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 its white caps. Any change in the passage of time increases that immeasurable amount but it’s still immeasurable. That’s how disorder is. But it is only the amount of increase that matters; it ineluctably increases without limit, driving systems to equilibrium by thermalization, and when they get there disorder continues to increase through the irreversible transfer of energy from higher energy components of a system to lower energy components. It’s the inevitable graduated income tax of reality. Sure, there will always be higher and lower energy particles in an ensemble of moving particles — a lower relative energy particle heading in one direction will be a higher energy particle relative to one with the same speed coming from the other. The total energy of the ensemble in its equilibrium state will not change although where each component resides in the Maxwell-Boltzmann equilibrium distribution is always changing. The distribution does not change, but lower and higher energy positions of particles within that distribution are always changing places. The microscopic states of an adiabatically enclosed system above absolute zero temperature are always changing whether the system is in equilibrium or not. But when the system has reached equilibrium and hops from one microscopic state to another, there will no longer be any change in the macroscopic state. MC Escher’s stair climbers will have reached the apex and still they will keep climbing — even without further ascent — the drudgery of an ordered reality.
And order? It’s nothing more than the status quo of having reached, and continuing at, such an apex.
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