[quote]I also have a a beef with the entire concept of entropy in general, it states that entropy can increase in a closed system, which is physically impossible.
It's impossible to have a perfectly closed system other than the universe, and I dare you to give me a situation in which entropy can increase.
You're misunderstanding fundamental concepts. Entropy is a measure of how evenly energy is spread across a system.
In thermodynamics, a system is different from normal vocabulary. A
system is a a precisely defined area of space. The edge of this system is called a
boundary which may be physical or non-physical. Beyond that there are the
surroundings, which is everything outside of the boundary.
That said, I too have misused fundamental terms.
In an open system, energy and matter may flow freely in and out of the boundary.
In a closed system, no mass may be transferred in and out of the boundary; however, the transfer of heat and work can be exchanged across the boundary.
In an isolated system, no interaction across the boundary takes place.
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I was incorrect when I said, "In a closed system, entropy will always increase." Correctly, it should read, "In an isolated system, entropy will always increase."
You would be correct in saying that there exists no true isolated system except the Universe. To say that this is useless, allow me to quote Thomas Leland, Jr.:
Quote from The Basic Principles of Classical and Statistical Thermodynamics
Everyone realizes of course, that molecules are not actually inert rigid masses. The forces of attraction and repulsion which we ascribe to them are in reality the consequence of variations in the quantum states of a deformable electron cloud which fills practically all the space occupied by a molecule so that when we represent it as a rigid mass we are constructing a model which allows us to apply classical mechanics to relate its energy changes to changes in its microstate properties. For example, an effective model for a complex molecule is to regard it as a group of rigid spheres of various size and mass held together by flexible springs. The only justification for this model is that calculations of its energy, when properly averaged, give good agreement with values of energy per molecule obtained from experimental measurements using bulk quantities of the substance. Constructing models is important in all aspects of thermodynamics, not only for individual molecules, but also in describing the behavior of bulk matter.
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Since entropy can decrease in an open system, such as Earth, evolution can occur.
None.
Oh_Man
