Could energy have always existed under the laws of thermodynamics?

[Andy_III]

Sorry for the long delay, I’ve been preparing for my second child, and taking care of my first! (Also, I lost my entire post because I submitted it after my session timed out - hopefully I have reconstructed it well)

Physics is indeed useful, and no doubt, practical applications, and those which are able to provide “future predictability” are the ones to bet on for getting grants and funding, but the real charter of physics is a model that is explanatory, falsifiable, and economical in explaining the whole enchilada, forward AND BACKWARD. … to look at the past AS THE MEANS of anticipating the future. As Lawrence Krauss like to say when he speaks, we need to know what happened at the very beginning to get a good view of what is going to happen at the end.

“Past eternal” is a tricky concept, and one that Guth (at least in BGV) can avoid because the nature of his model is such that all pasts are “non-eternal”, at least in a straightforward sense (is there any straightforward sense of ‘eternal’? You get my drift, I trust). He uses “past incomplete”, and I’m tempted to wander down that path (it’s interesting), but won’t here.

I think the idea here is that (1) we’re as far back [in time] as science can go reasonably, and (2) we have models which predict going forward well enough without needing to know the exact initial conditions. Guth was smart to avoid predicting anything before his initial conditions, because his tools were not suited to the task. The right tool for the right job is important.

As for the false vacuum, that is an effect of quantum fluctuations. That is, that is precisely the starting point hypothesized by the “quantum fluctuation” idea of universe creation. It’s a metastable low-energy minimum, and this is what provides the massive “kick” for inflationary expansion by repulsive gravity. This is a very cool subject, but very involved. Can keep working this, but really, if you can get hold of Guth’s The Inflationary Universe and read Chapter 10, that is a very good exposition on this subject.

I don’t think I will get the chance anytime soon, as I have more important matters to attend to. Since this thread is primarily about the time before any initial explosion of matter, and whether or not it is infinite (or exists at all), I think this line of research if off-topic. It isn’t even relevant to the question of whether God exists. It is interesting to think about, though. I think it sounds a bit shady to put mass and gravity on the same numerical scale. Also, the frequent use of paradoxical names doesn’t help my understanding at all.

The problem with cosmic design is that all you have is a putative handprint, and no people and no hands whatsoever to match it with. If there were no humans, and you were an alien just landing on the planet, would you as an alien infer design from a handprint-like imprint in the sand? No living things whatsoever to be found on the entire planet, and you find what we would say looks like a handprint. Do you infer design?

If as an alien, I could manipulate sand, I could learn about its ability to be deformed and hold its shape. I could observe the environment around it (waves, etc.) and determine that natural processes (that I’ve seen so far) couldn’t have done this to the sand. I could infer that another alien like me came and manipulated the sand in this curious way, but for various reasons I might discount that possiblity. I think my guess would be that a hand-shaped meteor landed there and melted. There you have it, I inferred something hand-shaped from a handprint, so yes, I inferred design.

What I had in mind when I wrote that was the idea of Adam and Eve as the sole and actual genetic parents of all mankind. I believe this is dogma, but it is at least official, binding Church teaching. The refutation of that idea is not and cannot be “definitive” per science, but the more we learn and know on this topic – and it’s quite a bit now – the idea of a real Adam and Eve as a concurrent couple, and the genetic parents of all humanity is extremely hard to maintain.

If it cannot be refuted, how can it be hard to maintain? What is the alternative hypothesis, that many humans were born of non-humans at roughly the same time? It sounds a lot like parallel evolution to me, which is very unlikely from what I’ve heard.

And yet, the Catholic Church is quite confident it knows better!

Yes, probably because she does. She is much older than you or me. Wouldn’t a parent be confident that they know better when they see their child attempt to do something impossible?

(Catholics) just apply lots of really careful thinking and evaluation on really feeble and unwarranted starting points and axioms. That’s a problem, and if you begin with bogus starting points, even the very best reasoning on top of that is not likely to yield good results. But even so, I appreciate the commitment to reasoning and thoughtfulness and real world evidence as far as it goes, wherever it happens, and there’s a lot of thoughtful people committed to reasoning on important questions here, which is, sadly, a huge distinction between the Catholic community and the intellectual ghetto that is modern Protestant evangelicalism.

