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What is one to think of someone who opens his discussion on entropy, as Mr. Aquino does, with a quote of a definition of the term from a dictionary? This is either a lame appeal to "authority" -- which persuades only those who can _not_ think on their own -- or it shows that Mr. Aquino is equally lame and clueless in light of the identification of entropy by many Satanists with Anton LaVey's "Dark Force in Nature." This identification, made for example by Tani Jantsang, I find particularly _a-propos_. (I say this as someone with special training in hard sciences and with some familiarity with the sayings of Christian theologians and the Church Fathers). As Tani Jantsang accurately and perspicaciously pointed out, there is as much literature (much of it untranslated in ecclesiastical Latin) on how Satan insidiously shapes every rose and sunflower, as there is on how Satan uses women to destroy men's souls! It is precisely this motivating, shaping "force" in nature that Anton LaVey was talking about in _The_Satanic_Bible, as were the Inquisitors and Mediaeval bishops to justify the compilation of their infamous _Index_ of forbidden books. It is, once again, precisely the same "force" known to modern physical science as entropy. This is a vast subject, so what I would like to do in as brief a space as possible is fairly explain what entropy is and what is it _not_. It is obvious to me that Mr. Aquino, benighted and akward as he is on this subject, has as much to gain from reading this as anyone.
A dictionary provides only information about the uses, function, forms, pronunciations, and etymologies of words. No one begins a course of study on entropy, chaos theory, or any other subject for that matter, by first looking the words up in _Webster's_. Mr. Aquino would do well to look up the word "dictionary" in _Websters's_ so he can put this sort of "reference book definitional information" on entropy in it's proper place. The scientific idea of entropy, embodied in what is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is quite different from anything one can find in _Websters_ or even in the _Oxford_Standard_English_Dictionary_, which is superior to _Webster's_ by a few billion light years. The scientific idea of entropy is much like what both Anton LaVey and the Church Fathers were calling "Satan." The _Webster's_ definition is given by Mr. Aquino on the Internet as follows:
The ultimate state reached in the degredation of matter and energy of the universe: absence of form, pattern, hierarchy, or differentiation . . . the general trend of the universe toward death and disorder.
This is no more than an accepted usage of the term "entropy" in common speech, which is all a responsible dictionary is obligated to report. A dictionary pretends to no real knowledge or insight into a subject. It offers none and need give none. Yet Mr. Aquino relies completely on this definition and, judging from his remarks on the Internet which immediatly follow his definition, has no further knowledge or understanding whatsoever of the subject himself. He reveals how woefully ignorant and misinformed his "extra-dictionary learning" on subjects related to entropy and chaos-theory really are.
First of all, this definition (again, of "common usage") confuses two very different things, and Mr. Aquino just soaked up this confusion. Reading the definition, there appears to be no difference between "the ultimate state reached in the degradation of matter and energy of the universe," compared to "absence of form, pattern, hierarchy, or differentiation." This means that most users of the word "entropy" can see or are aware of no difference between the general trend of the universe, which they are told is one toward "disorder and death," and a kind of featureless, disordered "soup." But there really is. What are the chances that a monkey throwing bricks will construct a cathedral? Almost absolutely zero. What are the chances a Masonic Artificer can construct a cathedral? We know they have already done so time and time again. But the architect _also_ obeys the laws of entropy. Both the monkey and the architect both obey that part of the definition given above that part of the definition given above that pertains to the (mentioned) "degradation" of energy of the universe. It is just a plain error for common users of the word "entropy" to think it is both matter _and_ energy (as the quoted definition says) that is "degraded." The Second Law of Thermodynamics (the mathematical niceties of which I wish to avoid for the untrained but intelligent reader who at least deserves to hear it _right_) requires only that _energy_ be "degraded." The mathematical physicist Stephen Hawking (along with Jacob Berkingstien) is responsible for a very marvelous mathematical formula that actually gives the entropy of a black hole! (This formula is easy to look up for interested readers). The entropy at a black hole is much higher then anything ever considered before. A black whole is microcosm or "drama in miniature" or the fate of the entire universe under what is called the "Standard Model" of cosmology: at the end of time, there will be the opposite of the "Big Bang"; there will be a "Big Crunch" in which all the energy _and_matter_ of the universe will, structured and ordered or not, will be swallowed up in a single black hole. The entropy will break all records reached in the entire history of the cosmos. At this