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ABSTRACT
Recent theological interpretations of entropy are almost univocally negative. Entropy is used as a stand-in for disorder, corruption, and evil. Responding to three reasons to correlate entropy and evil, this paper will argue instead that entropy is a good-but-fallen creaturely reality with a role to play in inspiring doxology. This paper argues that both entropy and heat death should be interpreted primarily in light of the doctrines of creation and providence, not eschatology and theodicy. Finally, Christian practices of figural interpretation are employed to interpret even heat death as an edifying phenomenon.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Robert John Russell, “Entropy and Evil,” in Cosmology: From Alpha to Omega (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008). See also Eugenia Torrance, “Entropy and Theodicy: A New Patristic Framework for Understanding Corruption,” Theology and Science 18:4 (2020), 589–603. Torrance interprets entropy as a “limit” set by God that is not, therefore, fundamentally evil, but still describable as “corruption.” See also David Bradnick, “Entropy, The Fall, and Tillich: A Multidisciplinary Approach,” Theology and Science 7:1 (2008), 67–83. P.R. Masani, “The Thermodynamic and Phylogenic Origins of Human Wickedness,” Zygon 20:3 (1985), 283–320. Paul J. Griffiths, Decreation: The Last Things of All Creatures (Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2014). Compare with Klaus Nürnberger, “Eschatology and Entropy: An Alternative to Robert John Russell’s Proposal,” Zygon 47:4 (2012), 970–996. Nürnberger does not explicitly offer an alternative evaluation of entropy, but he does insist that this is the world God has made (not one without entropy). This is a salutary methodological point I will try to follow.
2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 106 a.1 co. in Opera omnia iussu impensaque Leonis XIII. P.M., vols. 4–12 (Rome: Typographia Polyglotta S. C. de Propaganda Fide, 1888–1906).
3 See K.G. Denbigh and J. S. Denbigh, Entropy in Relation to Incomplete Knowledge (London: Cambridge, 1985), 44.
4 Peter Atkins, Laws of Thermodynamics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University, 2010), 62.
5 Ashon Crawley, “Stayed | Freedom | Hallelujah,” in Otherwise Worlds: Against Settler Colonialism and Anti-Blackness, ed. Tiffany King, Jenell Navarro and Andrea Smith (Durham: Duke University, 2020), 29.
6 Elliot Lieb and Jakob Yngvason, “The Entropy of Classical Thermodynamics.” in Entropy, eds. Andreas Greven, Gerald Warnecke, Gerhard Keller (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2003).
7 Some theologians also select statistical entropy because it seems most characterizable as disorder. See, for example, Bradnick, “Entropy, the Fall, and Tillich,” 70–71. Yet, there are reasons to think that disorder is an erroneous metaphor even for statistical entropy. See, for example, Henning Struchtrup “Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics—The Nonequilibrium Perspective,” Entropy 22 (2020), 793. He both defends Boltzmann’s equations and differentiates entropy and disorder.
8 For the most accessible introduction on time and entropy of which I am aware, see Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time, (New York: Riverhead Books, 2018), 23–33; 131–157.
9 Rovelli, Order of Time, 27–28. Rovelli is not claiming entropy is subjective. This “blur” is primarily a result of quantum properties, and of the observer as a physical (not mental) system. See Denbigh and Denbigh, Entropy in Relation to Incomplete Knowledge, 1–48, for a robust argument against subjective entropy. Rovelli’s image is associated closely with Josiah Willard Gibbs’ idea of systems between which no measurement could distinguish, a description of entropy that is not dependent on molecular explanations. An introduction to Gibbs can be found in Carl S. Helrich, “Thermodynamics: What One Needs to Know,” Zygon 34:3 (1999), 501–514; 506.
10 Kate J. Jeffery and Carlo Rovelli, “Transitions in Brain Evolution: Space, Time and Entropy,” Trends in Neurosciences 43:7 (2020), 467–474; 468.
11 Rovelli, Order of Time, 163n97.
12 For a good example of entropy and disorder correlated, see Atkins, Laws of Thermodynamics, 52–55. For an example on how they can be distinguished, see Peter Landsberg, “Can Entropy and ‘Order’ Increase Together?” Physics Letters 102A.4 (1984), 171–173.
13 J.R. Watson and E.M Carson, “Undergraduate Students' Understandings of Entropy and Gibbs Free Energy,” University Chemistry Education 6:1 (2002), 4–11; 5.
14 Denbigh and Denbigh, Entropy in Relation to Incomplete Knowledge, 43–47.
15 Paul Davies, The Last Three Minutes: Conjectures About the Ultimate Fate of the Universe (New York: BasicBooks, 1994), 116–118.
