"Michael Ragland"  wrote in message
news:cj4nbk$1t6k$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org... 
... 
Life, of course, is an anti-entropic system, increasing order inside
organisms while exporting entropy to the en-vironment, thus preserving
the validity of the entropy law... 

Reason:
Other natural processes create order from entropy. A river will sort
sand, silt and gravel into neat, uniform layers from a chaotic mixture
of weathered rock. A bottle of salad dressing settles out into uniform
layers of oil and water after it has been shaken. Where is the entropy
being exported in these processes?

Response:
Entropy is not my forte. Based on what I found on the net [below] the
case of the salad dressing settling out into uniform layers of oil and
water after having been shook would be a case of an isolated system of
entropy. In the case of a river sorting sand, silt and gravel into neat,
uniform layers from a chaotic mixture of weathered rock I would say that
was an open system of entropy.



If anything can pass into, or out of, a system, we say it is an open
system. If only matter can pass into, or out of, a system, but not
energy, then we call it a closed system. If neither matter nor energy
can pass into, or out of, a system, then we call it an isolated system. 
We have a definition of the 2nd law from our previous chapter, a
standard definition from standard thermodynamics. 

Processes in which the entropy of an isolated system would decrease do
not occur, or, in every process taking place in an isolated system, the
entropy of the system either increases or remains constant 

The definition explicitly requires the system in question to be
isolated. This is a non trivial observation. If the system were not
isolated, then entropy could pour out over the boundary, and the entropy
decrease instead of increase.

"It's uncertain whether intelligence has any long term survival value.
Bacteria do quite well without it."
 Stephen Hawking
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