What Elusive New Law Governs All Living Systems?

WORTHWHILE PURSUITS require effort, and to probe reality requires heroic effort. But it is worth it, because destiny is our goal. The material in this chapter may stretch the reader at places — but I encourage you to follow through. Examples will be given that will, hopefully, illustrate the ideas and illuminate their meaning.

What Is the Second Law?

   The Second Law of Thermodynamics can be an intimidating phrase. We can view it as the Second Law of Science (the First Law was discussed in chapter 1). I've studied the Second Law for over twenty-five years and I am convinced that it's the most misunderstood and misused law in all of science. Creationists (wrongly) use it to say that evolution is impossible,¹ and evolutionists (wrongly) use it to show that natural processes are equivalent to the activity of intelligence.² With the discovery of new knowledge,³ the Second Law underwent revision, and was replaced by the New Generalized Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law is a special case of the New Generalized Second Law.

   In the 1930s and 1940s,⁴ the Second Law was expressed in terms of the ability of a physical system to spontaneously change its heat content, e.g., water freezing into ice. This old idea was perpetuated by some authors into the 1950s and 1960s.⁵ Other writers, however, grasped the part played by "intellect" in physical reality, and either implied⁶ or introduced⁷ the role of the observer in the Second Law. The result was the union for the

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first time of "uncertainty" with the thermodynamic variables of a physical system. For the time being we can think of the elusive concept of uncertainty as akin to guessing at the shapes of treetops with satellite photos as our only source of information.

   In the seventies, however, a field of science known as Quantum Statistical Mechanics developed, and what emerged was a far more general and sweeping law of which the older law was a special case. Twenty years earlier, information theory appeared. Its insights allowed man for the first time in human history to quantify his participation in the system that he measured. This interaction between intelligence and measured objects is the focal point of the New Generalized Second Law,⁸ and, while in principle biological evolution is not forbidden, this law does impose severe constraints on how natural structures can change.

   In this newer and truer way of describing things, heat content is expressed in terms of a microscopic world that involves the location and motion of atomic particles. As discussed in the preceding chapter, entropy is identified with the uncertainty of an observer taking measurements and is a barometer of the one-way direction of natural processes. Although this may be unfamiliar to some people, the reader need only understand this: Modern science has shown that the older law is merely a special situation of the New Generalized Second Law, which, in simple language, can be summarized as follows: On average, things mix.

The Old Versus the New

   We can contrast the traditional Second Law with the New Generalized Second Law using the following example: Imagine that we're in a park beside a quiet pond and someone takes a picture of it. Then, I take a rock and throw it high into the air over the pond. The rock comes down and makes a big splash in the center of the pond; and ripples emanate from the pond's center and travel toward its circular bank. Fifteen minutes later, with the rock now at the bottom of the pond, everything is quiet. Again, someone takes a picture of the pond.

   The things described by the old law are very much like what we see in the two pictures. The traditional law can only describe things that are at rest, just like before and after the rock was thrown. But it can make no pronouncements and can draw no conclusions while the rock is being thrown or while ripples are moving. However, the New Generalized Second Law has no such limitation and can continuously describe things at each instant of time — before, during, and after the rock is thrown. Another difference is

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that the old law can only describe these "rest" or equilibrium states using thermodynamic variables, for example, pressure and temperature. However, the new law has no such constraint and is valid for any observable whatsoever.

Can Accidents Make Patterns?

   We have said that the New Generalized Second Law can be understood to say that, on average, things mix. This means that with the passage of time, natural processes will destroy patterns. Conversely, if we wish to create a pattern, things will need to be separated — an activity of intellect. This is true because patterns are created when things are separated, and destroyed when they are mixed. For example, suppose there were many rocks around the pond. Of themselves, they formed a pattern of one kind or another along the bank. This pattern disappears if flash floods wash the rocks into the pond. Moving rocks into the pond means that they will have "mixed" with the water. Likewise, ripples by the rock thrown earlier can be thought of as waves mixing with the bank of the pond.

   If later we were to play back a motion picture of my throwing the rock, with the film running backward, we would see a rock flying out of the pond up into the air, and ripples starting from the bank and disappearing into the center. In other words, we'd see a physically impossible event: things unmixing of their own accord.

