Commentary on the Endless Dispute Between Evolution and Creationism

I'm sure we're all familiar with the creationist chestnut that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. For people with a basic science education it is something of a litmus test. As soon as you hear someone make this argument you can be certain that you are dealing with a crank. You see, if someone says that he has considered the evidence for evolution and finds it unconvincing, we might shake our heads in disbelief or wonder how seriously he has studied the matter, but in the end it is a matter of opinion whether the evidence is compelling. But if someone says that evolution contradicts the second law then that person is simply wrong about a question of fact.

Most people know that the second law has something to do with entropy and that entropy has something to do with randomness and disorder. Creationist uses of the second law seldom go beyond this rudimentary understanding. Usually there is little more to the argument than the claim that the second law says natural forces always lead to increases in entropy, while evolution implies that the entropy of the Earth has decreased.

It s important to realize, however that the second law is ultimately a mathematical statement. In its classical form it says this:

Giving precise definitions for all these variables, and understanding exactly what they represent in concrete cases, is a daunting task, which is why thermodynamics textbooks do not make for light reading.

But a quick overview will be sufficient for the point I want to make. The basic scenario is that we are imagining some well-defined physical system that has gone from an initial state to a final state via some transfer of heat.

The term on the left is the change in entropy of the system that resulted from the change in state. The T represents something called the “equilibrium temperature” of the system. The term dQ represents (very roughly) the quantity of heat that has been transferred during the process.

The inequality above applies to any sort of thermodynamical system, regardless of whether or not it is open to its surroundings. But if we imagine that our system is completely isolated, so that neither matter nor energy is crossing the boundary, then dQ will be 0. In this case, elementary calculus tells us that he integral will be 0 as well. We then have the statement that the change in entropy for an isolated system must be positive or zero, which is equivalent to saying that it cannot decrease. Moreover, it will only be zero in the special case of a “reversible” process, which no actual physical process is. This is where we get the notion that the second law says that a spontaneous natural process in an isolated system always causes entropy to increase.

Rural Kansas Doc Leads the Way in EHR Certification

Dr. Jen Brull, a family practice physician in the tiny western Kansas town of Plainville has become what is thought to be the first physician in Kansas — if not in the country — to be federally certified for using electronic health records.

Being certified for “meaningful use” of EHRs by the federal Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology qualifies Brull for up to $44,000 in Medicare-based incentives over five years and $63,750 over six years through Medicaid.

“Achieving meaningful use was a natural extension of the benefits I have already seen after implementing an EHR three years ago,” Brull said. “My patients receive better care, my practice has grown financially and I am personally more satisfied since converting to electronic medical records.”

Read more here .

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