Re: More musings on the second law
Greg Billock (billgr@cco.caltech.edu)
Sun, 25 Jan 1998 11:09:49 -0800 (PST)Brian Harper:
> It seems very difficult to discuss the issue of the second
> law because of "prepared statements" like the one above.
> The answer has a certain common sense about it but yet
> there is a subtle (or not so subtle) switch wherein it
> suddenly seems that the evolutionist has made this really
> extraordinary claim (that the sun shining on piles of lumber
> will turn it into a house) when actually no such claim was
> made. Instead, it is the creationist who has made an
> extraordinary claim, that evolution violates the second
> law. Pointing out that the earth is an open system merely
> casts considerable doubt on the creationist's claim.
> It is now their turn to actually present some evidence
> that doesn't involve word games.
I think another problem with Second Law problems is that there
is a 'folk thermodynamics' which is very solidly ingrained in
us. We drop glasses and they fall down and break. The pieces
never come together and jump up. Thus 'folk gravitation' and
'folk thermodynamics.' The real difficulty, and where science
has had a lot of trouble convincing people, is that detailed
examinations often show folk theories to be wrong. Look how
long it took for people to learn that heavier things don't
fall faster than light things because of gravity. And this
is a relatively simple experiment! Since 'folk thermodynamics'
is tied up with our experiences of the passage of time and
so forth, it creates very strong conceptual objections (and
rightly so). The trouble is, the folk concept just doesn't
stand up to systematic examination. This makes any entropy-
based examination of processes evolutionary hard to undertake,
but for whatever reason often doesn't seem to address the
conceptual objection that started the process. Relativizing
folk theories has been one of the major stumbling points for
science--one which it hasn't necessarily performed particularly
well. This may have to do with the fact that scientists still
follow the folk theories, and so find it hard to come up with
compelling and persuasive and *workable* strategies for
relativization. Typically, I fear, arguments from authority
are used: "this is a scientific question, so your folk
understanding is no good. Instead, use our rigorous concept
with the same name." This is a hard problem in general, and
I think the second law is one of the tougher cases.
-Greg