   With these considerations in mind, let's reconsider the basic idea that dust moved through space millennia ago to produce all that we see and are. The question is, on average, do dust collisions unmix to produce patterns? Or do they mix to create chaos? Suppose we shook a container that originally had salt at one end, and pepper at the other. Soon we'd have a speckled mixture of salt and pepper; we would see that mixing produces chaos. But were we to shake the container continuously, the possibility exists that on one very magic shake we could find all the salt once again at one end of the container and all the pepper at the opposite end. This is the concept which says that every now and then a very special accident can happen that will generate a pattern.

Statistical Interference

   The belief that accidents can generate patterns is flawed, for it presumes something regarding physical matter which, in general, is untrue. In the particular example considered, to say that a lucky shake can produce the desired pattern presumes that when the salt and pepper were homogeneously mixed, somehow, on our magic shake, each particle would be free to move toward a separated state (salt at one end and pepper at the other) without colliding with each other. In other words, to assume that the salt and pepper can be unmixed on a magic shake of the container is to presume that a statistically feasible future state of physical matter is unconstrained by the history of its past distributions. But the mixed state of the pepper and salt

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disallows the desired patter on one shake. Even if the magic shake occurs, collisions between the salt and pepper will keep them from separating into opposite ends of the container. The only way that shaking the container will produce such separation is if a series of magic shakes occurs.

   How feasible is the occurrence of a sequence of magic shakes? Not very feasible at all. The problem with the statistical generation of patterns in this way is that, on average, our physical laws mandate that the salt and pepper must mix, not separate. The point is that not just any pattern will do, but only the one that is desired.

   In this trivial example, we've made the desired pattern a separation between salt and pepper. But in actual fact, the desired patterns are near random distributions with vast functional coherence. Yet the simple example illustrates the difficulty in accidentally producing even a trivial separation of salt and pepper because on average the Second Law constrains them to mix.

Can Intellect Explain Earth's Patterns?

   We might ask: Once mixed, how can we generate a pattern with all salt on one side and pepper on the other? The answer is that you, as an intellect, can observe where the black specks of pepper are and proceed to pick them out by hand with tweezers. If you were to do this, you could generate any pattern you desire. These kinds of patterns are generated by intellect, not by chance.

   Unlike pepper and salt, the actual state of affairs in the cosmos involves dust that is free to adhere to itself as it moves about. Because of this, some have argued that a series of fortunate accidents can build, one on the other, to produce the desired end pattern. But this idea fails on two counts. First, most of the distributions, if left to chance, will be the wrong ones. Thus, the adhesion merely removes from the cosmic commutative game material dust that is already in short supply. Second, successive lucky accidents are so unlikely that even if some lucky, transitory, "in-between" combination occurs, the combinations that follow will act to destroy the prior pseudo-pattern. Because on average, things must mix!

   Some have argued that the adhesion is a function of the "right combination," i.e., only those particles stick that intermingle in the right way. But this takes us back to the idea of physical matter somehow coming into existence with magical properties that over billions of years manufactured the blue sky, red wine, and green grass, along with us to enjoy them.

   These intellectual excursions, though heroic, that seemingly attempt to replace God with sod as the source of our world's patterns, are not warranted by the empirical data of science. The fact that some people are motivated to defend them indicates that the academic exercise exists for reasons other than the pursuit of the world's true origin. People who logically pursue truth focus on facts and propose what those facts teach. But in the question of origins this is not the case. Here it is assumed that matter and its motion

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are all that exist, and ingenious stories are proposed that are consistent with the philosophical presumptions.

   A good example of what natural processes do can be seen by watching a small child on the beach on a warm summer day. As the child tries to build a sand castle, the incoming waves repeatedly pound on the structure, washing the sand into the ocean and destroying its shape. If the child builds the sand castle elsewhere, then, over a period of time, the action of the wind will also destroy it. Both wind and waves destroy patterns. In this simple example we have an accurate picture of how natural processes pound away and destroy complex patterns. We can stand on a beach of our choosing until the day we die, but we will not see the ocean water or wind position sand so as to restore the complex pattern of the child's sand castle. It doesn't happen because nature is a destroyer, not a builder.

   The example of salt and pepper illustrates that the natural flow is for things to mix. However, many events in our common everyday lives also illustrate the one-way direction of this universal truth that, on average, things mix.

How Does the Second Law Affect Our Lives?

   The Second Law affects our lives in many ways. For example, soap and water will mix to make suds. A burning log mixes with oxygen to form fire and ashes. Sugar put into coffee mixes to sweeten it. Did you ever drink a sweetened beverage that sometimes tasted sweet and sometimes tasted bitter as you sipped it? Of course not. Why? Because the Second Law forces the sweetener to rapidly mix throughout the drink so that it is either sweet, bitter, or in-between, depending on the amount of sweetener. It will be the same throughout the cup or glass.

