The Second Law of Thermodynamics Applied to Processes A formal definition of the second law of thermodynamics is "In any closed

system, a process proceeds in a direction such that the unavailable energy (the entropy) increases." In other words, in any closed system, the amount of disorder always increases with time. Things progress naturally from order to disorder, or from an available energy state to one where energy is more unavailable. A good example: a hot cup of coffee cools off in an insulated room. The total amount energy in the room remains the same (which satisfies the first law of thermodynamics). Energy is not lost, it is simply transferred (in the form of heat) from the hot coffee to the cool air, warming up the air slightly. When the coffee is hot, there is available energy because of the temperature difference between the coffee and the air. As the coffee cools down, the available energy is slowly turned to unavailable energy. At last, when the coffee is room temperature, there is no temperature difference between the coffee and the air, i.e. the energy is all in an unavailable state. The closed system (consisting of the room and the coffee) has suffered what is technically called a "heat death." The system is "dead" because no further work can be done since there is no more available energy. The second law says that the reverse cannot happen! Room temperature coffee will not get hot all by itself, because this would require turning unavailable energy into available energy. Now consider the entire universe as one giant closed system. Stars are hot, just like the cup of coffee, and are cooling down, losing energy into space. The hot stars in cooler space represent a state of available energy, just like the hot coffee in the room. However, the second law of thermodynamics requires that this available energy is constantly changing to unavailable energy. In another analogy, the entire universe is winding down like a giant wind-up clock, ticking down and losing available energy. Since energy is continually changing from available to unavailable energy, someone had to give it available energy in the beginning! (I.e. someone had to wind up the clock of the universe at the beginning.) Who or what could have produced energy in an available state in the first place? Only someone or something not bound by the second law of thermodynamics. Only the creator of the second law of thermodynamics could violate the second law of thermodynamics, and create energy in a state of availability in the first place. As time goes forward (assuming things continue as they are), the available energy in the universe will eventually turn into unavailable energy. At this point, the universe will be said to have suffered a heat death, just like the coffee in the room. The present universe, as we know it, cannot last forever. Furthermore, imagine going backwards in time. Since the energy of the universe is constantly changing from a state of availability to one of less availability, the further back in time one goes, the more available the energy of the universe. Using the clock analogy again, the further back in time, the more wound up the clock. Far enough back in time, the clock was completely wound up. The universe therefore cannot be infinitely old. One can only conclude that the universe had a beginning, and that beginning had to have been caused by someone or something operating outside of the known laws of thermodynamics. Is this scientific proof for the existence of a Creator God? I think so. Evolutionary theories of the universe cannot counteract the above arguments for the existence of God. Evidence such as this helped to convince me to believe in God, and to accept His plan of

salvation through His son Jesus Christ. For further detailes about my conversion to Christianity, I have written a short testimony. Science has given humanity more than its share of letdowns. It has set limits to our technology, such as the impossibility of reaching the speed of light; failed to overcome our vulnerabilities to cancer and other diseases; and confronted us with inconvenient truths, as with global climate change. But of all the comedowns, the second law of thermodynamics might well be the biggest. It says we live in a universe that is becoming ever more disordered and that there is nothing we can do about it. The mere act of living contributes to the inexorable degeneration of the world. No matter how advanced our machines become, they can never completely avoid wasting some energy and running down. Not only does the second law squash the dream of a perpetual-motion machine, it suggests that the cosmos will eventually exhaust its available energy and nod off into an eternal stasis known as heat death. Ironically, the science of thermodynamics, of which the second law is only one part, dates to an era of technological optimism, the mid-19th century, when steam engines were transforming the world and physicists such as Rudolf Clausius, Nicolas Sadi Carnot, James Joule and Lord Kelvin developed a theory of energy and heat to understand how they work and what limited their efficiency. From these nitty-gritty beginnings, thermodynamics has become one of the most important branches of physics and engineering. It is a general theory of the collective properties of complex systems, not just steam engines but also bacterial colonies, computer memory, even black holes in the cosmos. In deep ways, all these systems behave the same. All are running down, in accordance with the second law. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics describes basic principles familiar in everyday life. It is partially a universal law of decay; the ultimate cause of why everything ultimately falls apart and disintegrates over time. Material things are not eternal. Everything appears to change eventually and chaos increases. Nothing stays as fresh as the day one buys it; clothing becomes faded, threadbare, and ultimately returns to dust. Everything ages and wears out. Even death is a manifestation of this law. The effects of the 2nd Law are all around, touching everything in the universe. Each year, vast sums are spent to counteract the relentless effects of this law (maintenance, painting, medical bills, etc.). Ultimately, everything in nature is obedient to its unchanging laws.

It is well known that, left to themselves, chemical compounds ultimately break apart into simpler materials; they do not ultimately become more complex. Outside forces can increase order for a time (through the expenditure of relatively large amounts of energy, and through the input of design). However, such reversal cannot last forever. Once the force is released, processes return to their natural direction - greater disorder. Their energy is transformed into lower levels of availability for further work. The natural tendency of complex, ordered arrangements and systems is to become simpler and more disorderly with time.

