(This post is still undergoing correction and enhancement)
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| NAID Granville Sewell has been caught up in the dualistic bandwagon which contrasts physical laws against divine agency |
In the third part of this series I continue to examine the thinking of Granville Sewell who argues that the second law of thermodynamics theoretically undermines evolution. Granville is part of the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) community who not only specialise in promoting a God an Intelligence-of-the-Gaps paradigm (which they will strongly deny) but they also veer toward a right-wing political stance. Strong evidence of this politics is seen in that the unwoke political animal Chris Rufo was a one time director of the Intelligent Design think-tank, The Discovery Institute.
See the following links for the two previous two parts...
Quantum Non-Linearity: Yet Again: Intelligence of the Gaps. Part 1
Quantum Non-Linearity: Yet Again: Intelligence of the Gaps. Part II
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GRANVILLE: You can argue that a few billion years ago a simple self-replicator formed by natural chemical processes, and that over the millions of years natural selection was able to organize the duplication errors made by these self-replicators into intelligent, conscious, humans, who were able to build rockets that could reach the moon and return safely.
MY COMMENT: Ah, at last Granville is asking the right question: It's not about the evolution of junkyard computers, rather it's a question of bio-molecular evolution. If one assumes OOL has occurred (by no means a trivial assumption) those duplication errors that Granville refers to, as we will see below, play a crucial role.
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GRANVILLE: I would counter that we with all our advanced technology are still not close to designing any self-replicating machine; that is still pure science fiction. When you add technology to such a machine, to bring it closer to the goal of reproduction, you only move the goal posts, as now you have a more complicated machine to reproduce. So how could we believe that such a machine could have arisen by pure chance?
MY COMMENT: Yet again, I repeat: We are not dealing with pure chance; instead we are dealing with conditional probability. and at that conditions created by an Omnigod. Therefore, we can not yet eliminate from the inquiry the possibility that the requisite physical pre-conditions needed for OOL-development have been contrived by a God for whom all (logically contingent) things are possible. So, given this relationship:
I <= S + Log T
1.0
....it may be that without sufficient starting information, S, about how to construct a general molecular self-replicator, the computation time, T, required to arrive at this information, I, is humanly speaking prohibitive; but really we don't know the answer to that question. The best humanity has done, however, is create replicators in the virtual world of computer memory. But evolution itself poses a far more abstruse meta-question: Is it possible to invent a regime of laws, constants and diffusive momenta which, given enough time, will result in an OOL natural history....that is to arrive at simple self-replicating structures...and then on to highly complex replicators? I'm not aware that this has been achieved even within a computer memory. In fact this problem could be computationally irreducible. If Granville is looking for gaps, then this is the mother of all gaps. Trouble is, given the intellectual resources of the Christian God we don't know whether He has filled that gap with a physical regime where OOL is possible.
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GRANVILLE: And suppose we did somehow manage to design, say, a fleet of cars with fully automated car-building factories inside, able to produce new cars, and not just normal new cars, but new cars with fully automated car-building factories inside them. Who could seriously believe [!!] that if we left these cars alone for a long time, the accumulation of duplication errors made as they reproduced themselves would result in anything other than devolution, and eventually could even be organized by selective forces into more advanced automobile models? So I would claim that we don’t really understand [!!] how living things are able to pass their complex structures on to their descendants without significant degradation, generation after generation, much less how they evolve even more complex structures.
MY COMMENT: OK, so leaving aside the somewhat misleading subject of self-replicating cars, the core question Granville is really asking here is this: Assuming the existence of molecular self-replicators how is it that the information needed to breed biological replicators from generation to generation isn't slowly but surely being corrupted by random noise? There is a plausible answer to this particular problem and that answer also shows us why Granville's insistence that the second law is a mathematical block to evolution is fallacious. I will be dealing with this question in the finale.
