6 Entropy in Daily LifeĮntropy helps explain many of the mysteries and experiences of daily life. The only way to make things orderly again is to add energy. In the words of Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, “The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life because everything is pulling you to be more and more complex.”Įntropy will always increase on its own. Maintaining organization in the face of chaos is not easy. “The ultimate purpose of life, mind, and human striving: to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order.” -Steven Pinker We must exert effort to create useful types of order that are resilient enough to withstand the unrelenting pull of entropy. This insight-that disorder has a natural tendency to increase over time and that we can counteract that tendency by expending energy-reveals the core purpose of life. Successful teams require communication and collaboration. Successful houses require cleaning and maintenance. Successful relationships require care and attention. 4īut because the universe naturally slides toward disorder, you have to expend energy to create stability, structure, and simplicity. You can organize individuals into a cohesive team. You can pull the weeds out of your garden. You can fight back against the pull of entropy. Without Effort, Life Tends to Lose Orderīefore you get depressed, there is good news. In the long run, nothing escapes the Second Law of Thermodynamics. 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.” 3 If it is found to be contradicted by observation-well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. 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. The great British scientist Arthur Eddington claimed, “The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. “The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature.” -Arthur Eddington The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system will never decrease. It is one of the foundational concepts of chemistry and it is one of the fundamental laws of our universe. This is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The inevitable trend is that things become less organized. With enough time, even mountains erode and their precise edges become rounded. Left to its own devices, life will always become less structured. It is the natural tendency of things to lose order. Here's the crucial thing about entropy: it always increases over time. And there are always far more disorderly variations than orderly ones. These simple examples capture the essence of entropy. The odds are astronomically higher that sand will be scattered into a random clump. Meanwhile, there are a nearly infinite number of combinations that don't look like it.Īgain, in theory, it is possible for the wind and waves to move the sand around and create the shape of your sand castle. There is only one combination of sand particles that looks like your sand castle. Similarly, if you build a sand castle on the beach and return a few days later, it will no longer be there. Mathematically speaking, an orderly outcome is incredibly unlikely to happen at random. There is only one possible state where every piece is in order, but there are a nearly infinite number of states where the pieces are in disorder. Every piece would have to fall in just the right spot to create a completed puzzle. Quite simply, because the odds are overwhelmingly against it. In theory, it is possible for the pieces to fall perfectly into place and create a completed puzzle when you dump them out of the box. Imagine that you take a box of puzzle pieces and dump them out on a table. What is entropy? Here's a simple way to think about it: It is the one force that governs everybody's life: Entropy. It drives many of the problems we face and leads to disarray. This force is so fundamental to the way our world works that it permeates nearly every endeavor we pursue. Murphy's Law is just a common adage that people toss around in conversation, but it is related to one of the great forces of our universe. ![]() If anything, our lives become more complicated and gradually decline into disorder rather than remaining simple and structured. Life never seems to just work itself out for us. Problems seem to arise naturally on their own, while solutions always require our attention, energy, and effort. This pithy statement references the annoying tendency of life to cause trouble and make things difficult. ![]() ![]() Murphy's Law states, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |