A synopsis of the Moriarty-Thims debate. Top: 2009 video stills of Irish physicist Philip Moriarty: “we can think about the students who are milling about here and filling out this state quite well as a high entropy state” (Left); and “then we can think about bringing them into what we term a low entropy state (Right), where we pack them all nicely together, nicely ordered in the center of this lovely green.” Bottom: A 2012 depiction of the supermolecule adenylate kinase (adk) in the open (high-entropy state) and closed (low-entropy state) configurations. [1] The top description, according to Moriarty, is pure analogy, whereas the bottom is reality. Libb Thims argues the pro position, namely that the entropy of ADK exists just as it does for the entropy of a folded aggregate of students in a group, no analogy.

“Where did Gibbs say that ‘a society is one such material system’? He didn’t – that is Thims particular (incorrect) reading of the application of thermodynamics. When I talk about the 'entropy' of the students, it's **really** important to note that this is just an analogy. Entropy and the second law of thermodynamics are very abused concepts. An arrangement of the students *does not* have an associated thermodynamic entropy. Thims has taken the abuse of the term entropy to an entirely new level, however, by suggesting that it—and, unbelievably, quantum mechanics—can be applied to 'interactions' in romantic human relationships.”

— Philip Moriarty (2009), atheist thermal physics professor; his gist view of entropy (against Thims); compare: Gibbs' friend Joseph Klein's 1910 proof, via Planck, Boltzmann, and Clausius, that entropy applies to all "bodies" in the universe, whether gas, liquid, solid, or student body

Moriarty's view: “you cannot say that a particular arrangement of students has a thermodynamic entropy.”

Thims' view: “you can say that a particular arrangement of students has a thermodynamic entropy.”

“I looked at the Moriarty-Thims debate. My god: what a Babylonian cacophony! And so much innuendo! Is that the level of communication at which we have arrived? I dare say that, instead of Yes/No boxes at the end of the comments, there should be an injunction to sleep at least one night over a response. And good old Muschik—with the talent for obfuscation—predictably is putting his oar in. But yes, of course one may define an entropy for a group of students ‘in the field’ as well as for a battalion of marching soldiers. And for an anchor chain, and a polymer chain. And for a protein molecule and the human genome. The question is, however, what to do with such entropies and what predictions are possible—at this time—by the use of the concepts.”

— Ingo Muller (2009), “Email to Libb Thims”, 4:40AM CST Sep 9

	Debater	Thermodynamics background
1.	Libb Thims (Sadi-Carnot) (c.1975-) American chemical engineer, electrical engineer, and thermodynamicist	Founding editor of the Journal of Human Thermodynamics, authored the first textbook chapter on human thermodynamics (Human Chemistry, ch. 16), author of the 1,600+ article Encyclopedia of Human Thermodynamics, world's largest thermodynamics book collection (300+).
2.	Philip Moriarty (c.1965-) English thermal physicist and nanoscientist	Professor of thermal physics for six years.
3.	Wolfgang Muschik (ThermoSyst) (c.1936-) German physicist and thermodynamics professor	Senior editor of the Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics.
4.	Robert Kenoun (Wrk003) (1950-) Iranian-born American materials scientist and electrical engineer	Author of the 2006 social internal energy minimization theory book A Proposition to Theory of History and Social Evolution.
5.	Peter Pogany (Telosx) (c.1939-) Hungarian-born American economist	Author of the 2006 book Rethinking the World, which includes a chapter on the thermodynamics of cultural evolution.
6.	Bruce Bathurst (Petrologist) (c.1945-) American geological thermodynamicist	Completed PhD in geological thermodynamics at Princeton.
7.	Lynn Liss (LynnLiss) (c.1977-) American consultant and business executive	Noted for her 2005 JHT article on thermodynamics and business efficiency.
8.	Ingo Muller (Ingo.Mueller) (1937-) German physicist and thermodynamics professor	Author of the 2007 A History of Thermodynamics, the 2005 textbook Entropy and Energy: A Universal Competition, and for his 2002 articles on socio-thermodynamics theory.
9.	John Schmitz (Waldnoces) (c.1950-) Danish chemist	Author of the 2007 book The Second Law of Life and noted for his human entropy diagrams.
10.	Jing Chen (JingChen) (c.1965-) Chinese-born Canadian thermodynamic economist	Author of the 2005 book The Physical Foundation of Economics: an Analytical Thermodynamic Theory.
11.	Frank Lambert (1918-) American organic chemist and humanities thermodynamics professor	Noted for numerous second law themed websites, e.g. SecondLaw.com, 2ndLaw.com, Shakespeare2ndLaw.com, EntropySimple.com, EntropySite.com, etc., for his 1969 thermodynamic theories of evil; for teaching "baby thermo" class to humanities undergraduates for several decades, and for his efforts to reform the standard American textbook chemistry definition of entropy from disorder to dispersion (supposedly getting 25 authors to make the change).
12.	Aaron Agassi (AaronAgassi) (c.1970-) American philosopher	A skeptic to the idea of human thermodynamics.
13.	Ted Erikson (SdogV) (c.1928-) American chemical engineer and physics professor	Competed his MS in “Steady-State Thermodynamics” under American physical chemist Ralph Tykodi, at the at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
14.	Andrew Morrow (AWMorrow) (1961-) American chemical engineer	Noted for his 2006 philosophy people are “mosaics of atoms with a mind”, whereby, aware of this reality, one should attempt to see reality from the viewpoint of reactions of one’s fellow human beings to oneself, so to see if further insight can be found.

