“I intentionally chose the word Entropy as similar as possible to the word Energy…
Rudolf Clausius, 1867
The energy of the universe is constant; the entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.”
The question, “What is Entropy?” elicits a multitude of definitions and answers reflecting the beliefs, language and behaviour of almost every major school of thought in the Anglo-world. Most definitions emanate from formations of experts whose lifestyles are extremely delusional and unsustainable by any common measure.
All this confusion and conflict about the meaning of “entropy” is profound evidence supporting the hypothesis that when men (human beings) embrace fatally flawed notions of what energy is, then their lives unravel in division, delusion, depravity and dereliction.
This article suggests we can lessen the risk of this fate by enjoying compassion and ensuring we employ the most transcendent meanings of these words according to the wisdom of the Conservation of Energy Principle.
Observe the abundance of abstract mathematical formulations but no practical formulations such as images of exploded mineral oil blasting out the exhaust of a car or jet in the form of lethal pollution or of broken $2 switches rendering an expensive household device obsolete or of the Shuttle exploding after a small rubber o-ring failed.
Confounding Definitions of “Entropy”
Like me, many people soon feel overwhelmed and numbed when encountering the notion of “entropy”. Indeed our popular English dictionary definitions of “entropy” seem designed to bewilder us and make our brain hurt – especially if we even attempt to make good sense of them. For example:
“Entropy is a scientific concept, most commonly associated with states of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy#See_also
Entropy (noun)
“thermodynamics : a measure of the unavailable energy in a closed thermodynamic system that is also usually considered to be a measure of the system’s disorder, that is a property of the system’s state, and that varies directly with any reversible change in heat in the system and inversely with the temperature of the system broadly : the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/entropy
“Entropy, the measure of a system’s thermal energy per unit temperature that is unavailable for doing useful work. Because work is obtained from ordered molecular motion, the amount of entropy is also a measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system. The concept of entropy provides deep insight into the direction of spontaneous change for many everyday phenomena.”
https://www.britannica.com/science/entropy-physics
Words such as “disorder, randomness, uncertainty” have very different meaning for people depending on their life experiences.
One person’s notion of disorder is “mess” while it means “creativity” to another person.
One person’s notion of a “random incident” is an “accident waiting to happen” according to another person.
Every one experiences a unique balance of the ego and compassion in their psyche and this has a major impact on their sensation of “certainty”.
Perhaps the most potent words in these three common definitions of entropy are the words “energy” and “work”.
Most of us graduate from our Crown English education system able to quote by rote its definition of energy: “Energy is the capacity for doing work.”
Our Crown English accounting systems are founded in the belief that “Time is Money!” with work being valued according to the degree the activity maximizes short-term profits it delivers The Crown merchant bankers.
Such a psychopathic governance system is almost certainly an artifact of the ego, reflecting~~generating a culture lacking compassion.
Many of us soon learn to associate the word “work” with the daily exhaustion of our personal energy, time deprivation, a sense of meaninglessness and inequity – especially if you are a woman, child, elderly and give care freely to others. More reflections on this amoral social phenomenon at “What is Energy?”
We intuit “entropy” has something to do with this depleted state of being and for many years I have joked, “Well, my job involves reversing the daily entropy generated by about 200 children and a score of teachers so the school is inhabitable again by next morning”.
This is code for my being the school cleaner.
And a great many of us graduate from our Crown English education systems baffled and stupefied by the very sight and sound of the language of Mathematics. Spare yourself the impulse to lie down with a pillow over your head: this article briefly quotes two sample academic papers to illustrate how confounded the discourse about entropy is.
Sample One
Researchers in an Entropy Wonderland: A Review of the Entropy Concept
Marko Popovic
Key words: Thermal entropy; Shannon entropy; Residual entropy; Total entropy; Negentropy.
- Introduction
Entropy concept is frequently used in many scientific disciplines: physics [1-70], equilibrium and non-
equilibrium thermodynamics [1-25, 60-70], statistical mechanics [89,91,95], cosmology [50-59], life
sciences [42-46, 86], chemistry and biochemistry [60-67], geosciences [85], linguistics [84], social sciences [83], and information theory [41,69,74, 88].
Before we proceed to review the entropy concept, it should be stressed that the concept is often used, misused and even abused in the literature [30, 79-82, 108]. The widespread use of entropy in many disciplines lead to many contradictions and misconceptions involving entropy, [80,81].
Note : sincere thanks to Marko Popovic at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602. The Rudolf Clausius and von Neumann quotes are both sourced from this thoughtful paper.
“Whoever uses the term ‘entropy’ in a discussion always wins since no one knows what
John von Neumann (1903 – 1957) Polymath
entropy really is, so in a debate one always has the advantage”
Sample Two
by Joshua S Martin, N Adam Smith & Clinton D Francis in paper titled
Removing the entropy from the definition of entropy: clarifying the relationship between evolution, entropy, and the second law of thermodynamics
The abstract of their paper reads:
“Misinterpretations of entropy and conflation with additional misunderstandings of the second law of thermodynamics are ubiquitous among scientists and non-scientists alike and have been used by creationists as the basis of unfounded arguments against evolutionary theory. Entropy is not disorder or chaos or complexity or progress towards those states. Entropy is a metric, a measure of the number of different ways that a set of objects can be arranged. Herein, we review the history of the concept of entropy from its conception by Clausius in 1867 to its more recent application to macroevolutionary theory.”
LEGEND explaining cartoons
We are information beings, existing as dynamic balances of information and we live the following fundamental connundrum of our human condition:
We exist as unique, finite formations amidst the continuous, universal transformation, paradoxically informing all even as we are informed by all. And this continuous transformation (change) is a universal constant i.e. unchanging.
All forms are of energy; no form is energy.
Every man (human energy) is vitally sentient of energy; no man can truly know what energy is.
“Energy” and “power” are inextricably interconnected and understanding their complementary relationship is critical to our survival.
Energy being the universal potential, the most transcendent definition of the word “power” is this:
Power is our measure of the rate the universal is manifest.
We are our language and we live the paradox of information: our use of a symbol simultaneously reflects and generates our state of being.
We are sustained according the degree our use of a symbol is in harmony with the principles of physics – we perish if our actions (our language~~behaviour) are in denial of and dissonant with the ways of the universe