320 VINCENT E. SMITH 



to statistical equilibrium. The commou eud-product of all 

 energy reactions is the spread of heat or the increase in ran- 

 domness. By contrast to the order, described by von Weiz- 

 sacker, which is differentiated and heterogeneous, the random 

 or disordered, in the language of thermodynamics, is undif- 

 ferentiated and homogeneous. If entropy reigned alone in 

 nature, our world would gradually be undergoing a levelling 

 influence where difference, or otherness, an essential in all 

 motion, would slowly be disappearing. 



There are several qualifications that would have to be put 

 upon the law of entropy if the discussion were to become more 

 precise than is intended here. 



For one thing within the kinetic molecular theory itself, if 

 the particles of a system are truly disorganized, there is a small 

 statistical possibility that they may, in their aggregate, move 

 " uphill " and this fact has led, as d'Abro suggests, to the 

 downgrading of entropy to the status of an approximation.^^ 

 Such a view, projected within the classical kinetic molecular 

 theory, would be supported for different reasons by the statis- 

 tical thermodynamics of quantum theory .^"^ Moreover, Tolman 

 suggested that a relativistic treatment of entropy might not 

 require the irreversible march toward the " heat-death " of the 

 universe." Finally, the steady state theorists restrict entropy 

 to local systems and permit the addition of hydrogen, in the 

 quantity previously stated, so that the total entropy of the 

 universe, far from declining, remains constant, i. e., in a steady 

 state.^^ As they deny evolution in its orthodox sense, so the 

 steady-state theorists see a universe where entropic losses are 

 being overcome. 



Nevertheless, with all of these qualifications, it may still be 

 true that the law of entropy — and could we not argue in a 

 similar vein concerning evolution.^ — is one of those approxima- 



" Op. cit., I, 399. 



^° But directionality is also indicated by the non-conservation of parity. See the 

 article with this title by P. Blackett, American Scientist, XXVII (1959) , 509-514. 

 " R. Tolman, The Principles of Statistical Mechanics (Oxford, 1938) . 

 " H. Spencer Jones, " Continuous Creation," Science News, XXII (1954) , 29. 



