COINCIDENCES 71 



Here a point arises which unfortunately has no 

 analogy in the shuffling of a pack of cards. No one 

 (except a conjurer) can throw two half-shuffled packs 

 into a hat and draw out one pack in its original order 

 and one pack fully shuffled. But we can and do put 

 partly disorganised energy into a steam-engine, and 

 draw it out again partly as fully organised energy of 

 motion of massive bodies and partly as heat-energy in 

 a state of still worse disorganisation. Organisation of 

 energy is negotiable, and so is the disorganisation or 

 random element; disorganisation does not for ever 

 remain attached to the particular store of energy which 

 first suffered it, but may be passed on elsewhere. We 

 cannot here enter into the question why there should be 

 a difference between the shuffling of energy and the 

 shuffling of material objects; but it is necessary to use 

 some caution in applying the analogy on account of this 

 difference. As regards heat-energy the temperature is 

 the measure of its degree of organisation; the lower the 

 temperature, the greater the disorganisation. 



Coincidences, There are such things as chance coinci- 

 dences; that is to say, chance can deceive us by bringing 

 about conditions which look very unlike chance. In 

 particular chance might imitate organisation, whereas 

 we have taken organisation to be the antithesis o{ 

 chance or, as we have called it, the "random element". 

 This threat to our conclusions is, however, not very 

 serious. There is safety in numbers. 



Suppose that you have a vessel divided by a partition 

 into two halves, one compartment containing air and 

 the other empty. You withdraw the partition. For the 

 moment all the molecules of air are in one half of the 

 vessel; a fraction of a second later they are spread over 



