But in some theories, we will get the opposite, such as the so-called entropy increase principle. According to the law it explains, life and even the whole universe will eventually die out. So what is entropy?
Although entropy is a very famous term in physics, it is actually not a substantive substance. In most cases, it is a conceptual measure to describe the state of a specific system, especially the state changes of the substances that make up this system.
Because our society is also an artificial system, some studies also apply the concept of entropy to sociology to explain its operation.
As far as the concept of entropy is concerned, what it describes is related to the change of energy. More precisely, it is a parameter used to measure the degree of energy decline. It was first put forward by a physicist in Germany. Since the middle of19th century, entropy has been widely used in various fields, especially in disciplines directly related to energy, such as thermodynamics.
However, unlike most physical quantities, the explanation of the nature of entropy is much later than its application.
Everyone is using it freely, but if you want to ask what kind of substance or phenomenon it is about, there are few clear and accurate definitions. It was not until the development of modern physics that its essence was gradually clarified. In a word, entropy describes how chaotic a particular system is.
At first glance, it still seems very confusing. How can there be a physical quantity to describe the degree of chaos?
Intuitively, the purpose of describing a phenomenon scientifically is to make it as accurate as possible and find the law and order. All phenomena that are in a chaotic state and cannot be calculated and organized no longer belong to the scope of scientific description, but entropy breaks this law. Let's go back to the scientist who first put forward this concept, namely Clausius.
1850, the physicist published a famous article entitled "On the power of heat and the law of heat itself that can be deduced from it". In this landmark article, he put forward an important insight, that is, when work is done in our environment and heat is generated from it, the same amount of heat will be consumed in other material changes, and vice versa.
This description seems to regard our system as a whole with constant total heat. Some activities seem to generate new energy, but in fact they just move energy from somewhere in the system.
In other words, energy is not the Monkey King. It can jump out of a stone. We either get from existing materials or transfer ready-made energy from one place to another. The so-called production process, the technical content is not high, and it is not real production.
Of course, there is a second very important argument in Clausius' paper, that is, to make heat energy rise from a lower temperature object to a higher temperature object, it must be completed through specific work and energy consumption.
This is the embryonic form of the second law of thermodynamics, which is what we intuitively say. In the natural state, the temperature can only be transferred from high temperature to low temperature, but not from low temperature to high temperature. If we want to do it the other way around, this process must be artificially intervened.
But there is still a problem here, that is, in mechanics, such energy movement is reversible in principle. How to explain the contradiction between them?
Clausius's approach is to define this phenomenon independently first, and then assign a new physical quantity to it. Ten years after the publication of that classic paper, Clausius coined a new name for this phenomenon, namely entropy.
At the same time, he called the process of generating heat by doing work positive transformation, while the opposite process of heat becoming successful was called negative transformation.
The former can occur in the natural state, but the latter can be realized through positive transformation. That is to say, if heat is to be transformed into the form of work, another work activity is needed, and the heat generated by this activity is used to push the heat above to realize the transformation of work.
This is like saying that we don't need outside help when riding downhill, but when riding uphill, we have to work hard. If we don't have enough strength, we have to ask another person to help us. The extra consumption caused by this extra person is entropy.
On the basis of this observation, Clausius described this law, that is, in this negative conversion activity, entropy will definitely be generated, and its value is at least greater than zero to make the whole activity go on. This is the so-called entropy increase principle.
If our whole system follows the positive transformation of nature, then the value of entropy is zero, but the nature mentioned here is not only relative to human nature, but all energy activities that conform to the positive transformation. Even where human factors are zero on earth, the value of entropy will not be zero.
In the world we live in, there are always negative transformation activities, which constantly form negative entropy, and human production and life greatly increase its number. This process exists not only in the macro system, but also in each of us.
At least for modern people, if there is no negative entropy, the existing society cannot function, but negative entropy must point to internal friction, that is, the demise of the whole system.