On his post of 12 December 2008, Bob Enyart claims that
Styer was intending for his reader to guess the two creationist misconceptions. No. He intended to list them. But then forgot to. And the editors missed it also.
Bob certainly gives an incorrect impression here. I'll quote from my paper,
Entropy and Evolution:
[The above] argument rests upon two misconceptions about entropy:- Disorder is a metaphor for entropy, not a definition for entropy. ...
- Although the entropy of the universe increases with time, the entropy
of any part of the universe can decrease with time, ....
First of all, I never said that the misconceptions are creationist misconceptions. I have taught thermodynamics for almost 25 years, and I can testify that many people of various persuasions hold these misconceptions.
Second, in no way did I "forget" to list them. It's obvious that the two misconceptions were the two bullet points.
If I said
Cain had two parents:
would Bob say "Styer intended to list the parents of Cain, but then forgot to ... he just moved on to a random list of individuals"? I hope he would not. It's entirely clear that the intent is
Cain had two parents:- one parent was Adam
- the other parent was Eve.
Third, Bob owes an apology to the editors of the
American Journal of Physics.
AJP is the most carefully edited journal I have ever read, or written for. My manuscript was scrutinized by three editors of
AJP as well as two independent referees, and every one of them came up with useful suggestions for improvement. I acknowledge the contributions of the two referees in my paper. My manuscript acknowledged the editors, also, but as a point of policy the
AJP editors always excise any acknowledgment of themselves.
Since I can't say it in print within the
AJP, let me say it here: The
AJP editors Dr. John Mallinckrodt, Dr. Jan Tobochnik, and Dr. Harvey Gould all carefully read my paper
Entropy and Evolution and suggested improvements. I thank them for their selfless work on my paper and, in general, for their work promoting the understanding of science. Any remaining errors in the paper are, of course, my own responsibility.