Entropy part 2

Entropy (Part 2)

AS DISCUSSED in last month's article, entropy is qualitatively equated to probability. This concept better explains the localized phenomenon referred to in the last article in the area of the refinery engine that produces gasoline, where the conditions have been contrived to make gasoline most probable, and the second law holds, allowing gasoline to form. . .

AS DISCUSSED in last month's article, entropy is qualitatively equated to probability. This concept better explains the localized phenomenon referred to in the last article in the area of the refinery engine that produces gasoline, where the conditions have been contrived to make gasoline most probable, and the second law holds, allowing gasoline to form. Information concerning necessary conditions for producing gasoline was the primary ingredient of the refinery engine. Information is the prime ingredient of all engines.

The relationship between entropy and information theory is very intimate. The application of information to a substance can lower its entropy. Conversely, a measure of the entropy of a message can determine the degree to which it conveys information. By applying these principles to radio reception from distant stars, utilizing the enormous computing power of modern high-speed computers, it has been determined that there is no information content out side of possibly the rate of rotation of the star, some thing of the chemical nature of its makeup, and other physical data pertaining to the radio source.

This computer analysis of the entropy has become a powerful tool in analyzing the information contained in the DNA genetic codes, and is the basic tool in deciphering encoded messages.

Some engines have the specific function of transmitting information. When the second law is applied to information, it demands that any chance event will decrease the information content of a message (garbling because of noise, dirt on the paper, a cosmic ray particle knocking a few atoms off a DNA molecule). Unless somewhere in the system there is a source of information, the information in the system must decrease according to the second law.

intelligence Decreases Entropy

A source of information is called intelligence. Intelligence may decrease the entropy at any point in a system by adding information. But the particular intelligence must have the capability of adding information to the particular system. The orthodontist can add information in the form of constraints to cause a child's teeth to straighten. But he has not learned how to alter the genetic code to cause the teeth to be straight in the first place. In other words, the intelligence (orthodontist) does not have access to this particular system (genetic code).

No animal or human intelligence has yet been able to input data to a genetic code. (Human experimenters have removed data and caused mutations.) So the second law demands that since the beginning, no increase in genetic information can have occurred naturally (no evolution).

It is not specifically the purpose of this article to show the complete scientific impossibility of either generation of life or evolution on the basis of the second law. This subject has been covered much more ably by others. 1, 2, 3 The above statement, however, is the basis for these arguments.

Mutations Evolve Downward

The probable outcome of chance happenings is random. Complexities are less probable, and under the laws of chance and the second law, will disappear in favor of random simplicity. Entropy is also a measure of randomness. The second law therefore demands chance mutations to evolve downward if indeed a major mutation is in itself possible.

Randomness, disorder, predictability, and probability are all measures of entropy. Information content, order, specialization, and unexpected and improbable states are all associated with low entropy, and the entropy in any action must rise according to the second law. If intelligence has generated information in the form of an engine to constrain an otherwise random result into a particular result, the second law will demand that it occur. In this case the probability relationship is the easiest to comprehend.

If entropy is considered for a larger system of which the engine is a part, the entropy of the entire system is found to rise, even though a small part now has a state of lower natural probability because of the in formation supplied by the engine.

Open and Closed Systems

The presence of intelligence, which by addition of information may interfere with the second law, may cause confusion unless the idea of open and closed systems is mentioned. The second law does demand the increase of entropy within any system. We are free to define this system by drawing a boundary around it. We thus isolate it and make it a "closed" system. Now if we permit intelligence outside the system to add information to the portion inside the boundary, we are operating outside the scope of the second law. This would be defined as an open system.

However, if we have the intelligence reside inside the boundary, then the second law will apply, since the support of that intelligence will add entropy to the system faster than the intelligence can lower it if we believe the second law. Moreover, even with an open system, the second law will hold if we account for, and compensate in our entropy tally for, the flow of entropy across the border.

A very small change in conditions can produce a very large change in the result as far as entropy is concerned. We will give the simplest and most complex examples available. The simplest is a billiard table onto which a set of billiard balls is dropped, one at a time, at the same spot. The final result has the balls randomly distributed around the table. Now we place the wooden triangle on the table over the drop point and repeat the experiment. The triangle is a constraint with information of a triangular shape and of the dimensions of the balls so that they all fit within it precisely. This could be considered an engine, a coding device, a reservoir of information, or any other term used to describe an environment that adds a high probability of a particular result. The balls end up in a triangular configuration.

The first time the triangular configuration is hit with a cue ball in the absence of a triangle (energy added), the balls immediately take on a more probable, high-entropy, random state. Please note the very small change in conditions necessary to make completely opposite results occur under the operation of the second law.

The most complex case is the human fertilized egg cell, which grows into a human infant under the con straining effect of a blueprint encoded onto the DNA molecules in its genes. If one atom of the millions contained in the DNA is removed by any chance, in most instances the coding becomes so unintelligible to the interpreting mechanisms that the cells do not develop, but die and decay. Particular results occur with a working engine based on information, but random results occur without it, or even if it is slightly defective, all in conformance with the second law.

Perpetual motion, in which energy could pass through an engine, remain 100 per cent available, and then pass through again, is legislated against by the second law. This is not a defect in nature, as perpetual motion would have no useful purpose in a perfect natural environment.

Perpetual life, on the other hand, would not necessarily break the second law. Life would have to be more probable than death, however, to be tolerated by the second law. One necessary dietary requirement, withheld by the curse, would be sufficient to bring about universal death by making death more probable than life.

The curse was not the invoking of the second law of thermodynamics for the first time, but was more probably implemented by subtle changes in environment which changed the probabilities from perfection to imperfection. So weeds now have the ad vantage, and useful crops must be carefully cultivated. Diseases are probable enough to occur. Chance permanent degradation of the body functions occur from many sources, so that human life is very improbable beyond 100 years. This has decreased by a factor of ten since the curse was proclaimed. Methuselah, for example, lived close to 1,000 years.

Decrease in Life Span Predictable

This decrease is probably a result of genetic changes. Once genetic degeneration became possible under the curse, it is a completely predictable occurrence under the second law. People whose physical blueprints have gradually become garbled because of loss of information and whose food supply has suffered the same fate, must be less hardy and therefore less able to repair damaged tissue. A shortened lifespan is not surprising.

Finally, some speculation will be made on the possibility of Adam and Eve living in a paradise without the operation of the second law. Perpetual-motion machines would possibly be fascinating, but the cost would be enormous. Rather than the comfort of knowing that the probable can generally be expected, the improbable would occur with alarming frequency. This might cause the doorstep to disappear under your foot. A drink of water would possibly not reliably stay in the glass, or bath water might suddenly start boiling on one side of the tub and freezing on the other. (Water, at normal temperatures, consists of both hot and cold molecules. The second law uniquely demands that these maintain an even mixture everywhere in the vessel, but the above event would be occasionally possible without the second law.)

It is obvious that living in the absence of the second law would likely be termed something different from "Paradise."


FOOTNOTES

1. Morris, H. M., and J. C. Whitcomb, Jr., The Genesis Flood (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1966), pp. 222-227.

2. Smith, A. E. Wilder, Man's Origin, Man's Destiny (Wheaton, III.: Harold Shaw, 1968), pp. 52-100.

3. ____, The Creation of Life (Wheaton, 111.: Harold Shaw, 1970).


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August 1975

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