Sublime

Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that the tendency of energy is to decay in usefulness—a change for the worse known as entropy. I found it consoling after all these years to learn that writers are up against nothing less than the fundamental anarchy of the universe; entropy, prince of disorder, is sprinkling noise on everything we write.

“Entropy refers to an average of (physical) states, information to a particular (physical) state.”9

second law of thermodynamics—in closed systems, entropy will either increase or stay constant, never spontaneously decrease.

Useful energy is called “free energy” and useless energy is called “entropy.”

“Uncertainty” characterizes a non-deterministic system for which probabilities cannot be assigned to the space of outcomes.

But here’s the mystery. Obviously entropy can increase only if it starts out low. So why was the entropy lower yesterday than today?

tending over time toward the minimum amount of redistribution necessary to maintain social order.

Efficiencies of major energy conversions are still improving, although some techniques (gas-fired furnaces, aluminum smelting, the Haber-Bosch synthesis of ammonia) are now approaching their thermo-dynamic limits.

in an essentially random manner, an open system driven by a steady flow of energy will evolve deterministically toward an attractor that represents the region of the configuration space that corresponds to a stable molecular arrangement.