The second law of thermodynamics

Outpacing the second law

In our probabilistic universe, anything that can happen will happen, sooner or later. Unconstrained over vast lengths of time, however, the laws of physics and chemistry tend toward whatever results are most probable. And what is most probable is degeneration, not sustained self-regenerative organization.

Except for the special physical condition we call life, degeneration is the nearly inevitable result of physical change. Sorted things become unsorted, segregated things become desegregated, organized things become disoragnized, concentrations become diluted and dissipate.

This tendency toward disorder was first discovered with respect to heat. Concentrated heat dissipates into its surroundings, a tendency called the second law of thermodynamics.

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The second law isn't a force. Nothing and no one enforces it. The second law is a consequence of the absence of constraint, the lack of a force or enforcement, nothing and no one constraining what happens. It is simply a description of what tends to happen when there is no force, constraint, or other influence to prevent irregularity.

The second law tendency applies to all kinds of energetic processes. Pressure equalizes, batteries discharge, radioactivity decays; beyond energy, it applies to everything that can change. Even rocks degrade. Their molecules dissipate slowly as crystalline bonds break.

Here I'll generalize the second law beyond its energetics applications. I'll refer to the general tendency toward irregularity or mixed-upness as the second law. ...

Scientists agree that the second law is as fundamental as physical laws get. The mystery of purpose is that second law irregularity is the opposite of what we see in selves. Your body is no random molecular coin toss. Tossed by continuous dynamic throughput [of matter and energy], your body somehow remains highly regularized.

Self-regeneration outpaces the second law such that selves not only survive but also reproduce, proliferating populations of selves from a single ancestor, here, and quite likely in innumerable places in the universe, wherever selves has emerged.

When selves lose their capacity to self-regenerate they die, though not necessarily before passing on to offspring their self-regenerative capacity to work against, and outpace, the second law. Self-regeneration is a capacity to locally defy the second-law, temporarily in each individual self, and sustainably over the history of life. ...

While deline and slackening are inescapable and intrinsic to all systems, there is no reason either to deny or unnecessarily accelerate entropy through cultural, economic, or bodliy ways of being. The task is to see these fissures not only as collapses but also as fertile settings for new ways of acting, thinking, and being. Ultimately, universal heat death does not concern humanity given the scope of time in which it will happen. However, time's irreversible arrow does, and although it cannot be reversed, it can certainly be lived otherwise. Facing entropy directly can lead to a different kind of discovery: finding ways to endure and creatively reimagine social and individual practices that reconfigure instead of hasten the decline. Humanity can choose to accept destruction as essential to life and thus embrace it by refusing ignorance, exploitation, and environmental ruin. In brief, we can turn with reverence and care to the preciousness, fleetingness, and beauty of finitude.