Re: 2nd law clarifications

On 1/2/2025 12:13 PM, Ernest Major wrote:

On 02/01/2025 06:53, MarkE wrote:

Are these statements correct? Could they be better expressed?
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Local entropy can decrease in an open system with an input of free energy.
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Free energy alone is not sufficient to maintain or further decrease low local entropy: an energy capture and transformation mechanism is also needed.
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Extant life *maintains* low local entropy through its organisation and processes.
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Evolving life *decreases* low local entropy through the ratcheting mechanism natural selection acting on random mutations in instances where that evolution increases functional complexity and organisation.
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There is no other known mechanism apart from natural selection that does this. For example, neutral drift alone increases entropy.
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 It is difficult to operationalise the concept of irreducible complexity, as that necessitates a principled definition of system, part and function. But if you pass over that point, there are at least three classes of paths (exaption, scaffolding, coevolution) whereby irreducibly complex systems can evolve. I suspect that the last is the most frequent, and that it can be driven by drift as well as by selection. If you are equating an increase in functional complexity and organisation with a decrease in entropy, then this would negate a claim that neutral drift always increases entropy.
 

Behe admitted in his responses to his critics at the turn of the century (over two decades ago) that some irreducibly complex systems could evolve by natural means.  He started to claim that his type of irreducible systems had something special that made them impossible to evolve, or, at least, very difficult to evolve.  I recall that his own example of an IC system that could evolve by chance was the lever and fulcrum.  It just had 3 parts, but if you took away any of the parts it would lose its function.  A tree branch falling between two rocks could make such an IC system.  For biological systems it would be two proteins that were doing their jobs in the cell, but a third protein might evolve that brought the two initial proteins together and produce a new function.  Initially he claimed that his concept of "well matched" parts was the important distinction for IC systems that could or could not evolve by natural means, but he gave up on that because he never could define "well matched" so that it could be quantified in order to determine if any IC system had enough to be Behe's type of IC system. Eventually Behe gave up on multiple part IC systems, and started to claim that 3 neutral mutations that had to occur within a limited period of time in order to create a new function would be his type of IC system.  Mutations in a single protein could fit the bill, but Behe never found any examples.  As stupid as it may be he started denigrating the systems that had been identified that had evolved with two neutral mutations by claiming that those systems were "on the edge of evolution".  He admitted that natural mechanisms did account for these examples, but that evolution would never do better than that, and produce systems that required 3 neutral mutations.  It was a stupid argument because it just meant that Behe has never found his type of IC system existing in nature.
So early on Behe had admitted that the mechanisms his detractors had put forward for evolving IC systems could do that, but he would not give up on the concept, and just tried to add things to it, but was never able to verify that any of the additions had ever been involved with the evolution of any of Behe's IC systems.  He was never able to verify that his blood clotting, adaptive immune system, nor flagellum ever needed enough "well matching" to matter, and he never identified his 3 neutral mutations involved with any of those systems.
IC has been a total failure for any of Behe's attempts to keep it alive.
Ron Okimoto