As faculty members in the College of Engineering, we would like to first express our sincere apologies to the faculty and students of Iowa State that someone as ignorant of the Laws of Thermodynamics as Andrew Symns (“Thermodynamics disputes evolution,” Feb. 10) has managed to “slip through the cracks” and is now very close to graduating in chemical engineering. Clearly, we in the college are doing an inadequate job of educating our students.

In response to Mr. Symns letter, we are reminded of the famous quotation by the late Sen. Daniel Moynihan, “We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts.” Whether Mr. Symns and others choose to believe or disbelieve in evolution is no concern of ours. However, when they misstate and misuse scientific facts in an attempt to prove their point, they engage in behavior that cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.

Mr. Symns states that, “the amount of entropy (that is, disorder) in the universe increases or remains constant,” and implies that because of this, the Second Law of Thermodynamics states it is impossible for order to arise from chaos. However, this is completely untrue. A more valid statement of the Second Law would be, “the entropy of an isolated system increases or remains constant,” where an isolated system is a system that does not interact with its surrounding. Since the universe has no surroundings to interact with, it is, by definition, an isolated system. This means that the entropy of an individual system can decrease, so long as it interacts with its surroundings in such a way that the total entropy of both system and surroundings increases. In other words, order can arise from chaos, so long as the disorder somewhere else in the universe increases even more.

We see order arising from chaos all the time. For example, on a snowy day, water droplets freeze to form the beautiful crystals we call snowflakes. The snowflakes are far more ordered than the water droplets, but this does not violate the Second Law, because in order for this to happen, heat is transferred to the atmosphere causing the entropy of the atmosphere to increase even more than the decrease in entropy caused by the formation of the snowflakes. Similarly, living creatures do not exist in isolation. They interact with their surroundings all the time by breathing, eating, drinking, etc. Thus, there is no violation of the Second Law if the creature becomes more ordered over time, so long as its interactions with its surroundings causes the entropy of the surroundings to increase even more.

In an attempt to belittle those whose belief systems differ from his own (“go ask your half-monkey/half-fish cousin to evaluate your logic first”), Mr. Symns has instead demonstrated his own ignorance. His letter reminds us of another famous quotation, this one from Samuel Johnson: “It is better to be thought a fool and remain silent, then to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”

Michael Olsen

Assistant Professor

Mechanical Engineering

Shankar Subramaniam

Assistant Professor

Mechanical Engineering