[Bob Enyart]

Silly?

Dan Styer said it would be silly for him to have clarified that he wasn't speaking about information entropy, or a dozen other kinds of entropy he mentions. However the entropy confusion that has most plagued the evolution debate is between information and heat; and Styer's AJP paper takes Henry Morris to task, and Morris is partly responsible for the decades of confusion within the debate.

Originally Posted by Dan Styer

I want to present some of the other meanings of the word "entropy", to emphasize that it would have been silly to say that I'm not talking about each of them: information entropy, topological entropy, [etc.]

But Prof. Styer, this particular confusion is rampant.

Originally Posted by ThePhy

Enyart has shown that the confusion over entropy exists in both the evolutionist community and the Creationist community.

ThePhy quotes physicist Frank Lambert: "There is no more widespread error in chemistry and physics texts than the identification of a thermodynamic entropy increase with a change in the pattern of a group of macro objects." To which the Phy adds, "Lambert goes on to say that whatever information change may be in such rearrangements, it is not a change in thermodynamic entropy."

Originally Posted by chair

Bob Enyart is being very unreasonable… To expect [Styer] to unravel decades of confusion amongst creationists (or 'evolutionists'…)

And:

Originally Posted by ThePhy

I absolutely concur [with Stout and Enyart?] that such clarification is to be commended.

Agreed Phy! And in this One on One there are other examples of the specific confusion between information and heat entropy. I assume that Professor Styer agrees that such clarification should be commended.

Colorful

Certainly TOL benefits from having a colorful physicist like ThePhy on the boards (Phy football analogy; Phy boxing analogy). When Prof. Styer started posting, ThePhy wrote (and I must admit, he cracked me up):

Originally Posted by ThePhy

Dan - fair warning. I think you have stepped in it now.

One thing Reverend Enyart delights in is getting scientists with name recognition to respond to him.

To which the professor cheerfully (and humbly) replied:

Originally Posted by Dan Styer

Well I'm safe, then, because I have no name recognition!

To which ThePhy replied:

Originally Posted by ThePhy

Perhaps before, but not now. Whether you like it or not, in authoring your seminal paper you have joined the ranks of a small cadre of very influential scientists in the Creationism – evolution debate. You paper is generating a lot of attention in many forums like this. It has passed out of your hands now.

-Bob Enyart
KGOV.com