Ilya Prigogine, won his 1977 Nobel Prize for his theory that biological life self-assembled from inorganic non-life through the non-equilibrium thermodynamic processes. Again, random chance was abandoned, this time for the notion of an outside force arising in a thermodynamic process that, somehow, energized evolution. Such a force has never been identified.
Like every creationist I have ever encountered, Mr. Benedict is clueless about thermodynamics. There is no “outside force” invoked by Prigogine.
Two resources for Benedict to read are;
“The second law of thermodynamics and evolution”
http://2ndlaw.oxy.edu/evolution.html
C. Bustamante, J. Liphardt, F. Ritort
“The Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics of Small Systems”
Physics Today, vol. 58 (2005) 43-48
http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0511629
The "Laws" of thermodynamics only operate within boundary conditions, no different from Newton's "Laws" of motion. They are just dandy within their boundary conditions, but utterly fail beyond them. In particular, it is known that the 2nd law does not hold at extremely small scales, such as found within cells. The 1st law fails in quantum vacuums. This is real science, not superstition, or mysticism.
No comments:
Post a Comment