order to disorder.

Source

• Wallace, Timothy, 2000. Five major evolutionist misconceptions about evolution. [1]

Responses

1. Take a fairly large amount of salt and add boiling water until it all dissolves. The salt is now in a highly disordered state. Let it sit in a warm place for a while, and order will spontaneously develop in the form of salt crystals. Is this a violation of the 2nd law? For that matter, does creation get around the interpretation of the law being claimed, since life still exists and reproduction happens. No. Entropy is not the same as disorder: It is the reduction in the ability to do further work. We consume food and give back wastes such as carbon dioxide. The food cannot do further work now. Plants use energy from the sun to make food for us, but the sun fuses atoms together to provide that energy, which then can't do more work.
2. When defining a thermodynamic "system" for purposes of calculating changes in entropy, you need to define it such that there are no external inputs (i.e., an isolated system). A life form is not an isolated system. Life takes in energy (food) in order to function & grow, whether it be an animal eating another animal or a plant utilizing sunlight. If you were to properly define the system, you would see that the apparent decrease in entropy of a particular lifeform is actually at the expense of creating more entropy elsewhere. When a creature becomes more organized (say, grows to adulthood) it does it by destroying other life. For the little energy plants capture from the sun, massive amounts of solar energy is lost to space. The net result is an overall increase in entropy for the system, in accordance with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
3. The universe is a very big system with vast amounts of energy.
4. Local entropy reversal does not require, or necessarily benefit from, human intervention. Thus, the qualifier "left to themselves" is either incorrect or a meaningless hyperbole.
5. Systems produce gradients, which produce highly complex features. For example, temperature gradients produce Benard cells (octagonal convection currents); air pressure gradients produce tornadoes and other weather patterns; chemical gradients produce chemical "clocks". Complex systems, such as the ones described above, reduce the gradients surrounding them more effectively than if they did not exist. The Earth-Sun system produces a temperature gradient that is greatly reduced by life. So, in a way, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is enhanced by life.
6. add more responses

Fallacies contained in this claim

• Sweeping Generalization (entropy increases only in certain circumstances)
• Equivocation ("left to themselves" can mean several things)

Related claims

• 2nd law of thermodynamics prohibits evolution
• The 2nd law, and the trend to disorder, is universal
• Instructions are necessary to produce order
• The 2nd law is about organized complexity, not entropy
• Evolution needs an energy conversion mechanism to utilize energy

Acknowledgments