Quotes About Entropy

Like all languages, Atom is easier to learn when you're younger. With Paul Penfield, I co-teach a freshman course at MIT called Information and Entropy. The goal of this course, like the goal of this book, is to reveal the fundamental role that information plays in the universe.

Entropy is the information contained in a physical system that is invisible to us.

These examples both demonstrate that the laws of physics, notably Newton's laws, are time-reversible. They work just as well backwards in time as forwards, and there is no place in them for the second law of thermodynamics. The fundamental laws of physics do not distinguish between past and future.

The natural effect of processes going on in the Universe is to move from a state of order to a state of disorder, unless there is an input of energy from outside

IDisorder is infinitely deep.

Disorder is infinitely deep.

It had been impressed on Rien all through her childhood how fragile the habitable sphere was, and how much functionality had been lost through accident, negligence, malice, and the simple gnawing of entropy.

The more perfect the instrument as a measurer of time, the more completely does it conceal time's arrow.

I also believe that the most meaningful change, where individuals can triumph over both entropy and evolution as it were, comes when people use empirical knowledge against good taste, use strength against power, skill against art, and technology against science in their easiest and unthinking modes.

So far as physics is concerned, time's arrow is a property of entropy alone.

This thing all things devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town, And beats high mountain down.

The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.

The time flies. The time flies feed on rotting clocks.

Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases.

You believe in entropy, which postulates that all phenomena tend to sink to lower levels of organization and energy, and in evolution, which postulates that the history of life has been just the opposite. People like you credit both theories. It's de rigueur . Is that reason rational? I say, f*ck off.

This is a fundamentally insane notion, which developed in my own mind from an idea of Buckminster Fuller's. Every so often I try to encourage other writers by telling them this cheerful set of thoughts; always they gaze at me absolutely appalled. Fuller's assertion was roughly to this affect: the purpose of people on earth is to counteract the tide of entropy described in the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

like all material things, they were not immune to the corruptions of Time and its patient, unsleeping servant, Entropy.

the equilibrium state of the cosmos is death….

holographic principle.

it is relatively easy to scramble an egg, but to unscramble it is far harder.

Chaos is the undercurrent of everything that happens in life.

Recasting fairy tales has become a publishing sub-genre in itself, and has been done both well and to the point of entropy. More interesting are those works where the structures of fairytales are abandoned but the world of 'fairy' is imported as a delicate spice.

If you look at life with any honesty and intelligence, it's clear that human nature is dark, vile, selfish, and despondent. But I also see a force in human nature, namely grace, that sometimes works against our natural moral entropy.

Figure 12.1: Maximal Entropy and Maximal Variance