First Cause

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And maybe, just maybe, that was a contradiction.

Seriously though, I like where that went Nakia. Something in there to support every theory.


Here's a thought for you: What if creation was a combination of several processes, not just the one?

 

And maybe, just maybe, The Magister is correct.

 

Magister,

That is a pretty sophisticated idea, multicausality! That means one has to keep several probable causes in mind, at the same time ... ooooh, mind boggling!

 

This might not be the only universe either. There could be an infinite number of them, each with their own histories, like bubbles forming when you boil water.

 

But how can infinite spaces exist independent of each other without merging?

(Note: I like the idear, but wanted to question it as well.)

 

I wouldn't know, I didn't create the universe(s). Other species with much bigger brains than us will figure it out at some stage.

 

It's a good idea. I've always found that the idea of one cause - one effect to be too limited to relate to how things seem to work in the real world...

 

Didn't I talk about that multi-verse thing in my M-Theory post? Anyway, the way infinite spaces go-exist without overlapping is they are infinite in the three classical spatial dimentions and time, but not in other dimentions. Then you can layer them in those other dimentions and even have occational connections, but not overlapping.

Ok, I'm not sure where you got that, but its totally wrong. A reversible process is a theoretical idea that cannot actually be achieved. An irreversible process is, by definition, irreversible, and cannot be undone, no matter how hard you try. In fact, trying makes it even more irreversible. That's an entropy thing.

 

Um, that's not totally correct either. All chemical reactions exist in a state of equilibrium. For example, when we write a chemical reaction of A + B -> AB, the innverse reaction AB -> A + B occurs simultaneously. Now it is true that many reactions have an equilibrium that is nearly unidirectional. For example the reaction A + B -> AB may occur 10^20 times more frequently than the inverse reaction, but it does exist, and therefore reversible. I suppose it would actually be more appropriate to say that for every molecule AB that reverts back to A and B, 10^20 atoms of A and B combine to form AB. However, given the often-times high equilibrium rate, most chemical reactions are NOT completely reversible. If A + B -> AB is 10^20 times more likely to occur, you'll never completely revert back to A + B.

Oh, and entropy only matters assuming a lack of input of outside energy. While it is true that the entire universe could be considered a closed system, anything on a smaller scale (i.e., anything happening on a scale smaller than the entire universe) could have an energy increase or decrease.

 

@N.O.G. I found it by accident when checking something out in Spell Checker. I then did some research on it. The theory has been around longer than I have (140 years) and has only been challenged once.

I found with Google Search 17,400 refferences. No I did not check out all of them but I did check a few. Here is one: See Here

 

1) NOG (No Other Gods) is right, the "Fundamental Oxymoron" is nonsensical mumbo-jumbo. Nakia, in your Google Search, didn't it strike you as odd that the only references to this "Oxymoron" lead to a somewhat desperate figure named Pentcho Valev? Take a look at this: http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/valevfaq.htm
I didn't see anything resembling a theory that has been around for 140 years and has only been challenged once.
2) Aldeth, reversibility is indeed an ideal not to be found in nature - although we can get pretty near. Your example was not meeting the criteria for reversibility - as you yourself stated in your last sentence. Your chemical reaction has to be either exothermic or endothermic - hence without increasing or reducing the energy of your system, the process would indeed be irreversible. You took advantage of the fact that you yourself weren't investigating a closed system.
3) The universe does not need a cause to exist. We think in terms of cause and effect because of our daily observations. However, those are made in a world governed by natural laws that came into being in the same instance that the universe itself came into being. It is not altogether clear that in the, for lack of a better word, time just before the Big Bang those natural laws were valid as well.
And even if they were: think of radioactivity. This is a fine example of an effect that does not need a cause. We know that any radioactive matter will eventually decay - but nothing seems to be causing this decay in such a forthright manner that we would speak of a cause of the decay.

Have fun.