   The truth of the matter is that on our scale of observation, things do not unmix. Soap suds will not unmix and return to a bar of soap and drinking water. If we have ashes, they will not unmix to become a log and oxygen. If we have sweet coffee, it will not unmix to bring back the sugar and the original coffee. But another thing happens when things mix. The patterns in space that previously existed when they occupied separate locations now cease to exist; i.e., when things mix, their patterns are destroyed. This is illustrated through what may be a familiar example.

   Let's assume that you have purchased a brand new car and have taken it home from the dealer. Admiring your new car you examine the fenders, seeing that they are shiny and appear to be made of iron. But that's soon forgotten as you use the car and other things begin to occupy your mind. Several years go by, and you recall the time when you brought the car home and examined the fenders. You remember how shiny they appeared, so you decide to reexamine them. You now notice that the same fenders have begun to rust; i.e., the iron has mixed with the oxygen in the air. But, as disheartening

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as that may be, were you to wait long enough, the rust would begin to flake away and the entire fenders would disappear. Moreover, with the disappearance of the fenders they would lose their "pattern" (shape). When iron mixes with oxygen, the result is rust; and, given enough time, the rust will eventually flake away and the entire pattern that previously existed in space will be lost.

   This kind of process in which iron and oxygen mix to form rust reflects again the universal law that "on average, things mix." Here we begin to appreciate the mystery surrounding the many complex patterns that exist on the earth. Were you to attempt to separate salt and pepper that had previously been combined, you could not do so by shaking the container. The combination would not unmix because, in nature, things do not separate of their own accord. But to explain the origin of the world we must explain how things separated into complex patterns. And this is not as simple as some suppose. Thermodynamically speaking, the systematic production of patterns is equivalent to making a perpetual motion machine!

The Observer's Role in Reality

   The New Generalized Second Law mathematically describes the distribution that atomic particles will assume when put in the field of an observer's awareness. This New Generalized Second Law teaches that their location in space at each instant of time will be the distribution that maximizes the observer's uncertainty, subject to the predicted values of the observables. In simple language, nature provides intelligence with minimum information. All the older formulations of the Second Law are special cases of this fundamental, universal truth.

   One interesting sidelight of these new insights is that the word entropy used in the older expressions to describe nature's one-way flow through time is now understood to be the uncertainty in an observer's description of the physical system. That is, entropy is the observer's uncertainty at an instant of time concerning the spatial pattern of objects measured at an earlier time. Since these objects assume positions that yield minimum information to the observer, the structures that materialize in space are those that, at each instant of time, yield maximum uncertainty (entropy).

   These considerations apply to the entire system, and, when applied to the closed system of the universe (as indicated by modern understandings of its origin), the New Generalized Second Law has profound implications not only for the origin of the earth, but for the life that we find on it, and for the mechanism of evolution that is alleged to explain it.

   Our new understandings also dovetail quite nicely with some of the deeper implications of quantum physics, which teach with growing vigor that the reality of measured objects finds ultimate existence only in the information contained in its description by an observer. These and other insights are new to the twentieth century and are what set the older ideas apart from modern

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knowledge. So that we can understand some of this in more familiar terms, however, it will prove helpful to return to our simpler picture.

   Suppose we poured a box of salt into a tub of water. The result would be no mystery — we'd quickly get salt water. Now let's enlarge the tub to the size of the Pacific Ocean, and in your mind's eye imagine that we're stranded in a rowboat far out at sea with nothing to drink. We can't drink the ocean water, because it's a mixture of salt and water, a solution not unlike the result of pouring the box of salt and water into the tub of water. If we wait, and wait some more, and continue to wait even longer, we find that the salt in the ocean water will not unmix to become drinking water and a cake of salt. Were we to wait for drinking water in this fashion we would die of thirst long before the salt and water unmixed of their own accord.

   When we apply this consideration to the origin of planet earth, we find this mystery: If on average, things do not unmix, who or what produced the vast unmixed states that permeate all the earth? The book of Genesis says that it was Intelligence. Considering that this book was written thousands of years ago it is astonishing that its author explained earth's patterns in terms of six supreme acts of separation by some stupendous Intellect. Being unaware of the scientific fact that things don't unmix, why didn't the writer explain earth's origin in terms of natural forces? Why did he invoke a Supreme Intellect?

