Our vision of things limits our point of view. We perceive everything in binary terms: good and evil, order and disorder, light and darkness. Yet, the “good” and the “evil” which seem opposed might actually be tied to two “laws” of Nature, two fundamental concepts, Entropy and Emergence, which indeed coexist and cannot function without each other.
Natural sciences support the coexistence of two fundamental concepts that seem opposed at first glance: Entropy and Emergence. Entropy refers to an idea of disorder, a notion one might consider negative. Everything has an end. Whatever we do, there will come a time when there will be no living soul on Earth, we will all die. The end of the world is inevitable. In the face of this Entropy, this vision of the ultimate death of the Universe, lies the concept of Emergence, which can be likened to order. And contrary to what one might think, Emergence establishes its ability to organize as a consequence of the growth of Entropy, and not in spite of it.
The book “Emergence” by Jacques Neirynck shows us that Emergence retraces Creation as a process that abides by the “laws” of Nature: the emergence of local order from global chaos. In other words, it is Emergence that created us. In his book, the author shows us that everything, from the appearance of life to the history of our planet up to today, is closely related to these two concepts of Entropy and Emergence. He traces, in chronological order, the history of our existence and comes to the following conclusion: “The two concepts, Entropy and Emergence, are at the base of our knowledge, both physical and historical; they stem from such fundamental functions that one can estimate they will never change. Humans find themselves at the intersection of this dual discovery. As they perish by Entropy, they must find their meaning in Emergence.”
Jacques Neirynck thus tells us the story of our species through the notions of Entropy and Emergence, in a way. After the first chapters, which explain these two concepts quite theoretically, he applies them to our History, in specific situations that help us better understand these ideas. Therefore, it addresses, for example, the Emergence of the Neolithic, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or even the fall of the Roman Empire, which is the result of a relentless mechanism: the growth of Entropy allied with the inability to provoke an Emergence.
Thus, there are no two opposing forces contradicting each other in the Universe. There is not good on one side and evil on the other. “Entropy and Emergence are two sides of the same phenomenon, both destructive and constructive. From the perspective of Emergence, it is necessary to achieve a stable technical system, which implies controlling the population on one hand and the available resources, renewable or not, on the other. Without this caution, the weight of Entropy always ends up prevailing, due to the growing imbalance between the increasing population and the depleting means.”
This work, although quite complex as a whole, enlightens us on the concepts of Entropy and Emergence, making us revisit our History from a new angle. A fascinating work!
Author’s website: https://www.jacques-neirynck.com/
