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Feedback archive →
Feedback 2002
Some thermodynamics criticisms — and answers
This week’s feedback is from Jonathan Sherwood of the USA, who gave permission
for his full name to be used. In itself, the letter is not particularly negative,
just some questions about the article Evolution, Creation,
and Thermodynamics by Dr Carl Wieland on
our website. But it wasn’t too hard to find out that Mr Sherwood is apparently
a fervently anti-creationist science writer who has accused creationists of ‘misstating
scientific principles such as the second law of thermodynamics’. We almost
invariably find such charges come from people who have a quite amateurish understanding
of the topic, but who might have some expertise in other fields such as biology
or geology. So too it was here, where the issue has long since been answered, but
it is still bandied around by anti-creationists. The letter is printed
below, then reprinted with a point-by-point response
on Dr Wieland’s behalf by Dr Jonathan Sarfati,
whose Ph.D. is in physical chemistry, of which thermodynamics is an important part.
[Ed. note: Subsequently, Mr Sherwood responded to one of Dr Sarfati’s
thermodynamics articles, and Dr Sarfati replied — see
Round 2]
This note is for Dr Wieland regarding the article ‘Evolution, Creation, and
Thermodynamics’.
Dr Wieland,
You said in your article:
‘We see that it takes machines to make machines — it takes ordered systems
to produce ordered systems.’
Given that the evaporation and redistribution of ocean water on the planet is certainly
an ordered system, how is this not an example of a system that did not need an ordered
system to produce it?
Second, you said:
‘A crystal of ice, for example, carries no more information than a single
water molecule. The formation of a crystal involves molecules assuming a rigidly
predetermined pattern — there is no growth in information or complexity, and
again there is a pre-existing “code”.’
You’re suggesting here that crystals have a natural property that makes them
align, and that life uses designed properties. How do you distinguish between a
property that is natural and one that is designed?
Thank you, Jonathan [Sherwood]
This note is for Dr Wieland regarding the article ‘Evolution, Creation, and
Thermodynamics’.
This article is over 20 years old. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong, but that
many of the usual anti-creationist canards about thermodynamics became popular only
after major books were published in the early 1980s, so were answered in later articles
on the site. Really, you should have checked these as well, under
Q&A: Thermodynamics.
Dr Wieland,
That’s Dr Wieland, thanx.
You said in your article:
‘We see that it takes machines to make machines — it takes ordered systems
to produce ordered systems.’
Given that the evaporation and redistribution of ocean water on the planet is certainly
an ordered system, how is this not an example of a system that did not need an ordered
system to produce it?
Here is a case in point about targeting an old article. A major book refuting chemical
evolution came out a few years after this, The Mystery of Life’s Origin
(1984). This book distinguishes order and specified complexity,
reserving the former for low-information structures such as crystals and
the latter for the high-information structures such as those in living things—note
the online chapters available. The difference is also explained at
The Second Law of Thermodynamics: Answers to Critics: Question 2: What about crystals?
But at the time of writing, ‘order’ was being used in a well-understood
way to refer to both, as even the above quoted portion indicates.
The above book even addresses systems like the above and Prigogine’s examples,
mainly pointing out that such ordered (in the current way the term is used) systems
have nothing to do with the specified complexity of life. Neither do they have anything
to do with machines, which is what the above quote was about.
Also, there is actually order to produce order, in one sense. For any convection
system, there are certain important boundary conditions, e.g. a definite order of
heat source — intermediate systems — sink. Such boundary conditions
do introduce information content — in this case, specifying a lowering of
symmetry by introducing a preferred direction compared with an isotropic system
with no dissymmetry. This is an application of the [Pièrre] Curie symmetry
principle, that an effect cannot have a dissymmetry absent from its efficient cause.
Second, you said:
‘A crystal of ice, for example, carries no more information than a single
water molecule. The formation of a crystal involves molecules assuming a rigidly
predetermined pattern — there is no growth in information or complexity, and
again there is a pre-existing “code”.’
You’re suggesting here that crystals have a natural property that makes them
align, and that life uses designed properties. How do you distinguish between a
property that is natural and one that is designed?
Again, we now discuss this in terms of information. But a roughly equivalent formulation
was discussed in the article you cite: break a crystal and you just get smaller
crystals; break a protein and you don’t simply get a smaller protein, rather
you lose the function completely. This is the equivalent of saying that the crystal
has low information content that is simply repeated, while the protein molecule
can’t be constructed simply by repetition, because there is no chemical tendency
for amino acids to align in specific ways during polymerization.
Those who manufacture proteins know that they have to add one amino acid at a time,
and each addition has about 90 chemical steps involved.
Thank you,
Jonathan [Sherwood]
If, after studying the other articles under Q&A: Thermodynamics,
you have any further questions, feel free to ask.
Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D.
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