Granville goes onto criticise infinite multiverse attempts at explaining away the high improbabilities of our highly ordered world. I am at one with Granville in rejecting multiverse theory and won't publish his comments here, but here are links to some of my comments on the subject:
Quantum Non-Linearity: Many Worlds Theory: A theory devoid of meaning, goals and purpose
Quantum Non-Linearity: Science and the Multiverse
Quantum Non-Linearity: Middlebrow Atheism. Part 5 (Final Part)
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GRANVILLE: Conclusions: There are various ways to argue that what has happened on Earth does not violate the more general statements of the second law as found in physics texts. The “compensation” argument, which says that “entropy” can decrease in an open system as long as the decrease is compensated by equal or greater increases outside, so that the total entropy of any isolated system containing this system still increases, is perhaps the most widely used. Since in this context “entropy” is just used as a synonym for “disorder,” the compensation argument, as I paraphrased it in Physics Essays, essentially says that extremely improbable things can happen in an open system as long as things are happening outside which, if reversed, would be even more improbable! This compensation argument is not valid even when applied just to thermal entropy, as the decrease in an open system is limited not by increases outside, but by the amount exported through the boundary, as I’ve shown. Since tornados derive their energy from the sun, the compensation argument could equally well be used to argue that a tornado running backward, turning rubble into houses and cars, would not violate the second law either.
MY COMMENT: Once again Granville is trying to stretch credibility in evolution by ludicrous examples whose probability is all but nil. Once again, as we saw in Part II, in lieu of giving proper cognizance to conditional probabilities and a rigorous definition of entropy Granville is using our gut-feelings about known improbabilities such as tornadoes reconstructing houses and junk yards evolving computers and then exploiting those feeling to throw doubt on bio-evolution.... not a very satisfactory way to argue.
For my purposes there is no need to get involved with this compensation argument: We know from the process of crystallisation that highly improbable things (in the unconditional sense) do happen in isolated systems given the right conditions. Also, Granville fails to make clear that entropy is not the same as randomness and therefore a system of maximum entropy is not necessarily highly random; a system of maximum entropy is a system whose macrostate has the highest statistical weight given the physical constraints on the system. Since maximum statistical weight can't be equated with randomness, then high order in a system constrained by physics is not necessarily to be equated with high improbability.
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GRANVILLE: Conclusions: But there is really only one logically valid way to argue that what has happened on Earth does not violate the fundamental principle underlying the second law — the one principle from which every application and every statement of this law draws its authority. And that is to say that it only seems impossibly improbable, but it really is not, that under the right conditions, the influx of stellar energy into a planet could cause atoms there to rearrange themselves into nuclear power plants and digital computers and encyclopedias and science texts, and spaceships that could travel to tother planets and back safely. [Granville is appealing to his gut reactions again!]
And although the second law is all about probability, very few Darwinists are willing to make such an argument; they prefer to avoid the issue of probability altogether.
MY COMMENT: Although Granville's argument is clearly wrong because he gives no cognizance to conditional probabilities and the high unconditional improbability of crystallisation, this failure certainly doesn't mean that evolutionary mechanisms, as currently understood, are the engine driving natural history; all we can say at this juncture is that Granville's line of reasoning is fallacious and as an attempt to logically falsify evolution it has failed. Instead he has fallen-back on hand waving and gut-reaction-responses to ludicrous ideas about computers, encyclopaedias, science texts and spaceships popping out of an unconditional vacuum. No, Granville, the second law isn't all about probability, rather it is all about probability and the physical constraints on that probability.
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FINALE: Concerning Duplication Errors: In his post Granville raises the question about replicator duplication errors. Why doesn't random noise corrupt the information which needs to be passed from generation to generation to preserve the integrity of the replicator configuration? An answer is to be found in an equation I've often cited on Quantum Non-Linearity: Viz: the multiplying diffusion equation.....
....where: Y represents the count of replicators diffusing through configuration space, D is the diffusion constant and the "house" operator is a multidimensional version of the 3-dimensional "Del" operator. The intelligent information which has the potential to preserve the configurational status quo of replicators is incorporated into the VY term; The value of V is assumed to be coordinate dependent and will be dependent on the creation's physical regime. This term, depending on whether V is positive or negative, respectively describes either an exponential growth or an exponential decay of the replicator population at the coordinate concerned. The result, depending on how V varies over configuration space, is that at some points in configuration space the replicator population grows and at other points it decays.