The Mystery of Information

   Modern science has shown that patterns contain information that can be measured and quantified (assigned numbers).¹¹ When we ask where this world came from we are really asking for the source of the information that exists in the form of these complex patterns. The patterns are produced when things are separated. To explain their origin and, therefore, the source of the information within them, we need a way to unmix things. Natural processes make poor explanations because as things become unmixed, they do so at the expense of other things in the system that get mixed. The universal law works in such a way that when the total package is considered, more things must end up mixed than unmixed.

   For example, suppose we were to put a walnut at the center of a pancake. Nature can unmix things in the walnut provided that in doing so greater mixing occurs elsewhere. Since unmixing produces patterns, we might imagine a natural process making both a pattern near the pancake center and producing information in the walnut. But, since mixing destroys patterns and, therefore, information, we think of the information produced in the walnut as coming from other information located throughout the pancake. This "other information" is lost as things become mixed in the outer regions of the pancake. The New Generalized Second Law of Thermodynamics teaches that nature cannot create more information in the walnut than was originally available throughout the pancake. We can produce information in the walnut,

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but only at the expense of information that exists elsewhere. The pancake is our universe, and the walnut is a living cell. The mystery that confronts us is that the information in the walnut vastly exceeds that available in the pancake. Were we to believe that a natural process created life, this would mean that nature brought more information into existence than is available within the universe (under 270 bits ¹² versus over a million bits ¹³ for just a simple bacterium).¹⁴ A similar concern exists if we imagine that nature produced planet earth.

Too Small and Too Young

   Few people realize that only since the early fifties have we been able to quantify the information resident in patterns. When we examine the numbers, we find that the random action of the "bits and pieces" of the universe in the form of cosmic dust cannot explain it. Some answer by saying that it is explainable if we give it enough time; they say that the random action of the dust can explain it.

   When this idea is carefully examined we find that even if the universe is 13 billion years old and 30 billion light-years wide, it is still too young and too small to explain what we see. We touched on the basic reason why this is so earlier, in the concept of statistical interference.

   If you put hot and cold water into a tub, you observe that they obey the universal law — they mix to form lukewarm water. Now it's our experience that lukewarm water does not unmix to give us back hot and cold water. To get these, we need an intellect to design both a refrigerator and a furnace. But what if we were to wait long enough; is it not possible for all of the fast-moving water molecules (the hot water) to move to one side of our tub, and all of the slow-moving ones to the other side?

   The problem with that argument is that, as in the earlier example of salt and pepper, it ignores the basic properties of physical matter and presumes that if the fortunate circumstance were to statistically occur, each of the molecules would be free to travel along their randomly ordained paths without interference from all the others. Thus, to perform the feat, we once again find ourselves needing a fortuitous sequence of magical accidents that somehow allow the desired end result to materialize. But physical laws predestine such hope to despair because on the average we must get more mixing than not. Given the properties of physical matter, were we to wait long enough we would lose the water through evaporation long before it ever unmixes.

What Patterns Does Nature Produce?

   But do natural processes ever produce any kind of pattern? The answer is yes. We can look at snowflakes or at the way different kinds of salts form crystals. These things are patterns, but they are very simple patterns.

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For example, if you were to walk inside a salt crystal, you would be able to look in any direction and essentially see the same thing. The reason is that a salt crystal contains nothing more than a very tiny pattern that repeats itself billions of times. Let's look at this from a different point of view.

   Many years ago, when I was in grammar school, a teacher said to me, "For your punishment, you shall write 'I will be good' a thousand times." Now, I could write that phrase over and over again, and I might cover the front and back of ten sheets of paper. But that does not mean that I had produced ten sheets worth of information. In fact, we have virtually no information simply because I took the one small phrase, "I will be good," and repeated it over and over again. Nature does that with the very patterns that occur naturally. They repeat over and over again and actually contribute very little information. In fact, information is always lost in natural transitions of this kind, including the crystallization of water into ice. This is what the New Generalized Second Law teaches — and this is what is observed.

   But in inquiring about the world's origin, the real question we need to ask is, "What is the origin of the complex patterns we see and experience in the world?" If I took those ten sheets of paper and began to cover them with Einstein's theory of relativity, I would have a far more complex distribution of symbols than by my repeating a simple phrase over and over.

