how does one explain the nature of living things if the second law of therodynamics is correct?

Question

how does one explain the nature of living things if the second law of therodynamics is correct?

Answer 1

Living things present no problem in this regard, as they are
open systems and the second law of thermodynamics applies only to closed systems. The creationists have tried to
get around this problem by claiming that the second law applies to open systems as well, but they are wrong.

Answer 2

Just to expand a little on the first two answer...

The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy increases in a *closed* system that is out of equilibrium. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_law_of_thermodynamics)

Entropy is the production of energy by a *closed* system that cannot be used for work. Generally, this is seen in a loss of heat.

There are at least 3 arguments against using the second law as evidence against evolution:

1) Any biological system is hardly an isolated (or, more correctly, a closed) system, whether you look at the DNA, the chromosome, the cell, the individual, the population, the species, the ecosystem, the biome, or the Earth as a whole. This rules out the 2nd law of thermodynamics all by itself, almost.

2) Entropy is simply the loss of energy to an unusable form (heat). Many infer that entropy *always* means increased disorder, but that is not necessarily the case; it is not a one to one equation all the time.

3) It has been shown that, while the overall entropy of any closed system will always increase when out of equilibrium, it is possible that there may exist pockets within that closed system that actually show decreases of entropy.

Answer 3

I will be the first to say that chemicals becoming alive by chance arrangement could not have happened. But this is not because of thermodynamics. It is the nature of the chance.

Try this experiment. We will use a sequence derived from pi. Add one to each digit. 9 goes to 0. So we have 4.2526....
We will do searches for these sequences.
Sequence_______Occurrences

4.2526_________2,790,000
4.25260_________ 147,000
4.252603__________ 1,260
4.2526037____________56
4.25260376___________21
4.252603764___________2
4.2526037646__________0

We notice that in general for each character we add, the occurrence goes down by more than a factor of ten. Which makes sense because there are more than ten characters in the search set. Now lets say that each planet of 10^60 planets had an Internet and we could search all of that.
We could expect to find sequences that were 60 characters longer, or about 70 in length.
Now lets say that every second the entire universe was redone to give new chances. Now over 20 billion years this would increase the length by 18 digits. So now we are up to 88 that we can expect to find. The simplest parasite has 1100 base pairs in its DNA. Each base pair has three molecules that have to correctly form, a phosphate, a sugar and an amino acid. This means that 3300 molecules have to correctly form just to form the simplest parasite. There are conciderably more than ten molecules to choose from (based on Urey-Miller) If we underestimate at only 1000 then we have to have the opportunity for 10^9900 molecules to form before we get the one we want.
To account for diversity we can take the square root. That is to say 10^4950

This gap is ridiculous. 10^4950 vs 10^88. It is ridiculous to say with 10^88 opportunities, that anything can happen.
Yes 10^88 is a very large number. You could find enough info to do identity theft. But not life.

Answer 4

*Please* be more specific. What do you mean by "the nature of living things"?

Do you mean their ability to maintain life (exist as a thermodynamic system)?

Or do you mean the evolution of complex forms from simpler forms (evolution)?

Or do you mean the origin of life itself (abiogenesis)?

Each of these produces a very different, and potentially long answer.

{edit}

I have to reply to Roy E's answer ... even though it has nothing to do with the question.

Roy, you wrote:
>"The simplest parasite has 1100 base pairs in its DNA. Each base pair has three molecules that have to correctly form, a phosphate, a sugar and an amino acid. This means that 3300 molecules have to correctly form just to form the simplest parasite."

No. That means that 3300 molecules have to correctly form just to form *THAT PARTICULAR PARASITE*!

This is the fundamental error in your entire argument!

(1) You are mistaking a single successful example of success as the *only* possible example of success.

But you are making so many other errors as well:

(2) You are computing the odds of an existing parasite occurring by random chance ... when you know quite well that said case did NOT arise by random chance, but by natural selection.

(3) The minimum number of base-pairs needed to support self-replicating molecules is *far* less than 1100. (Hint: Spiegelman showed that an RNA-based replicating molecule was possible consisting of only 218 base-pairs. Eigen and Oehlenschlager were able to achieve a replicating molecule with only 48 or 54 nucleotides).

(4) You talk of the three parts of a nucleotide as if they their assembly was an unlikely thing, and ignore the fact that (a) nucleotides (sugar-phosphate-aminoacid triplets) will self assemble, and remain free-floating, and (b) sugar-phosphate chains also form readily into stable backbones.

(5) How many different combinations of a small number of base-pairs would be considered *successful* events (i.e. able to continue self-replicating without further need for random combinations)?

(6) How many combinations of nucleotides were occurring *per microsecond* in all the oceans of the earth in the first billion years? How many earths are there, or have been, in the history of the universe?

I'm afraid you have a *lot* more work to do in your analysis.

Answer 5

According to Isaac Asimov's definition:

Life is a localised negative-entropy phenomenon (or reverse-entropy, if you wish).

Living things are not in equilibrium, so the second law of thermodynamics is not broken. Life itself is a movement towards lower, not higher entropy. When life ends (i.e. at death), entropy again begins to increase.