I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the second law of thermodynamics. Fancy explanation:
The arrow of time is the “one-way direction” or “asymmetry” of time. The thermodynamic arrow of time is provided by the second law of thermodynamics, which says that in an isolated system, entropy tends to increase with time.
Wikipedia lol
Gracie explanation:
Heat energy can move from hot to cold. Heat energy is reflected in agitated molecules. The more heat, the more agitation, the more chaos. The colder it is, the less agitated the molecules are, the less chaotic it is. Entropy is the heat / chaotic part. In chemistry, we learned about how there are different forms of energy, how they transmute from one to another in a set of ordered paths, and how heat is the final energy form.
Heat can’t turn back into cold. Heat can’t turn back into a different energy form. Eventually, the entire universe will be all just heat energy (if we have it right).
Allegedly, this flow connects to time as the only physical process that can’t be reversed. It shows there is a past and a future, and it flows in that direction.
I think I don’t like it
I’ve been chewing on this for a decade now. Is there a past, present, and future? Scientifically speaking, that is.
What grinds on me: why do we isolate time to this one single physical process? If we have to, why do we stop the flow at when things get hotter?
As heat energy transfers into cold spaces, it triggers more chain reactions and physical processes that move both ways. It’s a beginning as much as it is an end. Heat transfers into water from my stove. That water transfers to a cup with tea leaves in it. Those leaves rehydrate and release chemicals and compounds and flavors. Those transfer to my body and awaken my senses, give me focus, and nourish my body. I use it to create, or to ruminate, or to do absolutely nothing.
I dislike trying to understand time through the arrow of thermodynamics. On an experiential level, time looks more like a bubble universe than a timeline: memory mixes with projection and planning and hoping, mixes with the steam rising from my cup right now, mixes with a daydream of a world that doesn’t exist. It’s all so intertwined and, for me, rapid.
My brain isn’t wired to understand the fourth dimension in its entirety. It’s wired to experience it. The idea, though, that we could understand that it functions in a flow from past to future, seems to limit the potential of this fourth dimension and reduce it to two dimensional terms. Even if it is a vector, who’s to say that vector always moves in the same direction? Won’t it toss this way and that? So far as we know, there isn’t a true straight line anywhere in our universe. Our sun and galaxy don’t move in straight lines.
Why would time?
Puddles of Thought 