16 Paul Davies, “Emergent Complexity, Teleology, and the Arrow of Time,” in Debating Design, eds William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2004).
17 Davies, The Last Three Minutes, 117.
18 Davies, “Emergent Complexity, Teleology, and the Arrow of Time,” 200.
19 Davies, “Emergent Complexity, Teleology, and the Arrow of Time,” 195. For a more technical treatment, see Steven Weinberg, Cosmology, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 109–113.
20 Peter Landsberg, Thermodynamics with Quantum Statistical Illustrations (New York: Interscience Publishers, 1961), 391.
21 For example, the abundance of the negative specific heat of gravity. Paul Davies, “Emergent Complexity, Teleology, and the Arrow of Time,” 200–202. See also Lee Smolin, “Time, Laws, and Future of Cosmology,” Physics Today, 67:3 (2014), 38–43; 42.
22 Paul Davies, The Last Three Minutes, 112. He goes on to describe many ways civilization could survive indefinitely (pp. 108–118), and many ways the universe could end unrelated to entropy (pp. 128–135).
23 Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue With Nature (New York: Bantam Books, 1984).
24 Axel Kleidon, “Life, Hierarchy, and the Thermodynamic Machinery of Planet Earth,” Physics of Life Reviews 7:4 (2010), 424–460.
25 E.g. Karo, Michaelian, “Thermodynamic Dissipation Theory for the Origin of Life,” Earth System Dynamics 2:1 (2011), 37–57. R. M. Pulselli, E. Simonici and E. Tiezzi, “Self-Organization in Dissipative Structures: A Thermodynamic Theory for the Emergence of Prebiotic Cells and Their Epigenetic Evolution,” Biosystems 96:3 (2009), 237–241.
26 Jeremy England, “Statistical Physics of Self-Replication,” Journal of Chemistry Physics 139 (2013); 7.
27 Kleidon, “Life, Hierarchy, and the Thermodynamic Machinery of Planet Earth,” 424.
28 Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, Activation of Energy, René Hague, trans. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 112. See also pages 290 and 383.
29 De Chardin, Activation of Energy, 331–332.
30 De Chardin, Activation of Energy, 302; 315.
31 De Chardin, Activation of Energy, 389.
32 E.g. De Chardin, Activation of Energy, 330.
33 Russell, “Entropy and Evil,” 226.
34 Russell, “Entropy and Evil,” 236–237.
35 Russell, “Entropy and Evil,” 237. Though it is a rhetorical objection, I want to note the ableist metaphor. Russell is using a broken back to describe entropy becoming non-existent or inoperable. Persons with broken backs exist, and they may question the association with inoperability.
36 Bradnick, “Entropy, the Fall, and Tillich,” 73.
37 See Bradnick, “Entropy, the Fall, and Tillich,” 70–71. Russell speaks of viruses and tornadoes as examples entropy’s destructiveness, even though these are highly ordered low-entropy systems. In the next paragraph he treats a fire dying down and heat death as evidence, though heat death is a high-entropy reality. The nature of the correlation between entropy and evil thus becomes unclear at the precise moment Russell presses this connection rhetorically. Russell, Evil and Entropy, 233.
38 This point is actually made most extensively by P.R. Masani, “The Thermodynamic and Phylogenetic Origins,” 288–299. There are idiosyncratic features of Masani’s work, like his non-axiological use of “evil,” that make it a less representative sample. I have therefore decided to focus on Russell and Bradnick’s more recent works.
39 The most quoted is Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life?: The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell, With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1992 [1944]), 73–75.
40 Quoted in Joseph Robert Burger, Chen Hou and James H. Brown, “Toward a Metabolic Theory of Life History,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 116:52 (2019), 26653–26661; 26653.
41 Kleidon, “Life Hierarchy, and the Thermodynamic Machinery of Planet Earth,” 426.
42 Russell, “Entropy and Evil,” 241–245. Much of the resonance Russell sees between entropy as a metaphor for evil comes from a nuanced abstraction of Augustinian theodicy. I have chosen not to focus on this particular element of Russell’s correlation for three reasons. (1) It seems dependent on the prior negative association of entropy with evil or disorder challenged here. (2) It is less about entropy than fluctuations in entropy production. (3) Augustine is likely no friend of the free-will defence he has been made to represent. See Jesse Couenhoven, Augustine's Rejection of the Free-Will Defence: an Overview of the Late Augustine's Theodicy,” Religious Studies 43:4 (2007), 279–298.
