An argument that we often seem to hear from creationists is that ‘Order cannot arise from chaos’.
Hmmm, what about the wave patterns that occur on sand dunes as a result of the wind blowing across them? (I have a feeling that the dunes themselves are created by the same effect simply scaled up), or the similar patterns that can be seen in cirrocumulus clouds.
Does this count as order arising from chaos? and if not, why not?
You should read James Gleick’s Chaos, and investigate more fully the phenomenons of nonlinear causality and sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
Yes, order is emergent without having to be imposed. And, yes, I agree with you that this hangup seems historically embedded in Christian (if not necessarily other religious) thinking – the idea that any process, left to its own devices, will result in rot and corruption because order (and beauty and virtue etc) exist only where imposed, and disorder absent only where actively prevented.
Try pouring sugar into water until the solution is saturated. Perfect disorder, correct? Now dip in a piece of string, and wait.
Dum dum de dum… (three days later):
Crystals! Rock candy, actually. Not being able to get order from chaos is so obviously wrong I thought it was a strawman argument against creationism the first time I heard it, much like the “violation of the second law of thermodynamics” argument that is trivially easy to disprove. See http://www.talkorigins.org.
Or, for a discussion of the biological implications, At Home in the Universe, by Stuart Kauffman.
What chaos theory shows is that many so-called random patterns are not really random at all, but follow relatively simple patterns with the parameters constantly changing. The constantly changing parameters are what causing the chaos.
Actually, Astronomer, I’ve been under the impression that the “order can’t arise from chaos” argument was a direct result of creationists’ abuse of the second law of thermodynamics. It probably helps if you consider the words ‘entropy’ and ‘chaos’ to be synonyms, no matter what the subject of discussion is.
Along the same lines, I’ve also heard (more from the intelligent design folks) that it’s impossible for new information to be created. I can only reconcile this with any form of reality if “information” is always a synonym for “order,” the opposite of “entropy,” and we’re back to the abuse of the 2nd law again. Are there any serious information theorists out there who believe this? Of all the claims I’ve seen, this is the only one I haven’t seen taken on directly. Anyone got a cite for me?