time, and in the vicinity of what are believed to be observable black holes today, energy is completely "degraded," or nearly so, _and_matter_ is completely ripped apart and disordered, all pattern and hierarchy lost (the second and distinguishable part of the _Webster's_ misleadingly unitary definition of entropy). From the misleading definition of "entropy" Mr. Aquino has incorrectly inferred that wherever and whenever an obligatory "degradation" of energy occurs, there must also be a destruction of pattern, a disordering into a meaningless "jumble" like a tanged ball of twine replacing a sophisticated knot, or some such. This is a mistake. I have given the example of black holes to show that the Second Law's "degradation" of energy sometimes does occur with the simultaneous dis-ordering and/or destruction of matter configurations and structures, It _very_ often does, and the reader can probably think of many examples, such as when someone puts salt crystals into his or her beer, or when I watch my cigarette smoke start out as a thin, smooth, streamlined column of flow (representing somewhat ordered matter, but less ordered than salt crystals), rising up in a vertical column into an erratic, turbulent cloud (representing chaos and disorder). These are examples wherein the energy is "degraded" as the Second Law requires at all times, _and_ the matter is disordered. Are there examples wherein the energy is "degraded" (as demanded at all times) but the _matter_ becomes more complex and highly ordered? There are, and there is every reason to think such cases are as common as cases in which degradation of matter _and_ energy occur together. And these instances are far from trivial: they are events of the greatest value to human life and interest. Mr Aquino has a problem with this. Tani Jantsang once told me, "I have no patience with people who just don't feel it. As we say, `tone-deaf people trying to hear much: a waste of time!' Entropy is not chaos: it _causes_ the chaos that _causes_ the order which _causes_ more chaos which _causes_ more order as if push/pull, the push/pull being _one_ thing, _not_ two things and surely _not_ opposites. The innate monkish, dried up husks never, never, _never_ understood: they can not!" I will try to be a bit more patient. When I explore this subject a little, the reader will see clearly that Mr. Aquino's thinking on this subject puts him, once again, in the camp of the religionists.
Throughout history, people have used religion, magic, and (as much as the other two) _science_ to perceive order, pattern, and meaning in what they apparently dread to discover is a chaotic and "meaningless" universe. (The pronouncements of the American _fantaisiste_ H.P. Lovecraft on this subject in his _Selected Letters_ are very revealing). The great regular celestial pendulums of sun, moon, planets, and stars seen to fortify this need and justify belief in the "order" in the universe, as best described in the scientific theories of Newton and Laplace. The 17th and 18th Centuries were times when this "faith," as scientists _today_ are more apt to call it, reached its heights. This new wave of mechanistic order undeniable in the cosmos, like sunrise and sunset, but also "deep" and _hidden_ order laid in there by a beneficent God. The demons of chaos seemed banished forever -- until the Twentieth Century, when physicists began to explore how this magnificent cathedral or edifice or ordered natural matter could come into existence, with not only columns of some and salt crystals, but also the most complex matter structures of all: bacteria, fish and hominids (like humans). Flaws in the Newtonian view were even evident as early as 1900. The mathematician and physicist J.H. Poincare remarked that this belief in the underlying order or a force or order (as Mr. Aquino speculates) in the cosmos was "a fantasy due to Laplace." The physicist James Clerk Maxwell said, "the true logic of the world is the calculus of probabilities," affirming a chaos underlying all apparent order. It is known today that all of the very most highly ordered matter and energy systems are based on disorder. When matter exhibits hierarchy and pattern, this is due not only to the "degradation of energy" (as is everything else), but is also founded on chaotic systems of matter with stipulated initial conditions (this is known as "chaos-theory" or the physics of chaos). How does it go over when physicists and mathematicians seem to be telling everyone that their senses are deceiving them: that all apparent order is founded on disorder? It sounds a lot like they are saying, "Your senses are deceiving you: don't be believe them!" So as not to get bogged down in a long-winded philosophical discussion here, all I can say to Mr. Aquino and other equally vulgar, obtuse minds is, "Sorry, but things are never what they appear to be -- and at least on this, science, religion and the occult _have_always_ been in agreement!" Mr. Aquino's statements on the Internet are common and typical: he brushes aside any consideration that apparent order could be based on chaos: he has _no_ knowledge, intuition or inkling how this could be so. So he postulates some sort of:
ordering God/gods/Forms/_neteru_, take your pick
he says affably! -- that is, _I_ would like to add, if you're a religious type of guy that desires faith in fantasy and is terrified of reality. He postulates forms of:
resistance to entropy and the more complex-ordered the greater the resistance.
