88 "BECOMING" 



linkage of the symbolic world of physics to the world 

 of familiar experience. As explained in the Introduction 

 this question of linkage remains over at the end of the 

 strictly physical investigations. Our present problem 

 is to understand the linkage between entropy which 

 provides time's arrow in the symbolic world and the 

 experience of growing or becoming which is the inter- 

 pretation of time's arrow in the familiar world. We 

 have, I think, shown exhaustively in the last chapter that 

 the former is the only scientific counterpart to the latter. 



But in treating change of entropy as a symbolic 

 equivalent for the moving on of time familiar to our 

 minds a double difficulty arises. Firstly, the symbol 

 seems to be of inappropriate nature; it is an elaborate 

 mathematical construct, whereas we should expect so 

 fundamental a conception as "becoming" to be among 

 the elementary indefinables — the A B C of physics. 

 Secondly, a symbol does not seem to be quite what is 

 wanted; we want a significance which can scarcely be 

 conveyed by a symbol of the customary metrical type — 

 the recognition of a dynamic quality in external Nature. 

 We do not "put sense into the world" merely by 

 recognising that one end of it is more random than the 

 other; we have to put a genuine significance of "be- 

 coming" into it and not an artificial symbolic substitute. 



The linkage of entropy-change to "becoming" 

 presents features unlike every other problem of paral- 

 lelism of the scientific and familiar worlds. The usual 

 relation is illustrated by the familiar perception of 

 colour and its scientific equivalent electromagnetic wave- 

 length. Here there is no question of resemblance 

 between the underlying physical cause and the mental 

 sensation which arises. All that we can require of 

 the symbolic counterpart of colour is that it shall be 



