Order from Chaos
Those of a more religious bent, are often prone to use the "unseen Watchmaker" argument to argue in favor of there being an invisible intelligence that created the world. They use the analogy of finding a watch in the forest, and argue that it could not just have "evolved", but that there must be an "invisible watchmaker" (GOD?) that created this marvel.
Then of course, they say the human body is far more complex than a watch, and that obviously, something this wondrous and complex, also would demand the existence of an "invisible watchmaker" to explain the creation of something this intricate.
This of course begs the introduction of natural phenomena that has been studied by scientists, in which an apparent higher "order" comes spontaneously from chaotic movement.
One such spontaneous order from chaos is from a " Benard cell ". For more on this, we can look at a web site.
"The Benard cell
The "Benard instabilty" is another striking example of the instability of a stationary state giving rise to the phenomena of spontaneous self-organisation. The instability is due to a vertical temperatire gradient set up in a horizontal liquid layer. The Benard instabilty is a spectacular phenomenom. The convection motion produced actually consists of the complex spatial organisation of the system. Millions of molecules move coherently, forming hexagonal convention cells of characteristic size.
Dissipative Structures
In far from equilbrium conditions, the concept of probability that underlies Boltzmann's order principle is no longer valid in that the structures we observe do not correspond to a maximum number of complexions. Neither can they be related to a minum of the free energy F = E - TS. The tendency towards levelling out and forgetting initial conditions is no longer a general property. In this context, the age-old problem of the origin of life appears in a different perspective. It is certainly tru that life is incompatible with Boltzmann's order principal but not with the kind of behaviour that can occur in far-from-equilbrium conditions.
Classical thermodynamics leads to the concept of "equilibrium structures" such as crystals. Benard cells are structures too, but of a quite different nature. That is why we have introduced the notion of "dissipative structures", to emphasise the close association, at first paradoxical, in such situations between structure and order on the one side, and dissipation or waste on the other. Heat transfer was consdered a source of waste in classical thermodynamics. In the Benard cell it becomes a source of order.
The interaction of a system with the outside world, its embedding in nonequilibrium conditions, may become in this way the starting point for the formation of new dynamic states of matter - dissipative structures. Dissipative structures actually correspond to a form of supramolecular organisation."
Here is another site dealing with such a phenomenon.
http://www.mpi-dortmund.mpg.de/departments/swo/markus/hp1.php3
" OSCILLATING REACTIONS AND CHEMICAL WAVES
We have investigated periodic and turbulent waves in excitable media and, in particular, in the Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction. We found that turbulence can be induced by high light intesity or low catalyst concentrations (in the Ru-catalyzed reaction) by oxygen, or by methanol.
The different spatiotemporal modes were analyzed by correlation analysis of video images, and they were simulated both by cellular automata (CA) and by partial differential equations. The figure below shows CA-simulations of three-dimensional waves.
There exist conditions for which a short light pulse can cause splitting into a forwards and a backwards running wave. If this is done with a spiral wave, the two resulting spirals annihilate each other.
Due to the formal analogy (analogous form of differential equations) between the BZ reaction and heart muscle, BZ-turbulence is comparable to the fatal heart fibrillation. Moreover, considering that light in the BZ-reaction corresponds to electrical current in the heart, the annihilation of spirals points to a method of controlling heart tachycardia. Formerly, we investigated the physiological clock (of yeast) due to oscillating enzymatic breakdown of sugar. Considering the coupling to membrane transport, one obtains, under certain conditions, chaotic biorhythms.
Examples of 3D waves in an excitable medium (simulations)
"
The Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction is indeed an interesting and well studied example of this "order out of chaos" phenomenon. Here is an interesting page on it. http://online.redwoods.cc.ca.us/instruct/darnold/deproj/Sp98/Gabe/
Here is a mathematical explanation of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction.
http://www.cheng.cam.ac.uk/~mkraft/pages/teaching/CETIIB-StoMo/WebModule/bz/node7.html
"
Algorithm for the Belousov-Zhabotinsky system
(1)
Initialize variables , , , for and .
(2)
Calculate
where .
(3)
Generate
waiting time
reaction index
(4)
Perform reaction
(5)
Update time:
(6)
If then goto (2). "
And, here is yet another page on this fascinating reaction
http://www.ux.his.no/~ruoff/BZ_Phenomenology.html
Ways how the BZ Reaction is Studied:
Chemical Wave Propagation
Study of the BZ reaction in a thin unstirred layer of reacting solution, where concentric waves ("target patterns") or spiral waves are developed. This system is almost exclusively studied with ferroin and malonic acid as substrates. Note that chloride ions have to be avoided because they may act as inhibitors. The reacting solution is normally spread out as a thin film with a few millimeters thickness in a petri dish (diameter ca. 10 cm). After a certain time blue oxidation fronts which propagate on the red background (reduced ferroin) develop.
From left to right: Propagating oxidation waves in an unstirred layer of the ferroin-malonic acid BZ reaction. When the wave is broken at a certain point (for example by a gentle airflow through a pipette) a pair of spiral waves develop at this point.