Second law stuff

Wesley R. Elsberry (welsberr@inia.tamug.tamu.edu)
Sun, 1 Feb 1998 22:28:26 -0600 (CST)

Greg Billock writes:

[...]

SJ> Thaxton et. al., "The Mystery of Life's Origin", 1992, pp116-117).
>Either the universe is ultimately uphill with some temporary downhill
>exceptions (Huxley), or the universe is ultimately downhill with some
>temporary uphill exceptions (Morris).

GB>(The latter is correct, in case you're ever asked at an interview.)

The latter is not correct. The universe is monotonically
increasing in entropy. Living systems make entropy increase at
a faster rate. Those who use "order vs. disorder" as their
metric carefully ignore the disorder that life inevitably
engenders along the way. Their argument flunks the
pooper-scooper test.

Wesley