 

Ok, I feel a little exposition is neccessary. A 'reversable' or 'irreversable' process in thermodynamics refers to a certain concept. The basis of this is the idea that entropy (which plays a BIG role in thermodynamics) cannot be destroyed. It can be created, but not destroyed. In fact, any real process MUST create entropy, and it is one of the balancing factors to check in any termodynamic problem: did the total entropy increase? If not, you did something wrong. This makes all real processes irreversable, as you cannot un-create (destroy) the entropy you created. The really interesting thing, however, is that THEORETICALLY, you don't have to create entropy. If your process is composed of differential (infinitely small) steps, then each step doesn't actually do anything, and so it doesn't create entropy, but an infinite number of them together can do something. Unfortunately, there are two problems with this. 1.)We can't make anything with infinitely small (or large) steps, that is a theoretical ideal. 2.)It takes an infinite number of infinitely small steps to make any finite difference. Therefore, even if we could do such a process, it would take forever (litterally) to make any difference. Because of this, a reversible process could never be part of a cycle.

The other problem is that you can make cycles out of purely irreversible processes, and we do all the time. That's how your air conditioning works, actually, and a number of heating systems.

 

NOG,

It's been 10 years since my last class in thermodynamics, so I certainly would have to refresh myself before I got into any type of detailed discussions with you on the topic. However, I remember from my time teaching basic freshman chemistry that some reaction are indeed reversible if you can overcome the activation energy. Again, such a process does not happen spontaneously - it requires the input of energy, usually in the form of heat. Typically the reaction happens one way at room temperature, and can happen the other way with the input of heat. I distinctly remember one lab where the students had to dissolve zinc flakes (I think it was zinc) in an acid (which generated a blue solution), and got the zinc "back" by running it through another reaction.

On the other hand, some reaction do appear to be completely irreversible - you can't un-burn a piece of firewood for example.

 

But burning firewood creates C02, which can be taken in by plants (as well as a lot of other things and processes) to create... more firewood.




It's why wood is seen as a "sustainable" fuel (Ignoring transportation costs)

 

But we're not talking about a chemical reaction here. We're talking about a thermodynamic process, which means changing the heat, pressure, volume, etc. of the substance (usually a fluid) to cause other changes. Chemistry can come into play, but it is by no means the whole view.

Let's take a look at a classic example, the air conditioner. This cycle is designed to move heat out of a cooler area and into a warmer area (the reverse of the natural process). It comes in four processes:

1.)Take the coolant as a liquid (at outside temperature) and expand it into a gas. This drops the temperature significantly.
2.)"Expose" the gas to room temperature, where it absorbs some of that heat until it, too, is room temperature.
3.)Compress the gas back into a liquid, raising the temperature significantly.
4.)"Expose" the liquid to outside temperature, where it dumps its excess heat into the atmosphere.

Now we're back at step one. Every process in this cycle creates entropy and, while the entropy can be pumped away, it can't be destroyed, so the process is irreversible.

There are some chemical reactions that can be undone with other chemical reactions and, as you can see, everything in the above cycle is undone except the production of entropy. For that matter, I think chemical reactions produce entropy, too, I'm not sure. Chemistry generally ignores entropy as not a significant influence, though, so they 'reverse' reactions without counting the entropy produced.

Remember, Aldeth, we aren't talking about physically undoing something, we're talking about a thermodynamic definition that centers around entropy.

 

OK good point, although I can't say that I'm completely with you on all you say. Let's stay in the world of heat transfers for another example: how does the process of adiabatic heating and cooling increase entropy?

 

Honestly, I'm not sure HOW anything actually does it. That's an area of physics I've never gotten into. All I know is that it does, from the theory, from the math, and from experimentation.

The production of entropy is linked to physical changes in the relative position and distribution of the atoms, I think. For example, if you have two noble gasses in connected chambers, only seperated by one thin wall, and then remove the wall, the simple mixing of the two gasses produces entropy. If you have a gas being blown by a fan, the interaction of the fan with the gas produces entropy, but the gas continuing along at its accelerated pace does not. Compression and expansion both produce entropy.

Entropy moves with heat (but isn't destroyed with it), most of the time, so an adiabatic process traps all the entropy produced inside and doesn't release any, but how exactly it is 'made' I'm not sure.