I’m glad you appreciate reason. It sounds like you are talking about first principles. A first principle is a simple statement or statements that everything else you say depends on and is dervied from. It is very hard to think of a statement that does not require some kind of prior belief. Do you know or could you explain what your first principle is? Just curious, I’ll wait patiently for your reply.

 

[antunesaa]

And what would that look like after an unbounded length of time? Say much, much longer than it takes for every star to run out. The idea is that entropy wins. There is nothing left but maximal entropy energy.

I am not entirely sure about this, but if you look at the thermodynamics 001 definition of the second law, its observance does not seem to imply a limiting state of chaos. It is the calculation of the velocity of expansion of the Universe and other measurements that lead scientists to think that the big freeze will be attained far into the future. But if their calculations are wrong, I can think of a model where there is a continuous increase in entropy, but at a sufficiently decreasing rate such that the limiting state would be observationally both stable and apparently organized; the increase in entropy of the whole system would be too small relative to total energy to affect the general aspect of the Universe. (This argument is reminiscent of Zeno’s paradox: if you keep increasing a quantity ad aeternum, then it’ll become infinite. Wrong: it will converge to a finite quantity if the next increment decreases at a sufficient rate.)

 

[antunesaa]

Physics is indeed useful, and no doubt, practical applications, and those which are able to provide “future predictability” are the ones to bet on for getting grants and funding, but the real charter of physics is a model that is explanatory, falsifiable, and economical in explaining the whole enchilada, forward AND BACKWARD…

What I had in mind when I wrote that was the idea of Adam and Eve as the sole and actual genetic parents of all mankind. I believe this is dogma, but it is at least official, binding Church teaching. The refutation of that idea is not and cannot be “definitive” per science…

Catholics do value reason and rationality in a much more authentic and sincere way than Evangelical Protestants, in my experience.

-TS

It seems this thread is almost dead, but let me add a couple of observations. In one of the interventions of Stephen Hawking at a conference on the origins of the Universe held at the Vatican and promoted by the Pontificial Academy of Sciences, when asked what existed before the Big Bang, he responded something like “that’s like asking what there is south of the South Pole”. Now, if you think about this, this question is crucial. If there is an origin of time, causality (perhaps the most solid principle of Science, and in a certain interpretation Science itself) “squeezes”, so to speak, all the initial physical phenomena into tiny fractions of second after the moment the expansion began. You can reverse causality farther and farther in time, approaching moment T0, but you cannot really reach it because, once there, you would need the action of an external, uncaused element (“God”, as interpreted by philosophers and physicists of the Church) to initiate the process. It’s not a question of getting the intratemporal physical relationships right (zero sum energy, etc., which are all ok and indeed need no “investment” from third parties); it’s about getting the intertemporal physical relationships right, i.e., fully accounting causality.

So, if you are not willing to posit something uncaused, you have a problem with an uncaused Universe that has a certain, finite age. In principle, you might try to eliminate the initial moment and assume the Universe has always existed. In fact, many physicists did just that until the mid XXth century, when it became clear that the Universe was expanding. The other way to get round this is to assume that whatever gave rise to the initial burst was likely to occur anyway. Some people think that the Big Bang was just a lucky bubble of a primary “sprinkling water” that had just the right proportion of constituents to expand and form what we know as the Universe. I believe there are numerous theories of multiverses and other funny objects, and perhaps one day some of them will become serious. However, looked from the outside, they seem only attempts at circumventing the need to acknowledge, essentially, that Science is also based on a specific postulate: over time, there cannot exist anything uncaused except the Universe itself. This implies that the Universe must have been created and this cannot be explained by Science.

You are a knowledgeable person in both physics and religion. You have not been contaminated by the efforts of depicting the Catholic Church as an institution that is viscerally against Science (although she has her own sins in that respect). I credit you for that and thank you for that.

To me, the most compelling model of the general attitude of the Church towards Science is that of the priest who first proposed the Big Bang theory against the Steady State theory, in the early XXth century. Unbound by atheism, he simply proposed what seemed more natural. The fact that such theory posed grave philosophical and methodological problems to a particular set of beliefs didn’t bother him; in the end, the result was both useful and closer to the truth. While the Big Bang theory is perhaps not the final theory on the origin of the Universe (will there ever be one?), it shows clearly the advantage of being honestly for truth. Being a Catholic for reasons unrelated to physics, I believe there’s nothing to fear from Science as regards the credibility of the Church. Much to the contrary. The Adam and Eve question, I believe, is not a dogma; the Original Sin doctrine is a dogma, but no theory of the origin of the homo sapiens species seems to pose any serious threat to it. And certainly modern behavioral biology (evolutionary or not) depicts humans as selfish, competitive and aggressive, but capable of noble and altruistic actions when they look at fellow humans and even other creatures. Now, that’s a beautiful description of the Original Sin doctrine and the need for redemption through love, isn’t it?

