EVOLUTION AND ENTROPY 319 



to gain a better possession of the meaning of entropy. Thus 

 if entropy is a tendency to uniformity, uniformity itself is one 

 synonym for a random aggregation of particles. As a statistical 

 equilibrium, such particles have a uniformity of behavior. The 

 ideal statistical aggregate is " the same all over." 



Using a different language to reach eventually the same 

 conclusion, it can be seen that if heat is a random motion and 

 if there is a tendency of a hot body to lose heat to a cooler one 

 until the temperature of both are equal, there is a tendency 

 between the two bodies to form an undifferentiated or random 

 state — in this sense a uniformity — with respect to each other. 

 As acquiring more heat, a cooler body acquires more random- 

 ness; in other words, an increase of heat means an increase in 

 randomness as microscopic particles move about. If there is 

 a tendency in the cosmos toward an equality of temperature 

 among and within all bodies, this may be described as a ten- 

 dency from a less random or differentiated state to a more 

 random and undifferentiated state — a tendency from the less 

 probable to the more probable. This indeed is another way of 

 interpreting the Camot principle. The original constellation 

 of things must have been one of lesser probability in the 

 vocabulary of statistics, and as time has unfolded, there has 

 been a movement from the less probable to the more and more 

 probable. And so it will continue in the future. " Order," as 

 von Weizsacker has summed it up, 



is a state which can only be realized in a very special way and 

 which, therefore, in practice, never originates of itself. Disorder, 

 on the other hand, is a generic name for the totality of all states in 

 which no definite order is realized; it can thus be realized in a 

 thousand different ways. When therefore any change not precisely 

 determined takes place in nature, it is to be expected with over- 

 whelming probability that it leads from order to disorder and not 

 vice versa.^* 



The tendency in our world toward uniformity is thus a 

 tendency to randomness, a tendency to disorder, a tendency 



^* Op. cit., p. 168. 