   This is the situation we find in the world. All the natural processes that produce patterns do so with virtually no information in them. Yet despite this fact, teachers for decades have convinced many, both young and old alike, that the world can be explained in terms of natural processes. Even some biochemists are convinced that they can mix chemicals and produce life. But it's a futile exercise because to produce life you need the source of information contained in its blueprint. The information contained in a living cell is much greater than what is available within the universe through natural processes. The margin between the two is so vast that, were we to recite the difference in terms of printed letters, we'd need the volume of forty thousand universes just to store the paper on which the letters were printed.

Chapter Eight  ||  Table of Contents

1. Morris, H. The Biblical Basis For Modern Science (1984) Baker Book House Ch. 7. Williams E. "Entropy and the Solid State," in Why Not Creation? (1970) Lammerts W. ed. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company.

2. Setlow R. & Pollard E. Molecular Biophysics (1962) Ch. 3 (7:63). Gatlin L. Information Theory and the Living System (1972) Columbian Univ. Press Ch. 8:189. Schuster P. and Sigmund K. From Biological Macromolecules to Protocells — The Principle of Early Evolution Ch. 17 Sec. 2:874 in Biophysics Hoppe W. et.al. ed. (1983) Springer-Verlag, Berlin. 

3. Information Theory and Quantum Statistical Mechanics

4. Slater, J. Introduction To Chemical Physics (1939) McGraw-Hill, NY. Hawkins, G. Thermodynamics (1946) Wiley & Sons, NY. Fowler, R. & Guggenheim, E. Statistical Thermodynamics (1939) Univ. Press Cambridge. Glasstone, S. A Treatise On Physical Chemistry (1942) Van Nostrand, NY. Page, L. Introduction to Theoretical Physics (1928) Van Nostrand, NY. 

5. Hatsopoulos, G. & Kennan, J. Principles of General Thermodynamics (1965) Wiley & Sons, NY, Wilson, A. Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics (1957) Cambridge Univ. Press. Rossini, F. Thermodynamics and Physics of Matter (1955) Princeton Univ. Press. Groot, S. Thermodynamics of Irreversible Processes (1951) Interscience Publishers, NY. Reif, F. Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics McGraw-Hill, NY. Aston, J. and Fritz, J. Thermodynamics and Statistical Thermodynamics (1959) Wiley & Sons, NY.

6.  Brillouin L. Jour. of Appl. Physics (1951) 22:334. Rothstein J. Science (1951) 114:171. Rothstein J. Jour. Appl. Physics (1952) 23:1281. Rothstein J. Physics Rev. (1952) 85:135. Raymond R. Am. Jour. Physics (1951) 19:109.

7. Katz A. Principles of Statistical Mechanics: The Information Theory Approach (1965) Freeman, San Francisco. Landsberg, P. Thermodynamics (1961) Interscience Publishers, NY. Tribus, M. Thermostatics and Thermodynamics (1961) Van Nostrand, Princeton. Jaynes, E. Phys. Rev (1957) 106:620; Phys.Rev (1957) 108:171. Jaynes, E. Statistical Physics (1963) (1962 Brandeis Lectures) Ford K. ed., W. Benjamin, NY. Jaynes, E. Am Jour. Phys. (1965) 33:391.

8. The formal expression of the New Generalized Second Law is given in Appendix 3. Although rigorously formulated by Hobson,⁹ the generalized canonical entropy had been previously developed independently as a generalized entropy by a number of authors.¹⁰

9. Hobson A. Concepts In Statistical Mechanics (1971) Gordon & Breach, NY.

10. Jaynes E. Statistical Physics op.cit. Robertson B. Phys. Rev. (1966) 144:151; (1967) 160:175. Schwegler, Z. Naturforsch (1965) 20a:1543. Zubarev D. Doklady (1962) 6:776. Scalapino D. Irreversible Statistical Mechanics and the Principle of Maximum Entropy (1961) Ph.D. Dissertation Stanford Univ. Kawasaki K. Prog. Theor. Phys. (1960) 23:754). Mori H. Jour. Phys. Soc. Japan (1956) 11:1029.

11. Shannon C. Bell Sys. Tech Jour. (1948) 27:379; reprinted in The Mathematical Theory of Communication (1949) Illinois Univ. Press (Urbana).

12. Golay M. Proc. IRE (1961) :1378 Sep.  

13. Setlow R. & Pollard E. Molecular Biophysics (1962) ch 3(10:71).

14. These concepts are discussed in Chapter 13 and Appendix 6

Chapter Eight  ||  Table of Contents