 

[Anselm33]

It seems this thread is almost dead, but let me add a couple of observations. In one of the interventions of Stephen Hawking at a conference on the origins of the Universe held at the Vatican and promoted by the Pontificial Academy of Sciences, when asked what existed before the Big Bang, he responded something like “that’s like asking what there is south of the South Pole”. Now, if you think about this, this question is crucial. If there is an origin of time, causality (perhaps the most solid principle of Science, and in a certain interpretation Science itself) “squeezes”, so to speak, all the initial physical phenomena into tiny fractions of second after the moment the expansion began. You can reverse causality farther and farther in time, approaching moment T0, but you cannot really reach it because, once there, you would need the action of an external, uncaused element (“God”, as interpreted by philosophers and physicists of the Church) to initiate the process. It’s not a question of getting the intratemporal physical relationships right (zero sum energy, etc., which are all ok and indeed need no “investment” from third parties); it’s about getting the intertemporal physical relationships right, i.e., fully accounting causality.

So, if you are not willing to posit something uncaused, you have a problem with an uncaused Universe that has a certain, finite age. In principle, you might try to eliminate the initial moment and assume the Universe has always existed. In fact, many physicists did just that until the mid XXth century, when it became clear that the Universe was expanding. The other way to get round this is to assume that whatever gave rise to the initial burst was likely to occur anyway. Some people think that the Big Bang was just a lucky bubble of a primary “sprinkling water” that had just the right proportion of constituents to expand and form what we know as the Universe. I believe there are numerous theories of multiverses and other funny objects, and perhaps one day some of them will become serious. However, looked from the outside, they seem only attempts at circumventing the need to acknowledge, essentially, that Science is also based on a specific postulate: over time, there cannot exist anything uncaused except the Universe itself. This implies that the Universe must have been created and this cannot be explained by Science.

You are a knowledgeable person in both physics and religion. You have not been contaminated by the efforts of depicting the Catholic Church as an institution that is viscerally against Science (although she has her own sins in that respect). I credit you for that and thank you for that.

To me, the most compelling model of the general attitude of the Church towards Science is that of the priest who first proposed the Big Bang theory against the Steady State theory, in the early XXth century. Unbound by atheism, he simply proposed what seemed more natural. The fact that such theory posed grave philosophical and methodological problems to a particular set of beliefs didn’t bother him; in the end, the result was both useful and closer to the truth. While the Big Bang theory is perhaps not the final theory on the origin of the Universe (will there ever be one?), it shows clearly the advantage of being honestly for truth. Being a Catholic for reasons unrelated to physics, I believe there’s nothing to fear from Science as regards the credibility of the Church. Much to the contrary. The Adam and Eve question, I believe, is not a dogma; the Original Sin doctrine is a dogma, but no theory of the origin of the homo sapiens species seems to pose any serious threat to it. And certainly modern behavioral biology (evolutionary or not) depicts humans as selfish, competitive and aggressive, but capable of noble and altruistic actions when they look at fellow humans and even other creatures. Now, that’s a beautiful description of the Original Sin doctrine and the need for redemption through love, isn’t it?

:thumbsup:You’ve done a great job explaining a position on creation compatible to believers. Unfortunately, I think Touchstone (like Elvis) has left the building, so I’m not sure he’ll have a chance to read this.
You may be interested in the web site for the Magis Center of Reason and Faith, which is trying to offer apologetics on Creation.
magisreasonfaith.org/
We’re also setting up a “social group” for the Magis Center;
forums.catholic-questions.org/group.php?groupid=771
We currently have 7 members; three more and we can have a forum with threads.
anselm.

