Reference: The Book of Physics
Linkage of Entropy with Becoming
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Summary
This is a universe of change. From the universal viewpoint, all these changes are in a near equilibrium. But from a local viewpoint, one only sees the system changing in a certain direction. The symbolic world of physics represents the universal viewpoint that gives us the primary law that applies uniformly. Our familiar world of experience represents the local viewpoint that gives us the time’s arrow of growing and becoming. This local viewpoint appears as the secondary law of entropy in the symbolic world of physics.
Thus, the change in entropy represents the moving on of time familiar to our minds. Scientifically, the system is reaching for a local equilibrium under the prevailing conditions. Mentally “becoming” is reaching toward some goal. Here we are in the domain of thought beyond physical. We feel time passing as we move toward the goal, or see the system move toward the equilibrium. Mathematically, we see it as the random element increasing steadily in the direction of the grain. Mentally, we feel all the variables in life lining up with some natural goal.
The scientific method has the purpose of ensuring continuity, consistency and harmony among all observations. As we observe more closely, the ideas in our mind lose their fixation and become more random. The application of scientific method brings that randomness into an “equilibrium” of continuity, consistency and harmony. We can intuitively sense the degree of equilibrium. Thus, when it comes to thought, we move beyond physical measurements into an intuitive sense of equilibrium defined by the degree of continuity, consistency and harmony, or oneness, that is present.
This summary is giving words to what Eddington is expressing only as a feeling. Time seems to provide a sense of movement toward equilibrium in the physical world; and a sense of movement toward oneness in the spiritual, or the thought, world. Physical measurements only extend the precision of our senses in the physical world. Similarly, an intuitive sense of oneness extends the precision of our senses in the spiritual (thought) world.
The equilibrium in the universe is moving from lower to higher complexity as represented by symbols for matter to symbols of energy to symbols of thought that represents life.
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Comments
The entropy (randomness) is increasing in the universe; but always within the constraints of continuity, consistency and harmony. We can feel the equilibrium among all thought due to its continuity, consistency and harmony. We measure this degree of “oneness” intuitively.
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