At the same time random perturbations (Granville's "duplication errors") ensure that replicator configurations are diffusing through multidimensional configuration space; if replicator configurations diffuse into configurational areas where V is negative the population decays; if they move into areas where V is positive the population grows. Thus, for example, if a replicator's configuration has become corrupt due to duplication errors and this corruption adversely impacts the replicator's ability to self-perpetuate and replicate, then in that area of configuration space V will be negative and the population will die. Alternatively if V is positive the population will increase. The value of V is the selecting mechanism which ensures that regions of successful replication will prosper and regions with negative V entail decaying population. Thus V has the potential to not only preserve configurational integrity but to enhance configurational survival. This is standard evolutionary theory expressed in an abstracted mathematical form. There is here a similarity with language changes. Languages are subject to incremental drifting all the time, but only those increments that ensure the language remains comprehensible are selected.
But and this is the big But it all depends on the given form of V and its layout in configuration space. As I've made clear in previous posts, if standard evolution is to work V must superimpose on configuration space a network of channels constraining the diffusion and forming a connected set I call that the "spongeam". For OOL and subsequent evolution to work the spongeam network must have connections all the way back from complex replicators to lifeless soups of chemicals.
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| Quantum Non-Linearity: Necessary Conditions for Evolution: The Spongeam |
However, given the physics of our world it is by no means clear whether or not V traces out a spongeam facilitating evolution from scratch. For example if the functionality that organic life requires to survive occurs in isolated islands then there is an unsurmountable problem for conventional evolution; trouble is, proving this one way of the other is very problematic and the cognitive gaps here tend to get filled with the tribal gut-reactions of the woke and the unwoke.
Equation 2.0 is, however, clear on one thing; namely, that Granville's NAID tribal belief that increasing entropy necessarily contradicts evolution is wrong. The spongeam, if it exists given our physical regime, is a networked domain of possibility in configuration space defined by the form of V. This networked space is also a domain of diffusion with the diffusion being a consequence of random walk. In elementary random walk the transition rate between any pair of points in space is the same both ways because it is only dependent on the distance separating pairs of points. This sets up the condition needed for the H-theorem to hold, and if the H-theorem holds it means that in configuration space the total entropy is always increasing. This constantly increasing entropy is true even though the presumed tight constraints imposed by the spongeam on configuration space may mean that as evolution progresses highly organised configurations appear for the simple reason they are on one of diffusion routes. The irony is that the random motions of entropy are actually the motive force which drives the system toward the complex organization encoded in V, just as the random motions of the molecules of a gas create a pressure which drives the gas through a network of conduits.
Equation 2.0 is notional and no doubt a simplistic town-toy model of a possible evolutionary scenario. But although it may not bear a strong resemblance to the complexities of an actual evolutionary scenario (if such exists) what it does show, by an mathematical example, is that Granville's assertion that the second law necessarily contradicts evolution is false.
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Repeating what I said in the last part: The NAID community have sold out to anti-evolutionism, and a God an intelligence-of-the-gaps model, although that will be denied by them. I propose that they subliminally hold on to this model because the deism of the enlightenment still plagues the thoughts of many. For should the completeness of science as a descriptive system be adequately demonstrated then the subliminal intuitions of both NAID and atheist alike quietly prompts them to view the cosmos as a kind enlightenment automata capable of working unattended; no deity needed. It is then a short step to eliminating deity altogether. Anxious to avoid this conclusion the NAID community have put all their eggs into the anti-evolution basket in their determination to find evidence that God does after all demonstrate His presence in overt interventions in natural history. This has prompted them to invent the bogus category they call "blind natural forces"; not something I would use to refer to God's creation and what He has encoded into it.
Of course conversely their atheist antagonists have put all their eggs in the evolutionary basket and concluded therefore that no God is needed to drive the mechanisms of natural history.
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As I've said before the right-wing political stance of NAID is really no surprise; the negative and even hostile reaction of the academic establishment who regard NAID as a purveyor of pseudo-science goes down like a dog-dirt sandwich with the NAID community; they know that they are being classified as the rejected other. But the NAID community have fallen in with politically powerful friends such as Trump, Kennedy and Steven Miller et al. Perhaps these powerful friends can teach the academic establishment a lesson or two! Such is the degeneration of a community who propose otherwise interesting questions about the ultimate origins of the cosmos.
NOTES
1. See this link for more on my reaction to the woke and the unwoke
Views, News and Pews: Review of Sharon James Book , "The LIES...."
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