In his Jan. 2 letter to the Kalamazoo Gazette, "How does one reconcile evolution with entropy?" David J. Barnd repeats one of the oldest anti-evolution canards in the intelligent design/creationist political playbook; the so-called "argument from the second law of thermodynamics."
This argument has several pseudo-scientific forms, including "tornadoes in junkyards," "entropy barriers" and "genetic entropy." Like every ID/creationist argument, it is a distortion of science designed to pique scientists and provoke debates to leverage the appearance of legitimacy for ID/creationism. And in every case, these arguments reveal why ID/creationism has no traction in the real world of science or with the scientific community. ID/creationists never do any research.
Their thermodynamic argument is a classic misrepresentation of a fundamental scientific concept. Mr. Barnd mangles the concept of entropy when he writes, "By definition, entropy is the degradation of matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity, a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder."
In reality, entropy refers to the number of available energy microstates in a thermodynamic system; it has very little to do with the spatial order of matter. An energy microstate is simply any mechanism that can carry energy (e.g., each way a molecule can vibrate or rotate). Thermodynamics is about the bookkeeping of energy; not spatial order. The distinction is crucial.
For example, atoms can condense into spatially ordered crystals. But they can do this only if excess energy is carried away into the surrounding environment via additional energy states, such as photons, phonons, or other atoms. Thus the atoms forming a crystal condense into fewer energy states (a local entropy decrease) as a result of even more energy states becoming available globally (global increase in entropy). The crystalline spatial order arises from electromagnetic interactions and the rules of quantum mechanics, along with any emergent properties of matter as it condenses into more complex systems; never by "overcoming entropy".
When atoms and molecules are forming crystals or living systems, matter and energy are always being exchanged with a larger environment. The field of condensed matter physics reveals that order, complexity, and emergent phenomena are ubiquitous in the universe, from the formation of protons and neutrons out of quarks and gluons, to atoms and molecules, to solids and liquids and organic compounds, all the way to the formation of living systems. The variety and complexity are enormous and depend on the energy ranges and materials available.
Yet no laws of thermodynamics are being violated anywhere. There are no ID/creationist "entropy barriers" prohibiting order and complexity from arising, and no ID/creationist has ever demonstrated such a barrier (it could be worth a Nobel Prize if one did). The "paradox" arises only because of misconceptions promulgated by the ID/creationists.
These anti-evolution sectarians are guaranteed freedom of religion by the U.S. Constitution. They can preach their pseudo-science within their own churches if they wish. However, they are not free to leverage the powers of government to throw stumbling blocks into the learning paths of others in the public schools.
Michael B. Elzinga is a retired physicist who lives in Kalamazoo.