Sir, - Dominique Tassot (July 18th), attempts to reopen the evolution vs. creationism debate.
As with all creationists, his arguments are so full of holes that I suspect that any knowledgeable leaving Certificate science student, or university student, could easily point them out. Since space is at a premium, I shall just point out one of his errors, regarding evolution and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Simply put, the Second Law states that in a closed system, "useful" energy becomes gradually converted over time to energy that is unavailable for use. This is sometimes stated as "the entropy (disorder) of the system increases".
The physicists, Lieb and Yngvason, whom Dr Tassot cites, are quite correct when they state that no exception to the Second Law has ever been found. Creationists interpret this to mean that complex living systems could not have evolved from simpler forms because of this notion of ever-increasing disorder.
Ilya Prigogine, who won the Nobel Prize in 1977 for his work on the thermodynamics of nonequilibrium systems, wrote an article in 1972 explaining how nonequilibrium thermodynamics solves (one aspect of) the puzzle of how life evolves (Thermodynamics of Evolution. Physics Today. pp. 23-28, November; pp. 34-44, December 1972).
Basically, Prigogine emphasised that living things are open systems and are far from a state of equilibrium. They acquire energy from the sun and can locally decrease entropy and increase their order and complexity without a violation of the Second Law.
Obviously, if you take some living thing, and seal it in a closed box, then it will cease to live, never mind evolve.
As for actually seeing evolution happen, there was an article in this newspaper, Cork institute on trail of drug-resistant bacteria (July 12th). Evolution right before our eyes! - Yours, etc.,
Alan Rogers, Department of Electronic Engineering NUI Maynooth, Co. Kildare.