43 Bradnick, “Entropy, Original Sin, and Tillich,” 75. Russell, “Entropy and Evil,” 235.
44 Robert Russell, “Natural Theodicy in an Evolutionary Context,” in Cosmology from Alpha to Omega, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 259.
45 E.g. Martin A. Nowak, “Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation,” Science 314 (2006), 1560–1563. See also Mark W. Kirschner and John C. Gerhart, The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005). For a “New Evolutionary Synthesis” grounded on an explicitly thermodynamic basis, see Mario Villalobos et al., “Autopoiesis, Thermodynamics, and the Natural Drift of Living Beings: Another Way to the New Evolutionary Synthesis,” Entropy 24:7 (2022), 914.
46 See, for example, Elizabeth Johnson, Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love (London; Bloomsbury, 2014), 219–227.
47 Ian McFarland, “The Problem with Evil,” Theology Today 74:4 (2018), 321–339.
48 Ian McFarland, “The Problem with Evil,” 321–339.
49 Russell, “Entropy and Evil,” 232.
50 McFarland, “The Problem with Evil,” 329–334.
51 Hans, Madueme, “The Theological Problem With Evolution,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 56:2 (2021), 481–499.
52 On the possibility of death (as cessation) that is fundamentally created good, see Kathryn Tanner, “Eschatology Without a Future?,” in The End of the World and the Ends of God, eds. John Polkinghorne and Michael Welker (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 2000), 232. See also the discussion of Karl Barth in Case-Winters, “The End? Christian Eschatology and the End of the World,” Interpretation 70:1:61–74; 66–69.
53 Shane Clifton, “Theodicy, Disability, and Fragility: An Attempt to Find Meaning in the Aftermath of Quadriplegia,” Theological Studies 76:4 (2015), 765–784; 772.
54 Russell, “Natural Theodicy,” 254–255.
55 Karen Kilby, “Evil and the Limits of Theology,” New Blackfriars 84 (2007), 13–29.
56 Neil Ormerod, A Public God: Natural Theology Reconsidered (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 166–167. McFarland, “The Problem with Evil,” 323; 323n6.
57 Denbigh and Denbigh, Entropy in Relation to Incomplete Knowledge, 17.
58 Shane Clifton, “Theodicy, Disability, and Fragility,” 772.
59 Russell, “Natural Theodicy,” 266.
60 Russell, “Evil and Entropy,” 238–245. Paul J. Griffiths, Decreation: The Last Things of All Creatures (Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2014).
61 Russell, “Evil and Entropy,” 238–240.
62 Russell, “Evil and Entropy,” 241.
63 Russell, “Evil and Entropy,” 241.
64 Griffiths, Decreation, 119–135.
65 See Griffiths, Decreation, 134–135; 311. Griffiths tends to use just the term “entropy” when discussing linear time, though in fact his objections would apply to the whole field of irreversible thermodynamics. This is likely an infelicitous downstream effect of entropy’s use in negative metaphors, since entropy is an ancillary point in this larger work.
66 Kathryn Tanner makes a similar point in Tanner, “Eschatology Without a Future?,” 232. Similarly, some physicists have doubted that irreversible thermodynamics establishes any privileged time-flow toward what we take to be the future. See Carlo Rovelli, “Is Time’s Arrow Perspectival?,” in The Philosophy of Cosmology, eds. K. Chamcham, J. Silk, J. Barrow and S. Saunders (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2017), 285–296.
67 Peter Leithart, “Decreation,” Reformation21 (September 22, 2015), accessed at https://www.reformation21.org/articles/decreation.php.
68 Kathryn Tanner summarizes many of these responses in Tanner, “Eschatology Without a Future,” 222–223. The rest of the volume include many others. See also Anna Case-Winters, “The End?”
69 Russell, “Evil and Entropy,” 226.
70 Drew Collins, The Unique and Universal Christ: Refiguring the Theology of Religions (Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2021), 124, emphasis mine.
71 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I q. 116 a.1 co.–ad.2. See a similar appeal in Clifton, “Theodicy,” 775–776. Many less traditional doctrines of providence would give similar effects. What is important is the God embraces every detail of the world as self-communicative love. A process God who lays a “lure” for every actual entity may be sufficient.
72 Tanner, “Eschatology Without a Future?,” 233–236.
73 This is not to claim that entropy is subjective. See Denbigh, Entropy In Relation to Incomplete Knowledge, 46.
74 Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, “God’s Hum,” Accessed April 12, 2022, from https://www.ecstaticxchange.com/.
75 Oleg, Bychkov, “What Does Beauty Have to Do With the Trinity?: From Augustine to Duns Scotus,” 66 (2008), 197–212.
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Nathan Jowers
Nathan Jowers is a Ph.D. student in Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University.