 

Well you've lost me. I thought that the definition of Entropy was (on a basic level) equal to the "losses" in a given system, hence why there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine.
Entropy as such isn't a "thing" to be created, it is a dispersal of energy to other surroundings.

Can someone remind me how this relates to the "First Cause" topic? Maybe in a few years time there will be nothing except entropy (Now there is a mind boggling idea - the dispersal of all energy (and therefore mass) into... what exactly?) and the argument will be moot.

 

Entropy in the frame of phenomenological thermodynamics is, broadly speaking, a measure for the amount of energy of a given system that can be converted into work. Take a look at the oceans: although a tremendous amount of energy is conserved in the water we have no means of accessing this energy in form of work (never minding tidal forces), because the temperature of the water is too close to the surrounding. The higher the entropy, the less energy is at disposal for work, i.e. for driving an engine. The maximum amount that is possible for the entropy is reached in a state of equilibrium when the temperature of the surrounding medium and the work reservoir are equal. This point will be reached at the “cold death” of the universe. Experiments as well as our daily experiences establish the second law of thermodynamics, namely that the entropy of a closed system is never found to be reducing.

This does not mean, however, that entropy cannot be “destroyed”. In the first place, it is wrong to apply the terms “destroy” or “create” to the entity entropy, since it is not a material entity. If a slab of metal is contracted by exposure to cold temperatures, no one would say that length or volume had been “destroyed”. We would say that length had been “reduced”, and we should call changes in entropy accordingly.

In the second place, it is possible to reduce entropy locally. You would have experienced this phenomenon if you had ever taken to cleaning up your room. When placing a bottle of beer into a lake for cooling the entropy of the bottle will be reduced. The total sum of entropy, on the other hand, is increased because the increase of entropy of the lake will surpass the decrease of entropy of the bottle.

In this light, there cannot be a time where there is “nothing but entropy”, just as little as there can be a time where there is “nothing but length”, because you would need a physical, material system you can attribute entities like length or entropy to.

Microscopically, entropy is a measure for the number of possible (i.e. permitted) states a system can occupy - this is what NOG (No Other Gods) referred to in his last post. A system will try to occupy a state in which the maximum allowed neighbouring states can be reached, hence it will try to maximize its entropy. In contrast to phenomenological thermodynamics, this statistical definition does not in principle prohibit the possibility of reduction of the entropy of a closed system, although such a phenomenon would be highly improbable. It remains a fact, though, that microscopically, no direction of time is distinguished, whereas macroscopically one is (try to unburn the paper, like Aldeth said).

This was ****ing boring, but necessary.

Now, Nakia has repeatedly been asking why we would prefer a non-sentient, nameless First Cause (or even causelessness) over a super-natural Creator or Unmoved Mover or some such. Which is an excellent question, I might add. Only that I would have voiced it completely reversed. “We don’t know” is exactly the gist of the question regarding the First Cause and frankly, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t leave it at that. Any step beyond only leads us to more instead of less questions.

• Is the Creator benign or full of malice?
• Is he YHWH, Allah, Vishnu or Marduk?
• Does he allow red wine with fish?
• Is Saturday his holy day or Sunday?
• Does he look kindly upon homosexuality or not?

You get the idea. Any system derived from the assumption of a sentient First Cause is so completely arbitrary and off base that I can’t think of any reason to prefer one to another.

 

That's a better explanation of entropy than I could have given, and I've actually learned a little from it. Thank you, Darkthrone, excelently done.

As for the other question, we leave it at 'First Cause' because, like the workings of entropy, we like to have the most options open to us. 'First Cause' may refer to anything, be it a natural event, a 'living but non-sentient' being, or a divine and living God, or anything inbetween. If we start defining it further than that, i.e. God, we loose options without having 'sufficient evidence'. We can say that there probably was some kind of 'first cause' becuase there are a number of features in the universe that are increasing, such as entropy and volume. If the universe alwalys had been, then these things would have had to 'start' at negative infinity, and you can't have negative either.

So some kind of 'First Cause' is fairly well supported by the facts presented so far, but not absolutely (stay scientific, now). Anything more specific than that, though, is out of our scientific reach.