"An unexamined Life is not worth Living"
-Socrates
Why are planets round?
Why are bubbles round?
Why are there patterns in nature that repeat themselves throughout the cosmos?
In searching for answers to these questions I have formulated my own philosophy. It's based off of observations of my own and observations of others that have come before me. My philosophy is my religion and Entropy is my god. In the next few minutes I'll try and quickly explain this abstract theory.
Entropy
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics: The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will increase towards a maximum value of equilibrium. Entropy is an abstract term that explains the universal phenomenon of irreversibility in a closed system.
Imagine you have a cup of tea sitting on a desk. As you wait, the tea will cool down and eventually reach the temperature of the room. The tea and the air surrounding it will have reached equilibrium. This is important, equilibrium is standstill. No further action can occur. The tea and the room have reached their simplest terms under the given conditions. You may be able to heat the tea back up, but this requires work which pulls the energy from somewhere else. It’s a lose-lose situation.
The fact that the tea is in the mug may also be explained entropically. The fluid tea has assumed its simplest structure under the given conditions, the conditions being the ceramic mug. If you were to break the mug the fluid would again find it's simplest structure and spill down onto the floor.
Entropy will increase until the maximum value of equilibrium has been reached. Entropy explains why you are here, right now, reading this paper. Under the given conditions, could you be doing anything else?
Material Evolution
The universe began with the big bang “the ultimate free lunch” Everything in the universe now came out of this bang and is still hurtling away from the origin. Immediately after the big bang “banged” materials started fusing together to create new particles that fused together again to create even more new particles. Very soon atoms formed and Hydrogen and Helium evolved into even more complex elements: Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon. All this matter production was the result of the system assuming a simpler structure based on the conditions involved. This is material evolution through equilibrium and simplification.
Eventually things started to level out, entropy reached ever heightening levels and energy was more broadly spread out. Things became not so disruptive. Planets formed, the earth was created. At first it was a bubbling ball of lava but things settled, the planet cooled, water and land divided and the environment became tranquil enough for conditions conducive for life.
Darwin was right. We did evolve. Simplest structures won the fight. Space dust to planets to bacteria to Humans, each of us have been adapted to fit our constraints. But we Humans changed everything. Our ability to think abstractly allowed us to see patterns in nature. We were able to deconstruct our complex environment and reconstruct it into a system that would work for us. Everything that we touch, or use, or see, or buy, has been deconstructed and synthesized from natural materials . Realizing that our environment was a sum of smaller parts that we could mold to our will, technology took hold and we made our way through the stone age, the bronze age, the iron age, eventually into the present: the silicon age. Each age could not have existed without the previous. We started by smashing birds with blunt rocks and now we can split the atom. Again, an evolution of material.
Planet Earth and all of us living on top of this small blue orb are one of the fastest changing systems in the universe. We are moving evolutionally at an ever quickening pace. Each age that humanity has passed through has been shorter than the one before it. However the material systems we create can'’t even begin to reach the level of complexity that makes us who we are. We are each of us individually the most complex material in the universe. Matter that is self aware. There’s nothing like it except you and me.
The Ultimate Fade Out
The Entropy of a system can only increase. Eventually all energy will be equally distributed around the universe and when entropy is at a total, no further action can occur.
Life is action. When no further action can occur life will end.
The cold remnants of dead stars and stray planets will spread out indefinitely until they are eaten by massive black holes that will later decay into enormous sub-atomic particles spinning around an axis larger than the current universe, spinning silently through the void. Even these super-atoms will decay and the universe, the void that was once filled with life, will be empty once again.
Why go on?
So what do I do know? How can I live life knowing that in the end all human accomplishments will mean nothing. I think of this and I feel ill as the weight of such a nothing crushes down on my feeble material mind. But “nothing” is an interesting idea. For something to mean nothing, for it to truly be without any meaning, that absence is itself something.
Work Cited
- Arnheim, Rudolf. Entropy and Art. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971. Print.
- Alfred Whitehead. Process and Reality. Hw Wilson Co, 1978. Print.
- "Entropy Intuition." YouTube. Web. 26 Jan 2010.
- "Entropy as Time's Arrow." HyperPhysics Concepts. Georgia State University, Web. 26 Jan 2010. <http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/therm/entrop.html>.
- Solloman, Robert. Introducing Philosophy. 7th ed. Oxford University Press, 2007. Print.