 

[Andy_III]

I am not entirely sure about this, but if you look at the thermodynamics 001 definition of the second law, its observance does not seem to imply a limiting state of chaos. It is the calculation of the velocity of expansion of the Universe and other measurements that lead scientists to think that the big freeze will be attained far into the future. But if their calculations are wrong, I can think of a model where there is a continuous increase in entropy, but at a sufficiently decreasing rate such that the limiting state would be observationally both stable and apparently organized; the increase in entropy of the whole system would be too small relative to total energy to affect the general aspect of the Universe. (This argument is reminiscent of Zeno’s paradox: if you keep increasing a quantity ad aeternum, then it’ll become infinite. Wrong: it will converge to a finite quantity if the next increment decreases at a sufficient rate.)

Good point, I missed that possibility. Even with that, though, you’d have to account for the change in rate of entropy increase at time T0. This will probably be my last post to this thread unless it fires back up again, but I wanted to thank everyone for their thought and consideration. Maybe when Greylorn gets back from getting his book out, he’ll have something to read that he didn’t have to write first.

 

[greylorn]

Good point, I missed that possibility. Even with that, though, you’d have to account for the change in rate of entropy increase at time T0. This will probably be my last post to this thread unless it fires back up again, but I wanted to thank everyone for their thought and consideration. Maybe when Greylorn gets back from getting his book out, he’ll have something to read that he didn’t have to write first.

More likely, that ornery old bugger will simply complain about what he’s just read.

This thread is the best I’ve ever followed on CAF because of the high percentage of thoughtful, on-point, contributors who persisted in spite of Greylorn. The OP was well posed. This thread must not die, because a new OP will attract the same nits who appear whenever GL tries an OP, and because this OP remains unresolved.

Has the mind of any reader or contributor to this thread changed, or reconsidered the OP question as a consequence of their participation?

I’ve not been contributing much because CAF no longer informs me reliably of new postings to threads which I’ve engaged, preferring to occasionally apprise me of postings to threads I’ve never examined. Go figure.

If this thread dies before I do, here’s a thought related to the last batch of posts.

Consider the Catholic priest, George LeMaitre’s Big Bang theory in comparison to Catholic beliefs.

God, and the cosmic micropea (now stupidly called a “singularity”) have always existed.

Each contains or can produce all the mass-energy in the universe and the laws and properties governing its behavior.

Neither has an origin.

At one moment, God decided to create the universe, for no particular good reason. Or, if you prefer, the micropea decided to blow up. Although this is a physical event in the context of what we mean by physics, and all other physical events have causes, the explosion of the micropea has no physical cause.

Either God created biological life and mankind, or the random interplay of post big-bang forces did. No intelligent reason exists for either’s doing so.

Have you noticed yet, that the Big Bang theory is functionally identical to Catholic theology? In each, the original cause is both uncaused and unmotivated.

LeMaitre’s Big Bang theory was “natural” to him because it is functionally identical to Catholic theology! Of greater curiosity is why astronomers who profess to believe in a cause-effect universe manged to wrap their slender minds around a cause-free belief system. So far as I can tell, they have yet to acknowledge doing so.

I’m curious. Do any of you guys see this, or am I whistling Dixie in a vacuum?

 

[Andy_III]

Consider the Catholic priest, George LeMaitre’s Big Bang theory in comparison to Catholic beliefs.
…
Neither has an origin.
…
Either God created biological life and mankind, or the random interplay of post big-bang forces did. No intelligent reason exists for either’s doing so.

Have you noticed yet, that the Big Bang theory is functionally identical to Catholic theology? In each, the original cause is both uncaused and unmotivated.

LeMaitre’s Big Bang theory was “natural” to him because it is functionally identical to Catholic theology! Of greater curiosity is why astronomers who profess to believe in a cause-effect universe manged to wrap their slender minds around a cause-free belief system. So far as I can tell, they have yet to acknowledge doing so.

I’m curious. Do any of you guys see this, or am I whistling Dixie in a vacuum?

I’m certainly aware of it, in fact it is a key point to understand! In Catholocism, we refer to God as the uncaused-cause for precisely this reason. Any logical cause-effect system must start with an uncaused-cause. This thread, in part, was to discuss the uncaused-cause in your book, as I understood it from your posts.

If I ask a person to draw a line segment on a piece of paper, one thing you can be sure of is that it will have a beginning. It doesn’t really matter where it starts, but it has to start somewhere. From the perspective of a point on the line segment, looking back at the starting point one might argue that there was no reason to start the line there. The motivation to draw a line segment plus the need to begin somewhere is enough to justify any particular starting location. Likewise, no one could successfully argue that someone who says Earth’s gravity is 9.8 m/s^2 is wrong because there is no reason for it to be that value. Neither could one say that someone claiming that the mass and radius of the Earth causes its gravity to be 9.8 m/s^2 must be wrong because Earth’s gravity is already 9.8 m/s^2.

