Does Life On Earth Violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
Robert N. Oerter The second law of thermodynamics (the law of increase of entropy) is sometimes used as an argument against evolution. Evolution, the argument goes, is a decrease of entropy, because it involves things getting more organized over time, while the second law says that things get more disordered over time. So evolution violates the second law. There are many things wrong with this argument, and it has been discussed ad infinitum. A summary of the arguments on both sides can be found on the links at www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo.html. These discussions never seem to involve any numerical calculations. This is unfortunate, since a very simple calculation shows that it is physically impossible for evolution to violate the second law of thermodynamics. It is important to note that the earth is not an isolated system: it receives energy from the sun, and radiates energy back into space. The second law doesn’t claim that the entropy of any part of a system increases: if it did