"Concepts of entropy [only] apply to gas molecules; you cannot say that a particular arrangement of students has a thermodynamic entropy.”

G = U + PV – TS

U = T + J

“Chemists, physicists, and engineers will recognize the construction and interpretation of the strategy diagram from metallurgy or alloys or physico-chemistry of solutions where phase diagrams are constructed … total segregation of the constituents occurs in those fields as the phenomenon of unmixing, like the fat globules float on watery soup. Such analogies emphasize the point of view that physical or sociobiological elements are atoms and molecules or birds and maybe men. And yet the forgoing is not socio-thermodynamics. While it seems plausible that birds strive for maximum gain, a principle like that is begging the question. What we are missing so far are the analogues in sociobiology to the first and second laws of thermodynamics.”

(a) Some elementary high school physics which does not begin to address the question I posed;

(b) evasion and/or obfuscation;

(c) Recourse to authority - citing wikipedia entries and/or textbooks, instead of addressing the question directly;

or (d) abuse directed either at me or others.

“If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”

(i) If humans can be described by wave mechanics then why do we not diffract when we go through obstacles (such as doorways)? Why do two humans not interfere constructively/destructively when they interact with each other? Why can we not see interference patterns for humans (just as we do for electrons of photons in the double slit experiment)?

(ii) Where is your evidence for these quantum mechanical wavefunctions? Can you plot out a probability density function for a human?

(iii) Do you understand the most fundamental quantum mechanical relations? What is the relationship between wavelength, momentum, and Planck's constant? Why do we not see quantum mechanical effects at the macroscopic level?

Your [Thims’] laughable central premise is as follows: "Well, a human is made of lots of atoms. Therefore a human is just a big molecule [see: Eadon poll]. Big molecules will behave just like small molecules. Therefore I can apply all thermodynamic principles to human "molecules" [see: human molecule]".

"To cite a differing opinion, the second person to comment in on this thread, Wolfgang Muschik (a physicist), professor of thermodynamics and statistical physics at the Technical University of Berlin, states that: “yes, you can: If you have a certain defined distribution function related to these students, you can define an entropy. So who is correct Muschik or Moriarty? Can we or can we not define an entropy for a system of people?"

"Thims gathers ever more sociological observations that can be correlated by whatever strained metaphors to thermodynamics, but has yet to make predictions, testable hypotheses with standards of refutation".

“The essential submission is the assertion that development is due, not to human effort, but to the automatic effect of certain external circumstances or events. It comes about in the manner in which a flame is produced when a match is struck against the side of the box. Surely, there are few who would accept this theory of culture-growth as realistic. But then the whole idea of ‘social heat’ is no more than a downright absurdity.” — Werner Stark (1962), on Henry Carey’s 1858 “extreme” sociology (see: Stark classification)

A comparison of Moriarty (C#79) to Werner Stark (1962) in mindset against the 1850s social heat theories of Henry Carey.

— — — — — —

"One reason for disagreement is indeed misunderstanding from ignorance, but that isn't the only possible motivation. Perhaps it is Thims who needs to pose question in order to understand his opponent, before then attempting more pertinent rebuttal....That, at least, might be fruitful for poetry, and ever truly to glean human insight."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLey7TTGXTw&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fytJ0ZsbIoQ&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKS3-npxgls&feature=channel_page

A 2015 synopsis of a “right” and “wrong” social Coriolis effect (C#80) based example, from slides #57-58 (Ѻ) of lecture #12 (Ѻ), from Thims’ “Zerotheism for Kids”. [N1]

— — — — — —

1. Traditional religions & traditional science must be in conflict.

2. Objective (shared) and subjective (personal) observations are treated the same.

3. The scientific use of the word 'true', which scientists strive to replace with 'false', is treated the same as the 'true' used by philosophers.

4. Hypotheses are judged by examining their explanations, not their predictions.

5. Religion and art are not viewed as important irrational activities of the mind: faith is treated as logical and thus blurred with scientific belief. Irrational thought is viewed as inferior to rational thought.

'The prediction of results, even of the same kind as those which have been observed, in new cases, is a proof of real success in our inductive processes.'

' ... The popularization of this statement and others like it have led to the wide-spread belief, for many, that the laws of thermodynamics are in conflict with evolution. This, however, is not the case.

'The difficulty in clarifying the contradiction, to the appeasement of all naysayers, is, in particular, that the science of “human chemical thermodynamics” is a future branch of knowledge. The conception that a human being is, in reality, a “molecule”, specifically, a human molecule, is a little understood or used concept in science.'