 

[neophyte]

…As far as the entropy of living systems go, they are 1) not closed systems and 2) not in thermal equilibrium, so the 2nd Law doesn’t apply in the sense that change of entropy has to be > 0. …

Coming to the conversation a bit late, but I feel compelled to comment. I’ve heard this kind of claim many times, but in fact all thermodynamic processes comply with the 2nd Law, including those that involve open systems. If you treat a real open-system process as a series of quasi-static steps, you’ll find that every step results in a positive generation of entropy, which means that the process as a whole does as well. And an open-system process that results in a negative generation of entropy is not a real process.

And all processes by definition involve a lack of thermal equilibrium.

 

[Anselm33]

Coming to the conversation a bit late, but I feel compelled to comment. I’ve heard this kind of claim many times, but in fact all thermodynamic processes comply with the 2nd Law, including those that involve open systems. If you treat a real open-system process as a series of quasi-static steps, you’ll find that every step results in a positive generation of entropy, which means that the process as a whole does as well. And an open-system process that results in a negative generation of entropy is not a real process.

And all processes by definition involve a lack of thermal equilibrium.

of course total change of entropy is >0 for the universe. You can have a negative change of entropy for system I, and a positive change for its environment (universe) such that
delta S(I) + delta S(universe) >0 even though delta S(1) might be negative. A simple example is the isothermal compression of an ideal gas, with the ideal gas being the system. My statement applied to the living thing as the system, and as it stands the statement is correct. And the Second Law, as an equality, dS =dQ/T, applies for reversible changes, otherwise you’ll have dS> dQ/T. And Irreversibility in thermodynamics has been treated extensively–Denbigh, Prigogine, among others.
anselm

 

[neophyte]

of course total change of entropy is >0 for the universe. You can have a negative change of entropy for system I, and a positive change for its environment (universe) such that
delta S(I) + delta S(universe) >0 even though delta S(1) might be negative. A simple example is the isothermal compression of an ideal gas, with the ideal gas being the system. My statement applied to the living thing as the system, and as it stands the statement is correct. And the Second Law, as an equality, dS =dQ/T, applies for reversible changes, otherwise you’ll have dS> dQ/T. And Irreversibility in thermodynamics has been treated extensively–Denbigh, Prigogine, among others.
anselm

It seems to me that you’re failing to distinguish between the intensive and extensive definitions of entropy, but in any case you’ve not addressed my point, which is that every real thermodynamic process, including those involving open systems, complies with the 2nd Law.

If I’m wrong, perhaps you could fully describe a real process which does not.
But I guess not here, it’s off-topic.

 

[neophyte]

…Have you noticed yet, that the Big Bang theory is functionally identical to Catholic theology? In each, the original cause is both uncaused and unmotivated. …

Well, no, not quite as I see it. Those who claim that quantum fluctuations are uncaused appear to be concluding that on the grounds that they are unable to discern any cause. That speaks to a philosophical presupposition that all causes are observable, which cannot be demonstrated.

 

[greylorn]

I’m certainly aware of it, in fact it is a key point to understand! In Catholocism, we refer to God as the uncaused-cause for precisely this reason. Any logical cause-effect system must start with an uncaused-cause. This thread, in part, was to discuss the uncaused-cause in your book, as I understood it from your posts.

If I ask a person to draw a line segment on a piece of paper, one thing you can be sure of is that it will have a beginning. It doesn’t really matter where it starts, but it has to start somewhere. From the perspective of a point on the line segment, looking back at the starting point one might argue that there was no reason to start the line there. The motivation to draw a line segment plus the need to begin somewhere is enough to justify any particular starting location. Likewise, no one could successfully argue that someone who says Earth’s gravity is 9.8 m/s^2 is wrong because there is no reason for it to be that value. Neither could one say that someone claiming that the mass and radius of the Earth causes its gravity to be 9.8 m/s^2 must be wrong because Earth’s gravity is already 9.8 m/s^2.

