Muad'Dib

"External" is defined as "outside the spatial boundaries of the system." I don't know that the term "external energy source" is commonly used; more common is to talk about open vs. closed systems. A closed system is one where transfer of energy across the spatial boundary is sufficiently close to zero. You're right, it will never be exactly zero, but there are cases where the error is small enough that we can pretend it's closed.

This talk of error may sound pretty fishy at first glance. It's important to observe that what people call the "Laws of Thermodynamics" on most discussion boards might be more accurately called "Observations of Thermodynamics." The real Laws of Thermodynamics that physicists and engineers use aren't just qualitative, they're quantitative. With quantitative stuff you can talk precisely about how much error you have, and it's meaningful to establish a threshold for error.

Applied physics is all about approximation. There's no "perfectly closed" system, but there are systems that are close enough to being closed that we can assume they're closed with acceptable error. Again, the fact that the laws of thermodynamics are quantitative rather than merely qualitative lets us talk about keeping error below an acceptable threshold.

My training is primarily in mathematics, so I have to object to your idea that "zero" is any more fictitious than "one" or "two" or "three." Further, if you allow an infinite number of divisions (through the concept of limits), you do get zero. I say all this to say that this kind of non-rigorous mathematical analogy isn't at all relevant for understanding the way the physical world works. (If I'm not mistaken, you're more interested in the purpose of the physical world--that's not something that science deals with at all.)

No offense meant, but I'd recommend that you at least consult a thermodynamics textbook before you try to let your intuition trump decades of research in physics and engineering. I mean, what would you think of one of us bashing Aquinas (or whoever your favorite theologian is) based only on a book by, hypothetically, Bertrand Russell? You're welcome to believe or not believe whatever results of physics you like, but at least understand that people who do physics for a living won't take kindly to you telling them they're wrong without even taking the time to figure out exactly what it is they're saying.

Hope this helps,
Muad'Dib

Albert Cipriani

Dear PZ,
To quote Spock here: You’re being illogical:
1) The subject is singular, the first “individual cell,” not “cells.”
2) What happens to it, the first cell, is a reduction in potential when it divides into two cells.
3) This inverse relationship between a decrease of potential and an increase in cellular divisions continues until death do we part.
4) “The individual is the product” – NOT. These are bogus undefined terms that smokescreen the subject of the single zygote cell, remember?
5) “An explosion of increasingly elaborate complexity” Wrong again. You are confusing the mere numerical increase of cells with an increase in their collective complexity. By such a standard you should consider basketball players more complex than midgets.

Our disagreement can be simplified to the following question: is a blueprint for a building more complex than the building itself? I say yes, you seem to be saying no. The zygote is the blueprint. Each cell it divides into thereafter is only a partial expression of those plans.

Of course I am. You certainly aren’t my fingernail clippings. Tho some of your words belong in the same wastebasket. Would you be suggesting that I somehow transcend my fingernails?

Agreed.

That’s what I question. What is it about Chance that creates complexity? I’d heard that cave-fish devolve into eyeless fish. Wouldn’t that prove that evolutionary theory should be considered blind to “increasing complexity”? – Albert the Traditional Catholic

Doubting Didymus

Yes! As a matter of fact, it is! evolution does not somehow 'desire' an increase in complexity, it is simply capable of doing so should that be advantagous to the reproductive future of the population. In fact, the vast majority of organisms have never evolved to be more complex than a single cell. Complexity is not the goal, and evolution is blind to it.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Doubting,
Great! I’m glad to hear you say that evolution is blind to complexity.

Would you agree with me, then, that evolution cannot be appealed to as the raison d’être for biological complexity? That is, would you disagree with your fellow moderator, PZ, who wrote:
Maybe I'm misreading him, but I interpret PZ as saying that evolutionary theory describes how and why bio-diversity and complexity is as natural as it is inevitable.
– Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic
Albert's Rants

Oolon Colluphid

Of course it is. Complexity, simplicity... it’s all the same to evolution. What counts is what helps an organism survive and reproduce.

