Whoever we quote with however many credentials to clarify our conception of entropy, we get basically the same adage – order into chaos. And it’s true, but it leaves the basic questions unanswered. What exactly is ‘order,’ and for that matter, what is ‘disorder?’
Don’t concentrate on the amount of disorder; it is immeasurable like the ocean beneath the white caps. Any change in the passage of time increases that immeasurable amount. It is only the increase that matters; it ineluctably increases without limit, driving systems to equilibrium by thermalization and when they get there it continues to increase through irreversible exchanges from higher energy components to lower energy components. The total energy of the system in its equilibrium state will not change although where each component resides in the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution is always changing. The microscopic state of an adiabatically enclosed system is ever changing whether it is in equilibrium or not. When the system has reached equilibrium and hops from one microscopic state to another, there will be no macroscopic change at all.
And order? It’s nothing more than the status quo.
Leave a Reply