How do Catholics respond to the law of entropy?

[Monte_RCMS]

Is Entropy really a “law”?

Or is Entropy merely a “theory”?

Or is Entropy not even yet up to the category of “theory”?

[You know, Entropy is one of those groovy ideas that hits you after consuming a bottle of really cheap wine accompanied by really bad sitar music.]

 

[Monte_RCMS]

lol … a Freudian slip if you’re referring to the " burning** Bush **" .

David Letterman had some photographs of the Burning Bush … in the corner, there was a fire extinguisher … no joke.

 

[Luke_K]

I have a book for my Chemistry class which explains the concept of the “law of entropy”. I haven’t looked deeply into it (or the pages after, like Free Energy and Redox), but I’ve taken a glance. Essentially, entropy is a measure of disorder within a system. The book describes it’s fundamental idea as “the concept of entropy is that nature tends to move from order to disorder in isolated systems. For example, gas molecules spread out over time to fill a space, increasing their entropy over time”.

I’ve heard it said that the underlying principle of entropy is that in randomness, lies stability (the more random something is, the more stable it becomes).

Catholics often use the Teleological argument to assert that God exists. The teleological theory basically says that everything seems too perfect for it to have come out randomly, and there must have been a Creator behind it all, that being God. But if Chemistry says that in randomness lies stability, how then can the Teleological theory assert the existence of God, or God creating the universe/world, if everything is seemingly stable? Is there something I’m missing?

Thank you,
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk

So, if I understand you, you’re saying that randomness is stable so we should expect the universe’s parameters to be random? That’s not what entropy is really about. The statistical explanation of entropy is that there are many more ways to arrange a system disorderly than orderly, so the disorderly is more likely. The order and disorder that your chemistry book is talking about is the distribution of energy between particles and their positions in space.

Read this post of mine about entropy. Entropy isn’t the sole determining factor of the stability of a system. You also have to consider the enthalpy, which is basically the forceful interactions between the particles. Combining the enthalpy and entropy factors gives you the Gibbs free energy, which is the most commonly used parameter for determining the stability of a system. (There is also Helmholtz free energy, which I don’t know much about.)

The classical and somewhat simpler way of looking at entropy is that of heat transfer. The classical definition of entropy is heat flow divided by temperature (written symbolically as q/T). In other words, the change in entropy of a system is how much heat flows into/out of it divided by the temperature it is when the heat is being transferred. For example, if you drop a hot coal into a bucket of water, the heat from the coal will flow into the water until the temperatures are equal and the heat stops flowing. Now, because the temperature of the coal is always hotter than the water while the heat is flowing, the entropy decrease of the coal (-q/T1) will necessarily be a smaller absolute magnitude than the entropy increase of the water (q/T2). This is because the variable q (heat) is the same for both the coal and the water (from the first law of thermodynamics), but the variable T (temperature) is larger for the coal than the water, and dividing a number by a larger number gives a smaller number (for example, 1/10 versus 1/2, where 1 is the heat, and 10 and 2 are the temperatures.) Thus, based on the simple fact that heat always flows from higher temperature to lower temperatures, entropy is always increasing.

 

[Moontown_Rabbit]

The introduction of Catholic theology has a significant impact not so much upon entropic theory but upon whether the theory holds in a practical sense. The central theorum of entropy is the second law of thermodynamics, which states that in an isolated system the only way entropy (statistical disorder) decreases is if the entropy of another system increases. Furthermore, in the entropic transfer there is always heat loss, so when considering all systems entropy is unidirectional i.e. it can only increase. We know from scripture and Catholic teaching that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. Translated into entropic/enthalpic terminology, one could say that Christ is pure order (enthalpy) and it is an order that is inexhaustible (see Aquinas’ discussion of God as fully actualized potential). If you could isolate the universe from Christ, entropic theory might be viable, but you cannot do so. There is a “system” out there that can transfer unlimited amounts of order to any part the universe at any time as it sees fit. If the second law of thermodynamics were a person you would at times see it kneeling.

 

[tonyrey]

wrong answer

you need to form a protest group, print up some picket signs, and stage a protest.

I’m not the one who was protesting! Perhaps you don’t understand what the protest was about?

 

[TheTrueCentrist]

Is Entropy really a “law”?

Or is Entropy merely a “theory”?

Or is Entropy not even yet up to the category of “theory”?

[You know, Entropy is one of those groovy ideas that hits you after consuming a bottle of really cheap wine accompanied by really bad sitar music.]

Entropy is a pretty well enshrined law.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics

There is a quote by Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington which captures this:
“The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”

 

[JDaniel]

I have a book for my Chemistry class which explains the concept of the “law of entropy”. I haven’t looked deeply into it (or the pages after, like Free Energy and Redox), but I’ve taken a glance. Essentially, entropy is a measure of disorder within a system. The book describes it’s fundamental idea as “the concept of entropy is that nature tends to move from order to disorder in isolated systems. For example, gas molecules spread out over time to fill a space, increasing their entropy over time”.