If an increase in complexity works -- say, the co-option of a neighbouring muscle into altering a lens’s shape, helping an eye to focus -- then it will be selected for.

If a decrease in complexity works -- eg not needing a gut, as in some parasitic barnacles (Cirripedia) -- then natural selection will push things that way.

IOW, you’re being teleological. There is no end-point being aimed for. Complexity can come about if it is advantageous, but remember that the world is actually dominated by very simple organisms -- bacteria. Only about one in ten cells in your body is a human cell (about 10^13 human cells to 10^14 bacteria), for instance. Simplicity works too. Complexity is just a more circuitous way of doing what many organisms do more straightforwardly -- living long enough to reproduce.
Please explain why the presence of simplicity means natural selection can’t explain complexity. How is that not a non sequitur?
Yeah, so? The crucial bit is competition. Organisms do not have to be perfect, they just need to be better than the competition.

Evolution works cumulatively, with each generation sieved relative to what else is around. Therefore, whatever level of complexity (or simplicity) something already has, its fellow species members will mainly have it too.

Losing any of that will generally be a disadvantage (all the individuals are alive because what they have inherited worked well enough for their ancestors to reproduce).

But adding something extra -- increasing the complexity -- might give an individual an edge over its rivals. That edge will, with mathematical inevitability, spread through the population, till that becomes the norm.

Losing this bit will now generally be a disadvantage... and so on.

So there is a tendency to ratchet towards more complexity.

Even so, sometimes returning to simplicity can be advantageous, as with many parasites, and blind cave vertebrates. If you live in total darkness, then a mutation that buggers your eyes by underdeveloping the lens doesn’t leave you disadvantaged compared to your sighted (but equally pitch-dark living) competitors. In fact, you will have used fewer precious resources to make your lensless eye, and that could be an advantage in itself.

Got it now?
If you’re a traditional Catholic, you should know that your Big Boss the Pope doesn’t have a problem with evolution. Ever considered that you do simply because you don’t know enough about it?

TTFN, DT

KnightWhoSaysNi

In regards to simplicity and complexity, here's something that you might want to consider, Albert.

Why does the species Amoeba dubia (see here) have 200 times more DNA than a human? Why did God like amoebas so much? Why did he pay so much attention and detail to their design compared to humans?

Albert Cipriani

Dear Muad’Dib,
You wrote:
Since you agree that a closed system is only a theoretical construct that does not really exist and which we can only pretend to exist, why not also pretend that some of the stuff that gets in is operative?

For example, Baloo is claiming that our sun fuels the Earth’s evolutionary machine that drives life on to higher and higher levels of complexity. But the sun is only one energy source. Perhaps neutrinos or gravity or gamma rays have a hand in the process. Or maybe thought (which is a wave form, too) is the culprit.

If somebody or thing or god “outside” this “closed” system wished for a certain effect, who is to say that the wish is not what caused the effect? Doesn’t it come down to two different ways of pretending? I pretending God wished things to get more complex and Baloo pretending Chance powered by the sun got things more complex.

Attacking the same idea from a different side, it would seem to me that Chance is the operative principal of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The apparent randomness of motion cascades into atrophy, diffusion, and heat death. How life could hijack this same principle for opposite ends, for evolving complexity is more paradoxical to me than the Trinity. It requires more blind faith to believe it than to believe in God.

To put it another way, if the principle of Randomness or Chance drives the devolution of the universe as described by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, how can we expropriate it as the driving principle responsible for evolutionary complexity? To me, this is like saying that wetness is the principle of water, but wetness can also be used to dry us off like a towel.

Well, zero may be no different than one, or even two, but it’s definitely different than three. I draw the line at three!

Numbers are placeholders for real things. Trailing zeroes function in that way, for example, in the number ten. And in this sense, zeroes and numbers are identically as real or as representative of what is real. But zero is unique among numbers in that it also serves as a placeholder for the idea of nothing, an idea that, like the idea of God, exists only in our minds and not empirically. There is simply no such thing as nothing in this universe.

