¶ Antientropy
Index Entry
What is the complementary or opposite of the expanding physical Universe that grows progressively more diffuse, complex, chaotic, and disorderly? Is there a phase of Universe equal in magnitude to that of the physical, but which is contracting and becoming ever more orderly? This question moved the astronomers to look for black celestial bodies in the heavens to balance the radiant stars. While the astronomers have as yet found none, our own Spaceship Earth constitutes one such important black body.
The cooling Earth is a contracting phase of Universe. Our Spaceship Earth is continually receiving radiant energy from the Sun and other stars. One finding during the recent International Geophysical Year indicated that Earth probably receives 100,000 tons of stardust daily. These physical receipts impinge randomly upon our spherical spaceship. On Earth the biological organisms go to work on these random receipts and continually rearrange them in giant but orderly molecular chains. Biological life impounds the Sun’s radiation in many orderly ways, e.g., through photosynthesis.
¶ Citations
- RBF in Merge & Acquisitions, Vol 1, No.3, p.45, Spring’66