I’ve heard it said that the underlying principle of entropy is that in randomness, lies stability (the more random something is, the more stable it becomes).

Catholics often use the Teleological argument to assert that God exists. The teleological theory basically says that everything seems too perfect for it to have come out randomly, and there must have been a Creator behind it all, that being God. But if Chemistry says that in randomness lies stability, how then can the Teleological theory assert the existence of God, or God creating the universe/world, if everything is seemingly stable? Is there something I’m missing?

Thank you,
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk

Eugen:

Remember: randomness means homogeneity. At the risk of boring people with the following description again: think of a barrel. In the barrel are placed exactly 600 black beans and exactly 400 red beans. The barrel is set up so that all of its contents can be thoroughly mixed, such that in any given scoop of 100 beans, there will be 60% black ones and 40% red ones.

The problem is that many people take randomness to mean chance, and visa versa. There is an incredible difference between the ideas. Take, for example, one four-seat, single engine, retractable gear airplane, carrying a full complement of four, three passengers and a pilot, is flying from East to West across the mid-Western states, en route to some airport in Arizona.

At the same time, a Cessna, twin-engine airplane, with a complement of four, is flying from West to East, from Arizona to Ohio. At a certain longitude and latitude along their routes, neither pilot sees the other plane coming until the last moment. Moments before colliding, the West-bound aircraft veers right and the other pilot does likewise. The two planes narrowly miss each other.

The pilots and passengers of each plane are in such shock that the pilots radio one another and decide to land nearby to meet and greet. Upon landing, two of the passengers - one from each plane - discover that they recognize each other from grade school, in southern Florida: 25 years earlier. Just before shaking hands, one of the men has a heart attack and passes. To the best of everyone’s knowledge, that man has never had a health problem.

That is chance. Entropy is when more and more of such occurrences occur during each moment of time as time marches forward. Affinities between things are canceled out. More and more is lost as time moves on. Order is lost. Ancient bonds are broken to never be restored. What was once hot, or warm, becomes cold and lifeless.

Most Catholics understand that what we have, as entropy progresses, is natural. When that energy that gives life and warmth to things is removed, material things die and decay. The resilient order of the universe re-routes most of that energy, but not all of it. Eventually, the universe will become a cold, life-less gathering of what may look like dead rocks.

Also, remember, at the beginning of the universe (if you can remember that far back! ) - the Big Bang - there was tremendous disorder, but that disorder was due primarily to excessive affinities. Those excessive affinities were the beginning of a stream of ever-increasing entropy. As creation slips through time those affinities have held together, but have been lessened such that the their properties permit a universe conducive of life, i.e., a so-called anthropic universe. The universe, as it comes to be, i.e., as it is being rolled-out, will remain anthropic for perhaps billions of years more. But, as creation is rolling out, and, as it is largely energy, matter and space, it is subject to the affects of thermodynamics.

When we are resurrected, we can’t be sure whether or not the earth is likewise resurrected, but we may believe that to be the case.

God bless,
jd

 

[Moontown_Rabbit]

[quote="…if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope…" - Sir Arthur Eddington
[/QUOTE]

Hope does not come from men, even if they are -]be/-]knighted.
[/quote]

 

[Monte_RCMS]

The notion of the universe winding down or of a closed system winding down is interesting.

Planet Earth is not, of course, a closed system … not even close … discovering new “impingements” all the time. Constantly. And how those outside exogenous variables have effects that we are always discovering for ourselves … maybe the newest is cosmic ray effects …

On the other hand, God is Infinite … so, if He puts His Thumb against the universe and gives it a little invisible push from time to time … then does that violate the law of Entropy?

What is gravity?

And where does gravity come from?

What if gravity comes from God and is His Invisible Thumb?

We brilliant humans can argue about if light is a “particle” or a “wave” … but what if there can be a third form of “light”? Physical light.

Or a fourth.

Or a fifth …

When Jesus resurrected, there was a third form … which we had no IDEA of. Until just now.

What if there are ways for God to add energy to the Universe that we cannot detect. Yet.

What if God has been adding energy continuously to the Universe?

What if God is not merely the “watchmaker” … letting the “closed system” run down.

When Jesus resurrected, there was a third form … what if that act of Resurrection added to the energy “content” of the Universe?

And set back Entropy.

What if owing to conditions we do not understand, the energy of the Universe does not wind down, but “ping pongs” forever?

 

[Bohm_Bawerk]

What is gravity?

And where does gravity come from?

What if gravity comes from God and is His Invisible Thumb?

