Of Thermodynamics, Complexity, Closed Systems & Equilibrium

In light of this recent post, I've been thinking more and more again on this topic.  And when Adam Kossloff liberally quoted from Entropy Production's author Robert McCleod's rebuttal to rebuttal or whatever in the Taubes/Bray dust-up, I just had to weigh in on this.  

Let me preface this by saying that I have a bit of a unique perspective on this issue having learned and applied thermodynamics in the context of several disciplines,  from both a scientific and engineering perspective.  I've worked in a number of fields and interacted with many who have only been exposed to these concepts in one context or the other.  Now what I'm about to say is obviously a generalization,  so keep in mind I'm not saying "all", just in general.  But one thing I've noticed is that engineers and physicists tend to not really "get" chemistry, or worse, biology, because they are used to things being cut and dry.  I've heard some certifiable geniuses in engineering disciplines make some extremely ... well ... stupid comments about something biological.  For the physicist, drop a ball off a cliff and pretty much we can figure the time it will take to reach the bottom, its velocity at impact and all that.  But one can mix A & B in a test tube, and almost inevitably the resulting amount of C that might be produced differs from predictions.  It is almost a given that one will be asked to provide possible explanations for the differences between predicted and observed values when writing up a lab report.  Throw in something living, like bacteria in a petri dish, and it only gets worse.  So the physicists and engineers tend to resort to the "it's all too complicated to explain" refrain because there are just so many other factors at play that we can't possibly seek to understand or explain.

The same happens to biologists and chemists looking the other direction.  Truth is, in most undergraduate programs, the bio majors (or softer life science related fields) and many chem majors take a different physics class, one that is not calculus based, and may not even be required to take a course in differential equations or even calculus.  The equation at the top of McLeod's blog looks daunting, as do many of the discussions of Hall & Chow.  So one can feasibly be a bio/chem/biochem whiz and still that thermo equation might as well be written in Chinese.  So that equation looks foreign so geez ... how can we ever seek to understand something so complicated?   It's a form of intellectual bullying IMO.  Make something so complicated that it can't possibly be understood and you can baffle with bullshit all day long.

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