OpenStax Physics Book online Fallacies on the Second Law of Thermodynamics
The author of OpenStax Physics online textbook insists that the second law of thermodynamics is not violated by “evolution of life”.
He or she has erroneously stated that while the entropy on one part of the Universe may decrease (such as in the case of “evolution of life” from a disorderly one celled instrument into a very complex human system), other parts of the Universe may increase in entropy at a larger rate thus giving us a total entropy, ΔStot increase of >0 (greater than zero).
Specifically, the author uses the simple Entropy equation:
ΔStot = ΔSsyst + ΔSenvir>0
Why is the author of OpenStax’s logic wrong ?
What the author leaves out is the means by which the ΔSsyst entropy actually decreases (The entropy reduced as a result of “evolution”).
Let us follow the author’s example of how ΔSsyst entropy would decrease. Author says:
“If I pick up marbles that are scattered about the room and put them into a cup, my work has decreased the entropy of that system. If I gather iron ore from the ground and convert it into steel and build a bridge, my work has decreased the entropy of that system”.
Now, you the reader, please curiously ask :
Who “picked up”, who “put them”, who “gathered”, who “converted” the marbles and the steel into bridge?.
In this particular case it was The author of OpenStax’s physics textbook who put all those items into an orderly fashion and thus reduced the entropy of the system.
It was not mere chance that picked up the marbles or created the steel bridge ! Not in a billion years.
What the author, fails to, willfully or naively, leave out of the picture, is that it took him or her a human agent to “pick up the marbles… put them into a cup” and to arrange them in order to decrease the actual entropy of that particular set of marbles.
Those are active actions coming from an intelligent agent. They did NOT activate themselves on their own. That is not called chance, that is called INTELLIGENT intervention.
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Last Updated Wednesday, July 12, 2017
