Just sayin’ …
How do you account for this wonderfully complex universe? Or the Chicago Cubs, for that matter?
It all comes down to religion. Well, you have the Bible which says that God started with nothingness and chaos and created order and complexity, resulting in this amazing universe that we know — that is, with the exception of the tax system. As Jesus said, “leave that one to Caesar.”
Then, you have the theory of evolution. No God. Just pea soup. Things go from a state of disorder and chaos to more order and complexity. Yes, over the period of millions of years, an occasional mutation of our archetypal pea soup occasionally became a more highly structured life form and became dominant over the millions of boring, non-mutants. And that happened over and over. No, I am not talking about Night of the Living Dead — although Chicago politics has sometimes been described that way. I am talking about mutation with the kind of odds that Los Vegas casino owners only dream about.
God versus mutants. Well, at least science and the Bible agree that things started as a mess. I guess it’s less of a mess now. I will leave that to your judgment.
Then science goes and throws in the Second Law of thermodynamics which says the opposite. Things go from a state of order to chaos. (Well, the politically correct term is “equilibrium”. But who wants to introduce politics into science?) And entropy is our measurement of how we are stuck in the journey to doom. Even organization nerds can’t reverse the process. Sorry. All of us humans have to live with the fact that peas spilled on the floor never stay in a neat pile like they were on the plate. Now this may be sheer excitement to my niece’s baby, who constantly discovers new applications for the laws of thermodynamics. But it’s sheer drudgery for her mom, who discovers that the cleaning up of spilled peas may bring order to the universe, but it just results in more entropy. And that leads to another diaper change.
Speaking of the Bible — you know, the “chaos to order” book. Well, theologians have spent an inordinate amount of time and energy ripping, tearing, rearranging and explaining to make the thing agree with the theory of evolution. I don’t mind telling you, it’s a difficult task. In the end, a lot of them have just given up and said, “What the heck — believe what you want. I never understood the ending, anyway.”
But I have to say, it appears to me also that scientists have been doing their own ripping, tearing and redefining. The laws of thermodynamics may still hold, but it is no longer in vogue to talk about about “chaos,” or “order to disorder.” Entropy may be conceptually reversible but the Second law still says that in reality, my niece will have to continue expending energy to clean up peas.
Which leads me to a deeper question: Has anyone figured out an easy way to clean up spilled peas?
