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The laws which govern how much energy is available are called the laws of thermodynamics and involve a concept called entropy for irreversible thermodynamic processes.
Robert B. Leighton • Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy (a measure of disorder simply understood as energy unable to be used to do work) of an isolated system always increases. Isolated systems are those that spontaneously progress toward the state of maximum entropy of the system, also described as thermal equilibrium—no net heat flow between objects
... See moreShane Parrish • The Great Mental Models Volume 2: Physics, Chemistry and Biology
Entropy is the supreme law of the Universe, which illustrates that systems tend toward disorder, chaos, and destruction on all planes of existence unless energy is put into the system. In other words, nothing is permanent.
Dan Koe • The Art of Focus: Find Meaning, Reinvent Yourself and Create Your Ideal Future
The entropy of the universe only increases with time. One of the impacts of this law is that we need to expend energy to create order. Without the deployment of energy, all things move away from order.
Shane Parrish • The Great Mental Models Volume 2: Physics, Chemistry and Biology
Since Boltzmann’s entropy measure is not about the dispersion of heat per se, but the evolving spatial configuration of a many-particle system’s components, we may call it statistical entropy, or configurational entropy.
Bobby Azarian • The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity
“The initial disequilibrium of the past is the reason the present has traces of the past. The formation of every trace is nothing other than an intermediate step toward equilibrium. If the present has traces of the past, it is due solely to the disequilibrium of that past. It is for this reason that we remember the past and not the future — because
... See moreFarnam Street • Natural Disorder
Entropy was not a kind of energy or an amount of energy; it was, as Clausius had said, the unavailability of energy.
James Gleick • The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
The universes predicted by Boltzmann and Maxwell, and later refined by the thermodynamics of Helmholtz, Gibbs, and Einstein, were universes that evolved into homogeneous soups—soups in which there was no information and energy was no longer free (that is, there was no energy available to perform work).3