Typical Of The Work Of Creationist Quote-hackers. 2nd Law.
The out-of-context quotes that were published in Scientific[sic]
Creationism seemed to suggest that Blum was presenting an argument
against evolution. Typical of the work of creationist quote-hackers,
that is the exact opposite of Blum's thesis - he considered the 2nd Law
to be essential to the evolution of life. Clearly, the creationists did
not read for comprehension. In fact, Blum summed up his views with an
analogy in Time's Arrow and Evolution as follows:
"I like to compare evolution to the weaving of a great tapestry. The
strong unyielding warp of this tapestry is formed by the essential
nature of elementary non-living matter, and the way in which this matter
has been brought together in the evolution of our planet. In building
this warp the second law of thermodynamics has played a predominant
role. The multi-colored woof which forms the detail of the tapestry I
like to think of as having been woven onto the warp principally by
mutation and natural selection.... "
Further research (by Prigogine and others) over the past couple of
decades on systems far from equilibrium has made it clear that the
relationship between disorder and entropy is much more subtle than was
realized back when Blum wrote his book. In many of these systems,
entropy is completely useless as a measure of order/disorder.