He conceives of these ideas pit of the thinnest of air, as has been done by the superstitious, religious, delusional and confused from time immemorial. But since this is the Twentieth Century, Mr. Aquino can now couch the whole thing _ad_hominem_ in modern scientific terminology and form, using such terms as "matter and energy," and expressions not even thought of before Einstein. Such a proposed "ordering force," needed to "balance" the destructive forces of entropy, was proposed by open-minded scientists early in the 20th century to explain what Mr Aquino naively calls the "lot of order in the objective universe." It was called "enthalpy," a term still used in science today (but to mean something completely different). Such a postulate, which Mr. Aquino himself rightly says it "behind all _religions_," was abandoned: every system studied in any depth showed no such ordering principal of what Mr. Aquino calls "reverse entropy" or "RE." In fact, even the most seemingly highly ordered systems, like life forms, showed quite the opposite: that they were the product and had their origin and sustenance in disorder and chaos at a deeper level. Not only does entropy always "degrade" energy, but utterly chaotic activity gives the universe (and every planet and mineral and life form in it) its _ordered_rule_! I will give a few brief examples of this. I am not going to type a defense of "chaos theory": my examples will only be of the most standard and widely accepted examples of this.
The best example of this, involving extremely highly-ordered matter structures and energy processes, are the laws of evolution of life on earth. These laws would _have_to_be_ founded or based on chaos because, whatever we may think the laws are or however we may formulate them, if they were _not_ based on chaos, there would have to be built into them rules for anticipation of every natural crisis which has occurred or ever will occur over the eons, and even inbuilt rules for anticipating every available ecological niche throughout all of geological time. To do this, the necessary amount of genetic information would have to be so vast and comprehensive that a single DNA helix would have to be longer than the visible universe to encode all of it -- otherwise life would long since have failed to meet the demands of geological changed and catastrophes, and would have long ago run out of viable ecological niches it could find in its stored inventory or niches for occupation and living. Nature as manifested in evolution has come up with a much more economical, ingenious and proven viable strategy using the richness of opportunity available through chaos. Random biological mutations, a subject which seems to mystify and confuse Mr. Aquino (judging from his Internet discussion), provide choices sufficient to meet almost any crisis, and natural selection selects the proper one. [CapSatan: Naturally!] The same sort of thing occurs when the human body faces defending itself against _all_possible_invaders_. It should be obvious again that there can be no way for the human immune system to do this in an ordered way, using some highly complex edifice of immune strategies of the most intricate ramification and detail to meet any and all attacks, for then the immune system would have to be much more complex then a cathedral structure: more like a cathedral which contains another equally complex cathedral for every brick and stone used to built it! The human immune system is one of the most complex systems of matter and energy known, vying with and probably surpassing what is popularly regarded as the universe's most complex hunk of matter [CapSatan: and tasty, too]: the human brain. But once again, to attain the super-complex order of a system that has to be primed to meet _every_ invader of the human body, organic _and_ inorganic, there could just not be enough room in a cell for the necessary genetic information to program for a protocol set to meet any and all invaders, familiar and unfamiliar. So once again, in this real of super-highly complex forms of matter systems, nature has chosen chaos as the most economical or "easiest" solution. When a virus or bacterium enters the body, defense stratagies are generated _at_random_, just like mutations in the example of evolution given above. This generation goes on until a kind of feedback loop indicated the correct strategy has been found. If Mr. Aquino had acquired any wisdom at all during his life, he would seek or preach the admirable method of science _today_ when it deals with super-highly ordered systems and matter structures: which is _not_ to find "ordered" methods and ways of doing things in very complicated situations and thereby struggle and strive "uphill" against the laws of entropy, but rather (instead) to _mimic_ nature by finding new and useful ways to _harness_ chaos. Some rather wise "magicians" have even thought of this! In fact, as far as I have been able to tell, scientists came up with this idea much _later_ then these magicians (scientists are a terribly conservative lot). But all of this is still alien to Mr. Aquino, who has no idea that when nature does something really complicated, it does not merely do it alongside of chaos, but _through_and_by_means_of_chaos_! To build a system as complex as a living cell, immune system, or a human neuron net, nature's only other choice would be strenuous ordering, the uphill battle like making a DNA helix the length of the visible universe. Nature takes the easy way, the path of _least_resistance_, like a Taoist or a true Satanist: the "downhill slide" which is the way of entropy, as the Nobel Prize-winning biochemist de Duve says in his wonderful book _Vital_Dust_. As to how the most complex orders can result from the "degradation" or energy has _always_ been a mystery to Mr. Aquino, and it is apparently too late for him to learn how now. I would have put it this way: when nature wants to built or do something of the highest complexity, it does not do it _despite_ entropy and chaos, it _calls_upon_entropy_and_chaos_to_do_it_with_!