Like I’ve said in my other posts, I’m not a physicist. However, gravity originates from what Einstein called a “spacetime curvature”. This again is integral to his idea of the theory of relativity, which is a bit over my head (I study Chemistry). Many scientists, if not all, believe Einstein is correct. The previous school-of-thought originated from Newton, and before that, Aristotle. Einstein essentially revolutionized physics with his theory.

Thank you,
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Like I’ve said in my other posts, I’m not a physicist. However, gravity originates from what Einstein called a “spacetime curvature”. This again is integral to his idea of the theory of relativity, which is a bit over my head (I study Chemistry). Many scientists, if not all, believe Einstein is correct. The previous school-of-thought originated from Newton, and before that, Aristotle. Einstein essentially revolutionized physics with his theory.

Thank you,
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk

There may be challenges to Eisntein’s notions.

Some may be silly.

1. RelativityChallenge.com/
2. Finding God in Physics … Roy Masters … with several Web pages … qv
   
   gravitydrivenuniverse.org/weekend-show.html
3. Galilean Electrodynamics … qv

There are Web sites for these last two … and they will probably lead to more.

I’m in the middle of reorganizing my library … so I can allegedly find things more easily. Meanwhile, things are slightly chaotic!





Found two more things:

[When I finish reorganizing my library I will probably be unable to find anything, but I will always be able to return each book to the same place. Professional writers conserve space, of course, by shelving books according to their cubage to maximize the number of books that fit in their available volume.]

“A Promenade Along Electrodynamics” by Junichiro Fukai

“Questioning Einstein – Is Relativity Necessary” by Tom Bethell.

www.valeslake.com

Also look up Petr Beckmann … he has a number of privately published books …

Some of Beckmann’s work has been continued by Art Robinson … www.oism.org and some by Howard Hayden www.theenergyadvocate.com and www.valeslake.com

 

[Arizona_Mike]

I’m not adept at physics, but it is my understanding that entropy is an essential argument against the steady-state theory of the universe (i.e., that the universe is uncreated and has always existed, a now-largely discredited theory), as the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics requires that, if the universe had already existed for an infinite state of time, it would have necessarily already undergone entropic diffusion - the so-called Heat Death of the Universe.

 

[TheTrueCentrist]

I’m not adept at physics, but it is my understanding that entropy is an essential argument against the steady-state theory of the universe (i.e., that the universe is uncreated and has always existed, a now-largely discredited theory), as the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics requires that, if the universe had already existed for an infinite state of time, it would have necessarily already undergone entropic diffusion - the so-called Heat Death of the Universe.

Superficially yes. If you understand that entropy is a statistical phenomenon, however, you get a different picture.

Essentially, on normal time scales, e.g. the age of our universe, it is astronomically improbable that the second law of thermodynamics would ever be violated in any large scale system. It is difficult to explain exactly how improbable it is in practical terms, see here for the math: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluctuation_theorem

However, once the universe undergoes heat death, we have a severely different time scale. In a heat death scenario, the universe be randomly fluctuating for a practically infinite amount of time. When you have an arbitrarily large time scale, incredibly unlikely phenomenon will eventually happen. This includes a spontaneous ordering of the universe. In other words, our universe may simply be one of those extraordinarily unlikely phenomenon that happens every now and again.

 

[Moontown_Rabbit]

When you have an arbitrarily large time scale, incredibly unlikely phenomenon will eventually happen. This includes a spontaneous ordering of the universe. In other words, our universe may simply be one of those extraordinarily unlikely phenomenon that happens every now and again.

This is a reformulation of the “given an infinite amount of time monkeys with typewriters will write all of Shakespeare” argument. I suppose if you are willing to work with infinite numbers you can calculate the probability of just about anything, but you have to remember that there is such a thing as impossibility (0 probability) and if you can find just one element in a statistical multiplication that is 0 (or incredibly close to it) it zeros out the whole thing and the entire proposal becomes impossible.

“Even if the observable universe were filled with monkeys the size of atoms typing from now until the heat death of the universe, their total probability to produce a single instance of Hamlet would still be many orders of magnitude less than one in 10^183,800. As Kittel and Kroemer put it, ‘The probability of Hamlet is therefore zero in any operational sense of an event’, and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed “gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers.” This is from their textbook on thermodynamics” - (Wikipedia page on infinite monkey theorem)

Most programming languages have random functions, and typically these return values between 0 and 1 such as 0.45532. If you ran such a generator for infinity, you would get tons of rational numbers (the variance would depend on the algorithm) however you would never get 1.1 because this has probability 0. This is an example of quantitative impossibility, but there are also qualitative impossibilities that cannot be represented mathematically. For example, if you were looking at a 100 mile long sheet of chaotic monkey typing with one exception right in the middle that said “Hey Bobo, have you got a paycheck yet? I think it’s been more than two weeks” you would probably conclude that one of the scientists was having some fun because it is qualitatively impossible for a monkey to make a rational quip. You can insist it is statistically possible if you want to, but this leads to the following unsavoury scenario from Jorge Luis Borges describing what an infinite monkey library would be like.