Technology with a Human Face

Today, the main content of politics is economics, and the main content of economics is technology. If politics cannot be left to experts, neither can economics and technology. Ponder on this a while, if you please. All he asks, is for you dear reader, to wonder and think that although technology has helped in many ways, yet the underlying factors of alleviation of poverty and unemployment have not been solved by technology at all. It is but a short lived illusory success. Instead of which people have often fallen back on traditional methods and knowledge. The tractor has helped handle large swathes of land, but has it helped feed the millions? Yes, we can blame the politics and economics of a rich country that has kept that surplus from reaching the starving people of a poor country. But technology has been a factor here that has created that surplus that really cannot be of help. In natural disasters or man made disasters, technology has not been able to either predict or even help save lives. It is the human hand that helps dig through and pull out people very often. Lets take medical machines that are supposedly created to help save lives. Whose lives do they save- only those who can afford, or those who really need it (a very small percentage)? Schumacher never says that technology in itself is bad. But, he urges us to utilize the scientific techniques, that helps us get to the truth of the matter and increase our knowledge, to focus on technology that does not lead to giantism, speed, or violence and destruction of human-work enjoyment. What he instead asks us is to recapture simplicity in all that we do so as to produce a selfbalancing system of nature. Ah yes, a small and beautiful thought that Schumacher gives us to think about is what he terms intermediate technologythan mass productions Schumacher again, The primary task of technology, it would seem, is to lighten the burden of work man has to carry in order to stay alive and develop his potential (the bold highlight is my action). And technology that lightens our production by the masses, rather

burden, would help give us better time to relax and do what we would like, increase our creativity, work things with our hands that give us joy. But now we have to pay someone else to help us communicate better, develop our creativity, and pay for our own happiness! This brings to mind the Vaccum Cleaner that adds more work than lessens it! Yes the Washing machine certainly lessens the work, but then again we go off to the gym to exercise our muscles paying a huge amount when it can be so easily dealt with by washing and scrubbing and rinsing! An image that has often come to my mind when people employ the cycle in a gym, that motion generates power, which can then be used to move gears in a tub to wash clothes ( in another room). What a novel idea and thus save electrical energy and lessen carbon footprints!

Technology and the Human Race The human race has indeed gone far with technology. From the age when he still used wooden and stone tools to a powerful era of silicon and steel, he ceased to be a helpless prey to a number of predators to become a god among beasts. And now, technology and human way of life have somewhat become inseparable. Everywhere we look, we see its manifestationsfrom the largest aircraft to the smallest microcomputer chip. Some even cannot do without their gadgets beside them. Technology has become a beast of burden of our timedoing things we usually do in the past, like an able servant at his masters side, ready to help him whenever need arises. Man created technology to serve this purpose, so that he can then face the more challenging problems ahead. But what if this technology, by all means, becomes uncontrollable by human hands? What if this beast of burden eventually becomes a monster? Could this same technology, which has brought us to a state of luxury and civilization, also lead us to our own ruin? From the evolution of military weapons, to the advent of the nuclear age, man is gradually realizing the fact that his little creation would someday take him to the very edges of his capacities. But despite all this, this fact still holds true: that however powerful it could become, technology is still just one of mans tools, and will remain as such. Its still up to is possessor on how he will apply the power he possesseswhether as a tool of progress, or an element of destruction. It may have brought people closer together, but not necessarily on friendly terms. It has brought us times of peace, as well as wars and struggles; it has brought us great prosperities, as well as dismal catastrophes. And now, the environment is being trampled, and people blame technology for it. Countless wars have sprung, they say technology is the culprit; animals are being led to extinction, and they say technology is the one accountable of all. Through technology, we have created and developed new beginnings, at the cost of many end. Yet, technology should never be blamed for all of this, but the wrong use of it.

The effect of technology on our surroundings is the complete reflection of our values. Therefore, we should develop the proper culture so as to effectively administer this technology that we have. We should prove to be worthy of its possession, for technology and corruption is a bad combination.

Abolition of Man

A Brief Summary of The Abolition of Man

I By regarding all value judgments as subjective, modern humans are faced with a choice between two evils. Either you hope that other people will still believe at least some value judgments to be objective; or you hope they will not. The first alternative must involve cynical propaganda. This may in practice be often rejected for moral reasons, although on the subjectivist assumption this comes from a confusion of thought. The second alternative means a debunking of all our sense of value. The resulting apathy is felt to be highly inconvenient, and found to be incurable. II The attempt to debunk traditional values is often based on a set of values which is considered to be new, but which in fact is a small selection from traditional morality. The innovator will be unable, in the end, to explain why that selection is retained while the rest is rejected. Thus on a closer view he will have confirmed the given nature of all moral principles and the need to reject either all or nothing of traditional morality. Modern people who admit this are then likely not to accept all but to reject all, since they believe that morality is human, humanity is nature, and nature is a thing to rule, not to be ruled by. III Mans conquest of Nature will be completed when human nature is conquered. Values will then be a thing for humans to produce and to modify at will, not a thing to be guided by. The only force left to motivate us will be the force of natural impulses. The conquest of nature will thus have ended in total surrender to nature. On the assumption of a perfect genetic science perfectly applied, we may expect this surrender to be for perpetuity. Our wish to see through the mainspring of specifically human

action is a magicians bargain: to see through all things is the same as not to see.

