EVOLUTION AND HUMAN DESTINY 



vironment. Art is therefore an expression of this need. 

 It portrays such orderliness as man sees directly in 

 nature; creates new patterns of orderliness representa- 

 tive of man's social activities, and serves to fashion the 

 totems and symbols necessary for continuing integra- 

 tion of the social body. 



It is noteworthy that the phenomenon of this * 'ap- 

 parently non-utilitarian" construction appears in all 

 cultures once they have reached a certain level of com- 

 plexity. It certainly persists vigorously up to the pres- 

 ent day. 



EFFECT ON IMMEDIATE SURROUNDINGS 

 MAY BE A THERMODYNAMIC NECESSITY 



If one views the development of the societal organ- 

 ism from a thermodynamic point of view, one might 

 expect that its very high level of extropy could raise 

 serious problems in connection with survival. It is 

 known that the long-term maintenance of any rela- 

 tively non-random structure presents difficulties in a 

 universe in which physical processes generally proceed 

 towards greater randomness. One would expect that 

 the preservation of a high degree of organization for 

 any particular system should become more difficult 

 generally, as the differential between the respective 

 levels of extropy of the system and the surroundings 

 becomes greater. This consideration certainly holds 

 true if one considers the entropy relations of ordinary 



92 