You’ll note that in human affairs, higher levels of motivation are related to higher levels of intelligence. Thus the song, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” That is why our courts often exonerate imbeciles of crimes which, if committed by someone with an IQ of even 100, would warrant severe punishment— imbeciles and children are not considered as sufficiently intelligent to be motivationally responsible.

God, being infinitely intelligent by your beliefs, might be expected to have perfectly sensible and logical motivations, probably part of a complex agenda.

Do you honestly regard your tale about drawing a line beginning at some arbitrary point as a legitimate way to bypass a thoughtful discourse about the motivations of such an entity?

 

[greylorn]

Well, no, not quite as I see it. Those who claim that quantum fluctuations are uncaused appear to be concluding that on the grounds that they are unable to discern any cause. That speaks to a philosophical presupposition that all causes are observable, which cannot be demonstrated.

Thanks for showing up here. Nice to add more clear thinking to an interesting thread.

I promise that you will never catch me claiming that any quantum event is uncaused. Like you, I don’t figure that if I can’t see it or explain it, it doesn’t exist. So, can we pursue this from your perspective?

First, do you accept the premise of BB theory? If so, do you accept the absurd notion that the precursor was a singularity, or some kind of cosmic micropea of very small but finite dimensions? (These questions are just to save hypothetical arguments that might prove irrelevant.)

 

[greylorn]

It seems to me that you’re failing to distinguish between the intensive and extensive definitions of entropy, but in any case you’ve not addressed my point, which is that every real thermodynamic process, including those involving open systems, complies with the 2nd Law.

If I’m wrong, perhaps you could fully describe a real process which does not.
But I guess not here, it’s off-topic.

What’s off-topic about your question? The OP is about energy and thermodynamics in the context of fundamental creation. You’re engaging the meaning of the 2nd law, entirely on point.

Should our moderator disagree, I’ll stand corrected and humbled.

 

[neophyte]

What’s off-topic about your question? The OP is about energy and thermodynamics in the context of fundamental creation. You’re engaging the meaning of the 2nd law, entirely on point.

Should our moderator disagree, I’ll stand corrected and humbled.

Alright…

 

[Anselm33]

It seems to me that you’re failing to distinguish between the intensive and extensive definitions of entropy, but in any case you’ve not addressed my point, which is that every real thermodynamic process, including those involving open systems, complies with the 2nd Law.(emphasis added)
If I’m wrong, perhaps you could fully describe a real process which does not.
But I guess not here, it’s off-topic.

I’m not sure how I’ve disagreed with that point (in boldface), with which I agree. My point is to distinguish between entropy changes for a system and that for the universe. And to say that entropy changes can be negative for changes in a defined system, which is my contention, certainly doesn’t violate the 2nd Law. Is it your contention that you cannot have negative entropy changes in a thermodynamic system? I gave the example of the compression of an ideal gas, which will have a negative entropy change for the gas (the system). The total change of entropy for the universe will be zero if the compression is carried out reversibly, and positive if irreversible. This complies with the Second Law.

Here’s the definition of the 2nd Law from my old copy of Guggenheim, “Thermodynamics”:
"dS = d(sub e) S + d(sub i) S where dS is the total differential change of entropy of the system, sub e refers to that part of the increase due to interaction with the surroundings,
sub i refers to the part of the increase due to changes taking place inside the system.
d (sub e) S = q/T where q is an infinitesimal. (note that q can be negative)
d(sub i) S > 0 (natural changes)
d(sub i) S =0 (reversible changes)
gives dS = q/T (reversible changes)
dS> q/T (“natural” changes)
I don’t really understand what you’re arguing about, to be frank.
anselm

 

[neophyte]

I’m not sure how I’ve disagreed with that point (in boldface), with which I agree. My point is to distinguish between entropy changes for a system and that for the universe. And to say that entropy changes can be negative for changes in a defined system, which is my contention, certainly doesn’t violate the 2nd Law. Is it your contention that you cannot have negative entropy changes in a thermodynamic system? I gave the example of the compression of an ideal gas, which will have a negative entropy change for the gas (the system). The total change of entropy for the universe will be zero if the compression is carried out reversibly, and positive if irreversible. This complies with the Second Law.