Logical positivism vs. natural law

Lewis begins with a critical response to The Green Book, by Gaius and Titius, pseudonyms for The Control of Language: A Critical Approach to Reading and Writing (1939) and its authors Alex King and [1] [2] Martin Ketley. The Green book was used as a text for upper form students in British schools. Lewis takes the authors to task for subverting student values. He claims that they teach that all statements of value (such as "this waterfall is sublime") are merely statements about the speaker's feelings and say nothing about the object. Lewis says that such a subjective view of values is faulty, and, on the contrary, certain objects and actions merit positive or negative reactions: that a waterfall can actually be objectively praiseworthy, and that one's actions can be objectively good or evil. In any case, Lewis notes, this is a philosophical position rather than a grammatical one, and so parents and teachers who give such books to their children and students are having them read the "work of amateur philosophers where they expected the work of professional grammarians." Lewis cites ancient thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle and Augustine, who believed that the purpose of education was to train children in "ordinate affections," that is, to train them to like and dislike what they ought; to love the good and hate the bad. He says that although these values are universal, they do not develop automatically or inevitably in children (and so are not "natural" in that sense of the word), but must be inculcated through education. Those who lack them lack the specifically human element, the trunk that unites intellectual man with visceral (animal) man, and may be called "men without chests". [edit]Men

without chests: a dystopian future

Lewis criticizes modern attempts to debunk "natural" values (such as those that would deny objective value to the waterfall) on rational grounds. He says that there is a set of objective values that have been shared, with minor differences, by every culture "... the traditional moralities of East and West, the Christian, the Pagan, and the Jew...". Lewis calls this the Tao (which closely [3] resembles Confucian and Taoist usage). Without the Tao, no value judgments can be made at all, and modern attempts to do away with some parts of traditional morality for some "rational" reason always proceed by arbitrarily selecting one part of the Tao and using it as grounds to debunk the others. The final chapter describes the ultimate consequences of this debunking: a distant future in which the values and morals of the majority are controlled by a small group who rule by a "perfect" understanding of psychology, and who in turn, being able to "see through" any system of morality that might induce them to act in a certain way, are ruled only by their own unreflected whims. In surrendering rational reflection on their own motivations, the controllers will no longer be recognizably human, the controlled will be robotlike, and the Abolition of Man will have been completed. An appendix to "The Abolition of Man" lists a number of basic values that Lewis saw as parts of the Tao, supported by quotations from different cultures. A fictional treatment of the dystopian project to carry out the Abolition of Man is a theme of Lewis's novel That Hideous Strength.

Passages from The Abolition of Man are included in William Bennet's The Book of Virtues which could be said to be a compilation of examples of Lewis's "Tao" system of values or natural law.

The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis

Published August 13, 2010

Im a big fan of Lewis, but after reading The Abolition of Man, I think I have nally gured out his problem. Lewis always casts too wide a net. He is so knowledgeable, and has debated the issues with so many people of vastly differing opinions, that he tries to counter every argument, predict every objection, and wrap it all up by the end of each chapter. He enters the parking lot and circles every light post before exiting. When compared with the notes he must have had while writing, it probably made perfect sense, but for those of us who are deprived of his notes, never had the conversations he had nor heard the counter arguments he had, we get a bit lost. His general gist was that Traditional Morality (which he calls the Tao) is a universal Law of reality that demands no proof, evidence or reason. He calls it one of those things that just is, like common sense, and it is such a rm-rooted law that every society on earth, regardless of its religion or culture, has recognized it (he then gives examples of cultures recognizing the Tao from ancient Egyptian to Christian, Babylonian to African, which is very handy). He gs on to argue that no one can debunk the Tao because in order to have a defensible position against it, one must actually invoke it (for example, my argument is against the Tao and my argument is true, presupposing that Truth is gooda traditional moral found only in the Tao). The Abolition of Man comes in when one tries to excise the Tao from humanity, because one nds that man can not be man without itit is a dening characteristic of man, found in no animals, and nowhere else in the universe that we know. To become a race that rejects the Tao is to become something other than human. I really respect Lewis argument and I think he is, of course, correct. Im just sad that he packaged such a great message in a book that was originally written as a series of three lectures, read to an audience that was trained to read ancient Greek and Latin, and therefore he makes many presupposition about his audiences reading, education and the things they take for granted. This produces a book that is hard for the layman to apprehend.

Anyways, it was good but reading a synopsis of the book would work for most people.