EVOLUTION AND ENTROPY 321 



tions, true for the most part as Aristotle ^^ maintained but not 

 invested with absohite certitude like the type which post- 

 Cartesian physics has been seeking in the physical world. 

 Moreover, and as Aristotle also showed in his dialectical evalua- 

 tion of his predecessors, approximations can put one on the road 

 to reality itself,*'" Thus, there is no intention here of using 

 such highly derivative notions as entropy and evolution to 

 decide the issue of the fundamental principles in nature; for 

 this question is decided at a level far more general than that 

 attained by modern science with its specialized techniques of 

 experiment and its mathematical apparatus. But within this 

 framework, both entropy and evolution may suggest some 

 basic truths or reinforce some truths already recognized. 



Ill 



Several reservations will be useful in order to understand the 

 spirit of the ensuing comparisons involving evolution and 

 entropy. 



1) However fruitful it might otherwise be to assess the 

 methods for studying both evolution and entropy and thereby 

 to gain a better hold on the meaning of the results, such an 

 excursion into logic and epistemology will not be undertaken 

 here." 



2) The leading cosmologies of our day are evolutionary. 

 This we have seen in the very language of cosmologists them- 

 selves. It is apparent in the build-up, a qualitative differen- 

 tiation, of the heavier elements from hydrogen ®^ and in the 

 final conditioning of the universe to support life in its higher 



^"Phys., II, 5, 196b 10-11. 



'** Ihid., I, 5, 188a 18-29. 



'^ This issue has been raised by E. McMulIin in " Realism in Modern Cosmology," 

 Proc. Amer. Cath. Phil. Assoc, XXlX (1955), 137-160. 



" What, then, does this steady-state universe look like? Although it is un- 

 changing on a large scale, it is not unchanging in detail. Each individual galaxy 

 ages owing to the way its resources of hydrogen are being depleted by its conversion 

 into helium inside the stars, and for other reasons." H. Bondi, The Universe at 

 Large, p. 43. 