“Everything would be in its blind volumes. Everything: the detailed history of the future, Aeschylus’ The Egyptians, the exact number of times that the waters of the Ganges have reflected the flight of a falcon, the secret and true nature of Rome, the encyclopedia Novalis would have constructed, my dreams and half-dreams at dawn on August 14, 1934, the proof of Pierre Fermat’s theorem, the unwritten chapters of Edwin Drood, those same chapters translated into the language spoken by the Garamantes, the paradoxes Berkeley invented concerning Time but didn’t publish, Urizen’s books of iron, the premature epiphanies of Stephen Dedalus, which would be meaningless before a cycle of a thousand years, the Gnostic Gospel of Basilides, the song the sirens sang, the complete catalog of the Library, the proof of the inaccuracy of that catalog. Everything: but for every sensible line or accurate fact there would be millions of meaningless cacophonies, verbal farragoes, and babblings. Everything: but all the generations of mankind could pass before the dizzying shelves—shelves that obliterate the day and on which chaos lies—ever reward them with a tolerable page.” - Ibid

A group of students actually carried out a monkey typing experiment in 2003 for a lark!

“In 2003, lecturers and students from the University of Plymouth MediaLab Arts course used a £2,000 grant from the Arts Council to study the literary output of real monkeys. They left a computer keyboard in the enclosure of six Celebes Crested Macaques in Paignton Zoo in Devon in England for a month, with a radio link to broadcast the results on a website. Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five pages consisting largely of the letter S, the lead male began by bashing the keyboard with a stone, and the monkeys continued by urinating and defecating on it. Phillips said that the artist-funded project was primarily performance art, and they had learned ‘an awful lot’ from it.” - Ibid

 

[Monte_RCMS]

for their next grant, they could request money to build a real world entropy engine.

that would be cool.

 

[tonyrey]

The teleological theory basically says that everything seems too perfect for it to have come out randomly, and there must have been a Creator behind it all, that being God.

The teleological theory accepts the imperfection of the world because it is the inevitable result of finitude. Only God is perfect in every respect!

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Question: Is entropy the “in” thing this year?

a couple of years ago, it was chaos and butterfly wings.

Anybody who is studying entropy but doesn’t have the periodic table down cold … including the chemical reactions, bonds, etc, including alcohols … is wasting their time and energy.

And then some basics on fluids and thermo.

Gotta know the basics before going off into chaos and entropy.

entropy is not “real world”.

 

[tonyrey]

Gotta know the basics before going off into chaos and entropy.

entropy is not “real world”.

Entropy is real enough but you are correct in putting it into perspective.

 

[Moontown_Rabbit]

for their next grant, they could request money to build a real world entropy engine. that would be cool.

It would also be cool if they built an enthalpy engine. After a drive you would have more gas in the tank than when you started. When you got to the gas station you would have to pump gas out to make more room.

 

[TheTrueCentrist]

This is a reformulation of the “given an infinite amount of time monkeys with typewriters will write all of Shakespeare” argument. I suppose if you are willing to work with infinite numbers you can calculate the probability of just about anything, but you have to remember that there is such a thing as impossibility (0 probability) and if you can find just one element in a statistical multiplication that is 0 (or incredibly close to it) it zeros out the whole thing and the entire proposal becomes impossible.

“Even if the observable universe were filled with monkeys the size of atoms typing from now until the heat death of the universe, their total probability to produce a single instance of Hamlet would still be many orders of magnitude less than one in 10^183,800. As Kittel and Kroemer put it, ‘The probability of Hamlet is therefore zero in any operational sense of an event’, and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed “gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers.” This is from their textbook on thermodynamics” - (Wikipedia page on infinite monkey theorem)

Of course, but all the monkey scenario does is explain how extraordinarily unlikely this sort of spontaneous ordering is. In the observable universe the probability is effectively zero, I said as much in my post. This is why the second law is so well regarded and presented without qualifications. However, we are not talking about the observable universe. For example, if the monkeys in your example type for 10^183,800 times longer than they already have (i.e. after the heat death), their odds look a lot better. The timescale does not have to be infinite, just long enough.

In our universe there is a non-zero probability that entropy will spontaneously decrease; it has been experimentally observed in microscopic scales.
adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002PhRvL…89e0601W

For anything other than micro-states, the probability of a violation is similar to the monkeys typing. Certainly people have a hard time imagining probabilities so tremendously small, but they have an equally hard time conceiving of time scales long enough to realize those small probabilities; this is understandable, because both are completely foreign to our daily experiences.