I would note here that it is only the equally misinformed that focus on the "chaotic" aspects of entropy, seeing in this justification for their own confused and dysfunctional lives and, subsequently, inventing delusional religions, "atheism" being a form of religion in _this_sense_. The Masonic Artificers not only built structures having monumental order, but they built everything according to a Cosmic Order they knew about quite well. Pythagoreans knew how the infinite and logic-defying penetrated every aspect of what common sense would call "the ordered world of logic" (see my published article on Plato and the Pythagoreans and their fascination with the square root of 2). This kind of thing, noted by them and precisely formulated, is now taught today in any college mathematics course. Yet the Pythagoreans themselves were not taught: each of them had to have figured it out on their own _first_, or they would not be allowed into the Order. There were no school text books (or dictionaries!) for the "most stupid" to look things up in and memorize or parrot. You either "had it" or you didn't. There was no way for those without "it" to cross over and fool anyone by parroting words more or less meaningless to himself. As Anton LaVey said: they fool themselves by trying to pretend they are better then something: or by playing "The Sage" by parroting (wrongly) the works of others when "others" are out there easily able to catch the fundamental errors they consistently make, and expose them if they bother to, as I am trying to do as briefly as possible here. (No one honestly can claim these are simple subjects, They are certainly not for dead minds or dunderheads). The Pythagorean dictum that one must know these things directly, through the flesh, _before_ one can possibly hope to grasp them cerebrally seems to be born out by scores of Western university students able to pass tests, memorize formulae, but _not_ able to apply any of it!
"OK, OK," someone might say in defence of Mr. Aquino, "but he was not necessarily talking about the _most_ highly ordered and intricate hierarchies in the cosmos, and maybe these _do_ need to harness chaos to come into and maintain their existence: he was talking about the plain, everyday order we see all around us, the great celestial pendulums you mentioned before of sun, moon, and planates, everyday order, like the kind humans practice -- some with Hurculean effort -- like baking a turkey or writing a poem. He was talking about _this_ kind of thing." I have talked about more highly ordered systems, systems of more ramified pattern and configuration than baked turkies or poems in order to argue _a _fortiori_ -- in other words, I have sought to argue that entropy and chaos rule _even_more_complex_ order than turkeys or poems prevails. So what about the "in-the-middle," familiar, everyday cases of modest order, nothing grandiose, like the cigarette smoke column I mentioned, or the salt crystals, where there is clearly order in the universe, as Mr. Aquino observes on the Internet, though it may not be all that high a degree of order or complexity?