Offense taken. In my defense, I’d say I was unaware of bashing anything (except perhaps PZ, but that was only cuz he bashed me first!). Seriously, I’m saddened that you have construed my arguments as me “telling [physicists] they’re wrong without even taking the time to figure out exactly what it is they’re saying.” What a horrible impression I’ve given you! I love physicists. And I put my money where my mouth is in that I’m putting my stepson through CalTech where he’s earning a degree in physics. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Muad'Dib

As long as the net energy transfer through the boundary of the earth is above a certain level, it's an open system. We don't have to exhaustively determine all the sources of all the energy that interacted with the earth over the last five billion years to establish that.

I'm not sure what you mean about your remark on thought. Are you asserting that God's thoughts take the form of detectable energy-carrying waves?

By "this closed system" do you mean the earth or the universe? I'm not sure what you mean here. I'm guessing you mean the universe, because the earth is not a closed system at all.

Not at all. Just so we're clear, could you explain what you mean by "Chance"? I'm not sure you're using it in the same way as the biologists on this thread.

The entire point of observing that the earth is an open system, not a closed one, is that the "principle" of the Second Law of Thermodynamics does not apply. It may seem intuitively amazing or incredible that life might evolve, but it is not physically impossible.

I can honestly say that with the amount of study you've put into evolution, if you were to believe it it would be blind faith. I hope that doesn't offend you.

Um, 2LoT doesn't say anything about Randomness or Chance. What do you mean by that?

Compromise at 2 and a half?

I disagree, but that is a topic for another thread.

Okay, let me rephrase. How would you react if I said the theology of Aquinas or Augustine (or whoever your favorite is, if you have one) was completely misguided, when I had only read a book or two by people who hadn't even read the primary sources themselves? That wouldn't make me wrong necessarily, but if you disagreed we wouldn't even have a common vocabulary to discuss our differences. That's what I see going on here. You're arguing with professional biologists on their own turf without first having done your homework, and whether you're right or wrong that's going to frustrate people.

At least that's what I see, fwiw,
Muad'Dib

pz

Nonsense, every word.

1) We are discussing individuals. In case you hadn't noticed, we metazoans are composed of vast numbers of cells, yet I still refer to myself in the singular, not the plural.

2) Your entire premise, that we should consider the future "potential" as the measure of complexity, is simply silly. Someday, I may be a pile of carbon and potassium and calcium that gets incorporated into a whale, a bat, and an oak tree. Do you count all that?

There is no reduction in complexity with cell divisions. In fact, it goes the other way: a cell that is the product of a cell division in development is now a cell that has the same genetic information that it had in its prior state, but has now added a dollop of epigenetic information.

3) There is no "inverse relationship" in potential or complexity. An organism that consists of a single cell experiences an increase in both when it becomes an organism consisting of two cells.

4) I have no idea what you are babbling about in your point 4.

5) Yes, an increase in cell number represents an increase in complexity. Yes, an adult human is more complex than a single-celled zygote.
The blueprint analogy has a rather discredited history in biology. It's not a good idea to use it.

And yes, a building is much, much, much more complex than the blueprint for a building.
I would hope so, but perhaps I am wrong, and you are no more complex, sophisticated, intelligent, or personable than some fingernail clippings.
Evolution is mostly blind to increasing complexity. I never said otherwise. Chance can create things that are more complex or less complex. If it couldn't, it wouldn't be chance, now would it?

And, of course, this discussion hasn't been about chance. It's been about evolution. One small part of your lack of comprehension is your inability to see the diference.

Jobar

Albert Cipriani:
Of course I am. You certainly aren’t my fingernail clippings. Tho some of your words belong in the same wastebasket. Would you be suggesting that I somehow transcend my fingernails?


pz:
I would hope so, but perhaps I am wrong, and you are no more complex, sophisticated, intelligent, or personable than some fingernail clippings.

Heh heh heh! Albert, you *did* say you liked a certain degree of rough-and-tumble in your arguments. If you challenge pz here to that sort of contest, you'll get your clock cleaned twice- since he also understands what he's talking about, and you don't.

Jobar settles back with big bag and popcorn and cheers on pz