ENTROPY Stu,—Although Mr. Pease is right in saying that the
exceedingly interesting subject of Entropy is difficult to deal with in words, there is a good deal to be said for Mr. W. J. Turner's view that it can be made more intelligible than it usually is. Suppose you were watching a film of children playing about in an obviously haphazard way in a large room full of Victorian furniture with plenty of knick-knacks, and after a short time you found that as they tumbled aimlessly to and fro the room kept on getting tidier, what would you think? You would think that the film had beds put on backwards. Why? Because in the film the disorganisation of the room appeared to be getting less as time moved on, whereas you know that, without a directing intelligence, disorganisation, or messiness, always gets more as time moves on. Entropy may be roughly regarded as disorganisa- tion, and used as an indication as to which of two states of a system is the later in time, provided that no intelligent or living agency has interfered.
In the end part of Mr. Pease's very interesting and useful letter he seems to me to miss another important poiut. If we look forward in time we see the Entropy, or disorganisation, of the universe getting continually greater, and energy getting less and less available, except where intelligent or living agency interferes and the law does not run. But if we look back in time we see that the further we look the more organised the universe is. In the remote past the capital of the universe appears to have been invested in organisation, and, except in the very small parts of it such as the type-setting room of The Spectator, where organisation is being done by intelligent living agency and the Second Law of Thermodynamics does not run, the universe is living on its capital. Any living agency can also organise without being what we call intelligent.
How did the capital of the Universe ever come to be invested? The Second Law of Thermodynamics leads us back to a primal state of the Universe into which by the operation of that very law it couldn't possibly have got. .The primary Law of Physics leads to a contradiction. The Deist has an easy way out, but what does the non-Deist say? And, incidentally, what about life, which disobeys the law all the time?
Hengwm Hill, Knighton, Radnorshire.
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