7.3 Evolution and Entropy

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Now the question is simply this; Can evolutionary processes on earth afford to pay their entropy debts?

I have shown (refer ch 6) for a logicaly improbable state the negative entropy by the Boltzman-Gibbs equation must be accounted for by the performance of a sufficient number of trials to make that outcome possible. This is the real implication of that equation for the second law where the total number of possibilities (logical phase space) is so large as to preclude any average increase in improbability, complexity or order (for equivalence refer ch 5). So for a box of just 3 dice (system), of the 216 possible outcomes only 6 are tripples, 30 are pairs but 180 are composed of three different numbers. The average behaviour is a mathematical certainty, most outcomes will be 3 different numbers. However we may also see that for the entropy cost of 36 shakes we may get an unlikely triple! That is over many trials (random shakes) even 3 dice will obey the second law! Now consider 100 dice in the box, there are only 6 100's (same number) out of 6^100 possibilities. With just 10^80 atoms in the known universe you would be hard pressed to stray far from the average of 100/6 of each number, let alone get a 100 of any one number. The implication is clear, if any system with a very large number of logical possibilities (phase space) cannot do the necessary trials to make an improbable outcome possible (pay the entropy debt), we have an instance of a significant drop in entropy without the requisite increase in the surroundings and that is a violation of the second law! Meaning if you found the box with 100 6's face up you would be correct in concluding it did not occur by any random process.

DNA is the complete specification for the growth, reproduction, defence and repair of each life form. It includes specific codes for all its proteins which are the main functional molecules of the cell. Its instructions are read and acted on by a veriety of complex machines which themselves are made of protein. The driver of evolutionary change is random mutation of the DNA at the moment of reproduction, facilitating inheritance of new traits. It is well known that natural processes may produce most of the amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, now we need to know what is the cost in Boltzmann entropy of these logical states. The DNA contains semantic information (refer ch 4) by virtue of the ordering of the amino acids, as such it has a measurable Boltzmann absolute entropy.. (logical improbability).

Have a specially nice day..