Ok so to summarize the statistical presentation of the second law's teleological directive to randomize matter: Anytime you concentrate a great many of the same thing in one place, you put pressure on a system to come up with ways to rearrange that thing into something new and thereby increase the configurational possibilities of the universe. Again then, we see that the production of entropy is only tangentially connected to the wasted effort given off by our motors and is rather the explanation for the statistical drive that ensures the immanent differentiation and ceaseless mixing of the biosphere. As space itself expands due to the fact that we live after the big bang, so too do the historical possibilities of a complex system increase with time. I have come to be convinced that these phenomena are fundamentally connected and will one day provide deep insight into the structure of time and physical nature, though I have no idea yet what that realization might be…
So that’s matter randomization and configurational entropy. Next time we’ll connect matter and energy flows through the concept of chemical cycles which were the abiotic progenitors of life on this planet. Stay tuned!