Here’s the definition of the 2nd Law from my old copy of Guggenheim, “Thermodynamics”:
"dS = d(sub e) S + d(sub i) S where dS is the total differential change of entropy of the system, sub e refers to that part of the increase due to interaction with the surroundings,
sub i refers to the part of the increase due to changes taking place inside the system.
d (sub e) S = q/T where q is an infinitesimal. (note that q can be negative)
d(sub i) S > 0 (natural changes)
d(sub i) S =0 (reversible changes)
gives dS = q/T (reversible changes)
dS> q/T (“natural” changes)
I don’t really understand what you’re arguing about, to be frank.
anselm

Earlier you had said

…As far as the entropy of living systems go, they are 1) not closed systems and 2) not in thermal equilibrium, so the 2nd Law doesn’t apply in the sense that change of entropy has to be > 0

My point is that the 2nd Law most certainly does apply for systems that are not closed and/or not in thermal equilibrium.

Perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying? Oh, or perhaps I was wrong in thinking you inadvertantly left out the = sign? Certainly a real process can result in zero entropy generation - I had keyed in on the words “2nd Law doesn’t apply”, and the 2nd Law always applies. You were talking about living things at that point, not about the state of physical laws at the energy levels thought to exist at the Big Bang…

Bedtime. Have a good evening.

 

[Anselm33]

Earlier you had said My point is that the 2nd Law most certainly does apply for systems that are not closed and/or not in thermal equilibrium.

Perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying? Oh, or perhaps I was wrong in thinking you inadvertantly left out the = sign? Certainly a real process can result in zero entropy generation - I had keyed in on the words “2nd Law doesn’t apply”, and the 2nd Law always applies. You were talking about living things at that point, not about the state of physical laws at the energy levels thought to exist at the Big Bang…

Bedtime. Have a good evening.

what I was try to confute (?) was the argument ID people make that living systems are organized (so to speak) and therefore the delta S>=0 is violated–their construction of the 2nd Law–sorry to have led you down the garden path …chalk it up to one more senior moment.
anselm

 

[neophyte]

what I was try to confute (?) was the argument ID people make that living systems are organized (so to speak) and therefore the delta S>=0 is violated–their construction of the 2nd Law–sorry to have led you down the garden path …chalk it up to one more senior moment.
anselm

Oh, no problem.

Sounds like you’re talking about arguments that sound like “evolution results in more information, which violates the 2nd Law”. In fact, these arguments have it exactly backwards.

We know that the entropy of a thermodynamic system is given by S = k[sub]B[/sub] lnΩ, where Ω is the number of available microstates corresponding to the macrostate. The Second Law states that for every real process, dS >/= 0, which necessarily means that the number of microstates available to the system has increased.

S is also equal to -k[sub]B[/sub] ∑(ρ[sub]i[/sub] lnρ[sub]i[/sub] ), in which, in information theory, the term -∑(ρ[sub]i[/sub] lnρ[sub]i[/sub] ) is called the information function and the symbol ρ denotes the probability of each microstate i.

You can see, then, that lnΩ = -∑(ρ[sub]i[/sub] lnρ[sub]i[/sub] ), in which case for every real process the information function of the system increases.

So when they say that evolution results in an increase in information, they are conceding that it does not violate the 2nd Law.

 

[Anselm33]

It seems to me that you’re failing to distinguish between the intensive and extensive definitions of entropy, but in any case you’ve not addressed my point, which is that every real thermodynamic process, including those involving open systems, complies with the 2nd Law.

If I’m wrong, perhaps you could fully describe a real process which does not.
But I guess not here, it’s off-topic.

This is marginally off-topic, but it’s interesting, so I’ll proceed. In his review article “Philosophical Issues in Cosmology” (see forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=7293197#post7293197
George Ellis makes the statement

“A further unresolved issue is the nature of gravitational entropy [168, 61, 169]. Many statements about the nature of entropy in physics textbooks are wrong when gravity is dominant, leading to the spontaneous formation of structures such as stars and galaxies. There is as yet no agreed definition of gravitational entropy that is generally applicable; until there is, cosmological arguments relying on entropy concepts are ill-founded.”

The references are to one article I couldn’t access, and two books by Roger Penrose, “The Emperor’s New Mind” and “The Road to Reality”. In the latter, Penrose explores why the 2nd Law is valid, and concludes that it is puzzling, since there is a time symmetry in all the equations of physics. He further argues that entropy is increasing because at the very early life of the universe, it was in a highly ordered state (very low volume in phase space) and so what we see as the 2nd Law is just the evolution from that very small volume of phase space to a higher volume.
But he’s still puzzled.
Anselm