∆ Entropy, may just be Entropy.

Entropy, the apparent one way flow of events.

Figure: Ok, vases break but don't reform, I get it, But how does this prove that events come out of an invisible and random future, and receed into an invisible and fixed 'past'?

If time is shown elsewhere to exist, then yes, 'entropy' tells us about its nature and one way flow. But, if time has not been proven to exist, then entropy is just entropy , happening 'now'. It's only our assumption that time must exist, and all things must be framed in terms of time, that makes entropy seem to be evidence relating to time.

If we try the assumption that 'perhaps matter can just exist and interact - in accordance with the laws of nature' - then we find entropy, is just what happens now.

The agony and entropy...

Entropy is the observation that in nature things tend to head for chaos and disorder. Bedrooms get naturally messy not tidy, buildings fall apart unless maintained, and the reverse seems never to just happen.

Experimentally, we can let a million china vases fall separately onto a million stone floors such that every single vase shatters into to a large number of fragments. But no matter what we do we will almost certainly never see any of the piles of fragments fly up to reform a vase.

Of course you can repair a vase to a greater and greater extent using your hands and some glue etc, and you could approach closer and closer, but not quite achieve, its original condition.

Although this does point to the problem that ‘if vases apparently only smash, and never spontaneously reform, then how come we ever have any vases to begin with?’ the key here is the idea of vases ‘spontaneously forming’ – we know they smash spontaneously but we have to make them intelligently and deliberately –but it’s funny how we sidestep this obvious fact that the universe does indeed create perfectly formed vases ‘one way or another’, and dismiss the reason for this (our interaction) as not counting, and only focus on the ‘irreversible’ smashing of vases.

If you assume that time exists, then this one way disintegration, would seem to confirm a feature of time, namely that it has a fixed direction or ‘arrow’, vases and people, sandcastles and suns fall apart... over, and in the direction of time.

But linking this ‘entropy’ to the arrow of time is a bit like letting entropy get hijacked, or taken over by a cuckoo, can't entropy just be entropy, does this kind of motion really prove that ‘time, and the future and the past exist’, and that the infinitely thin four dimensional present, is an infinitely thin one way membrane or valve controlling the fourth dimensional direction all events?

Surely all these examples really show us, is ‘what they really show us’, which is that the laws of nature make things spread out and fall apart unless there is some energy and order put into the system and aimed at pulling things together (be it a human making a vase or an animal eating food so the laws of chemistry can assimilate what is eaten into the animal’s body).

These example also prove that if a person, or a video camera, is pointing at an event it can be effected by the event and have its internal matter, in-formation, affected by the event; and once formed this reorganised matter can be viewed from any angle and in any direction. In other words you can play a video tape or a memory in any direction, and ‘call’ these directions any names you want.

But none of these things actually proves the existence of an ethereal thing called ‘time’ controlling and forcing events to happen in one way only, or that there is an unpredictable and irreversible future; all entropy proves, is that entropy exists and can happen ‘here and now’.

If you consider for example the path of fragments flying out from a shattering vase, the vase fragments fly outwards according to the laws of physics, and are affected by what they meet – not in the future – but that is actually physically in front of them; so if on one side of the falling vase you had a wall, and on the other side a pond, the fragments that went to the left would seem to have a very different kind of motion and ‘destiny’ to the fragments that went to the right, not because the ‘future’ is mysterious and unpredictable, but because some headed in the direction of a wall and some in the direction of a pond.

see > The only way is forwards.)

>>Star light and Raindrops.