Consider a fellow who needs to drink a lot of water, so he always has a row of tumblers filled with water lined up along the edge of his table so he can always grab one when the need hits. He is hasty and often knocks a class or two over, so even though he cleans his house, there has, over the years, accumulated glass shards in his carped. Furthermore, the carpet is always dank from spilled water, which has leaked through his floorboards and even into his basement. Now there are plenty of messy houses and I have personally visited some domiciles where there _was_ glass and other debris strewn about, damp and moldy carpeting, wet floorboards and moist atmospheres and basements, Any number of living quarters could fit this description, but even a modestly competent detective could examine this hydrophilic fellow's abode and realize that there is something different about the mess in his house. The detective would be able to figure out how all the glass, mold, and moisture came about. A tumbler of water poised on the edge of a table is a result of ordered human behavior creating an ordered system of matter and energy. When the man fills the glass and carefully places it near the edge of the table at a precise spot, he does what physicist call "work," which is equal exactly to his energy output. In doing the work, some of which energy is _ordered_ into the row of filled glasses, and some of which is "degraded" in the form of heat energy (radiated into the room's damp atmosphere as photons). When the man orders his system of drinking glasses, he has caused an _entropy_increase_ which can be measured, but he has also created on ordered matter-energy system, it would appear -- a kind or water drinking station for himself, a "water-bar." It is not order he can brag about: compared to the kinds of order and configuration I have been talking about in a living cell, what he has created is "small beer." But this seems to be the kind of order Mr. Aquino finds so amazing and about which he is convinced what he is saying is correct -- not necessarily the kinds of super-high order one finds in evolution or human cells. When the man knocks a glass over and it breaks on the floor, he bemoans the loss of order he seeks to mantain: "glasses of water in drink-readiness where I want them." When a glass falls, spills, and breaks, and the water wets the carpet, leaks through to the basement, and evaporated into the room, there is, once again (just as when the man set the glasses up) an _increase_in_enthropy_, but now it would seem disorder previals. But look more closely at what _really_ has happened, more closely than any detective would ever need to do to actually figure out what all the strewn glass and moister is about. At any time shortly after a glass has fallen and broken, each and every single glass shard and water molecule is _still_ in a remarkably ordered, in a highly configured, arrangement. How so? Well, suppose you could do the impossible, and at some moment shortly after the glass falls and breaks you could wave a magic wand and reverse time. The water moisture would recondense, fill the glass as it reassembles itself, and the glass with water would fly up and come to rest on the edge of the table exactly in line with the rest of the glasses in the missing spot. The likelihood that this happens without a "time reversal" is not in the realm of impossibility according to modern physical laws, but it is _almost_ absolutely zero. But you could get a good idea of what it would look like for this to happen if you made a film of a glass falling and then watched the movie in reverse. The "imposable" situation reveals something _not_ obvious: at any time shortly after the glass breaks, the scattered glass particals and water molecules and (heat) photons are still so highly configured, ordered and arranged that if you could reverse the motions of each and every one of them by precisely 180 degrees, the glass _would_do_ the "impossible" and fix itself back on the table. Now you can go to any other messy house where there is glass and moistre and heat scattered about and reverse the motions of molecules of glass and moisture and the ambient photons by precisely 180 degrees (or any other angle you want) and no glass of water will set up anywhere. The useless, broken glass, spilled and evaporated water, and the ambient heat in the man's house are _still_highly_configured_ after he makes his "mess." The inspection and analysis of examples like this have caused the modern mathematician Roger Penrose (an associate of Stephan Hawking) to say that a system of what is considered to be "low entropy and high order," i.e. the row of filled glasses on the table (versus a system of "high entropy and disorder," i.e. the spilled and broken glasses) is really one of "low entropy and _manifest_ high order." A valid reason for distinguishing between the "low entropy-high order" glasses arrangement on the table and the "high entropy-low disorder" mess after a spill in the man's house is not that one situation is more highly configured or arranged than the other. We have seen this is not so. The only valid reason for making this distinction between high and low "entropy" or "order" between the two arrangements is that once the glasses have fallen and the water scattered and the man's work wasted, the configuration of particles that constitute a "mess" is now lumped in with a set of possible broken glass-water- photon partical arrangements that would constitute a "water-bar"-type set-up. There are _more_ partical configurations possible -- by far -- for a "mess" than there are for a "water-bar" set-up. This is why Roger Penrose calls low entropy a state of "_manifest_ disorder": the "mess" may be as highly arranged and unique as anything possible for humans to set up! A detective can say to a layman: "things are not always what they appear to be." In this case, the _physicist_ can say to the detective: "Indeed you are right, not even as they appear to you!"
Mr. Aquino uses this expression on the Internet: "raises interesting questions." I hope I have done so here. He needs to do a lot of clear thinking for a change, however -- something he is not of the habit of doing (or unable to do), if he really believes that human intelligence is
sharply at odds with all manifestations of "natural selection," which invariably take the easiest, physical way out.
Mr. Aquino himself feels estranged from nature, "sharply at odds with it." [In his sickness] He even glorifies this as a uniquely "human condition" and imagines it to be a badge of superiority over other life forms -- a quintessentially Christian _delusion_. He never takes the "easy path," like a Satanist, Taoist, et. al.: he doesn't know what this would be, like a Christian once again. Life for him is strife, effort, "uphill," control. I do not think he violated any laws of nature (or of entropy) in living this way [only the laws of common sense]: it is merely one kind of life-style that has appeared in one kind of species only (so far as I have seen), i.e. in a hominid called _Homo_Sapiens_ in the _Kali _Yuga_.
Hail Satan!
Philip Marsh