Progress's First Principles
How energy and knowledge can counter-entropy
Risk & Progress| A hub for essays that explore risk, human progress, and your potential. My mission is to educate, inspire, and invest in concepts that promote a better future. Subscriptions are free, paid subscribers gain access to the full archive, including the Pathways of Progress and Realize essay series.
Physics is the law; everything else is a recommendation. Everything that is, ever was, and will be, is bound by the obscure mathematics that governs the cosmos. To understand progress and suggest pathways to a better world, we must begin this examination at its most fundamental level. In this exploration of the first principles of “progress,” we must understand the interplay between energy, matter, knowledge, and entropy. Understanding progress from these fundamentals is crucial to understanding where we are, how we got here, and where we are going.
Understanding Entropy
We begin our discussion with the concept of “entropy,” which is rooted in the laws of thermodynamics. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. So far, so good. Entropy, however, is a consequence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law states that in an isolated system, “entropy” will never decrease. Technically, entropy describes the dispersion of heat in a system. At the risk of oversimplification, we might think of entropy as a measure of “disorder,” the higher the entropy, the more disorder. In our universe, everything always tends from order to disorder.
Another way to think of entropy is to think in terms of probabilities. Imagine you are given a box of puzzle peices. Should you dump the puzzle pieces onto a table, they will almost certainly land in a disordered fashion and not in the final image. Why? While it is technically possible to dump the pieces out and for them to fall and arrange themselves into the final picture, the probability of this happening is inestimably small. There is only one way for the pieces to organize themselves into the image, but there are nearly infinite ways for them to land in the “wrong” order.
Similarly, if you build a sandcastle on the beach and return a few days later, your sandcastle is probably long gone; the grains of sand returned to a random arrangement of particles on the beach. There are nearly infinite ways of arranging sand grains on a beach, but few that will build your castle. The universe, absent intervention, will always return order to disorder. This concept is a fundamental property acting on everything we are, everything we do, and everything that happens to us. It’s why we cannot “uncrack” an egg, for instance, or why a hot mug left on a bedside table always cools down. These are universal truths, physical laws that cannot be broken; the mathematical confines of reality.
It’s important to understand, however, that while a collection of atoms will succumb to entropy, a specific arrangement of atoms can resist it: life. Using energy, life brings order from disorder. Cells absorb nutrients, build complex organelles, divide, and reproduce. Trees absorb the energy of sunlight, growing taller and wider by creating structures of order that stand up against the inevitability of entropy. To be clear, this does not mean that life violates the laws of physics; on the contrary, as we will discuss, life accelerates entropy when it uses energy. Organisms can counter entropy because they are not isolated systems, a requirement of the second law of thermodynamics.
In other words, in furtherance of entropy, life carves a slice of order from the disorder. It can do this because life contains the knowledge required to carry out this mission, contained in its DNA. Among the lifeforms that exist today, however, humans are unique. Our large brains and ability to communicate through vocal vibrations enable us to plan, wonder, reason, and spread knowledge. As far as we know, we are the only arrangement of atoms capable of discovering and understanding the very laws of the universe that constrain us. We are therefore unique in our ability to acquire and diffuse counter-entropic knowledge.
And while we cannot counter entropy forever as individuals, as a species, we can do so for a nearly infinite time. This struggle against entropy gives us purpose and is what fundamentally defines all progress. Progress is our never-ending endeavor to carve a slice of order from the disorder in furtherance of the universe’s physical laws. Indeed, this desire for order may be so deeply rooted in our biology that we are naturally wired to be attracted to counter-entropic forms, from flowers to architecture.
Matter or Energy?
We carve this order out of “matter.” We construct skyscrapers from steel that rise to the heavens, we transform sand particles into glass, and we develop molecules that help our bodies overcome disease. This counter-entropic mission requires “matter” and/or “energy.” I will often refer to these as two distinct concepts, but bear in mind, this is useful shorthand. Reality is complex, and “matter” is difficult to define. We often think of “matter” as that which has “mass,” but not all “matter” has mass! “Matter” is better thought of as a measure of intrinsic energy content, or “bound energy.” From this “intrinsic energy,” we can get mass, the “stuff” we can feel with our hands, manipulate, and build from.
How can “energy” have mass? We get mass in two ways. First, from the mass of elementary particles that make up atoms, like quarks, when they interact with the “Higgs Field.” The Higgs Field is a kind of “energy field” that permeates all space. The more the elementary particle interacts with the Higgs Field, the greater its “mass.” Note that some particles, like photons, don’t interact at all and therefore have no mass. We don’t know why this is; like entropy itself, this appears to be a mathematical property written at the universe’s inception.
Over 99 percent of an atom’s mass, however, is not found in the subatomic particles, but rather in the energy that “glues” them together. The energy that holds quarks together, for example, is mediated by massless particles known as “gluons.” This “strong force,” as it is known, bends spacetime, creating gravity and what we perceive as “mass.” Additionally, the separate “strong nuclear force” that keeps protons and neutrons glued together also contributes to an atom’s mass.
Matter and energy, therefore, while not the same, are not entirely distinct. In fact, Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc², was originally written as m=E/c², illustrating that mass is a measurement of the energy contained within a body. This property explains why we can build nuclear reactors that split atoms to release energy. It’s also why we can create atomic weapons that unleash unfathomable destructive power. It also means that all energy contributes to mass; a compressed spring and a charged battery, for instance, are heavier because they contain more energy; the difference is just too small for us to notice. Philosophically, we might think of “matter” as the universe’s means of confining energy so we can build useful forms, while “energy” is a property that describes behavior (motion energy, potential energy, kinetic energy…etc).
Knowledge
Matter and energy won’t do much of their own accord, however, we also need knowledge. A skyscraper won’t rise on its own. We need to know how to build it. We need to know how to precisely control the carbon content of iron to make steel with the correct properties. Someone had to invent the steel girder, the crane, the elevator, the bolt, and countless other innovations to make this counter-entropic form possible. What we call “technology” is the use of knowledge to create beneficial counter-entropic forms; utilizing matter and energy for human ends. It’s how we learned, for example, how to use energy to replenish depleted soils through nitrogen fixation and how to produce more food. It’s how we learned to create small, rapid, and contained explosions to build engines to do work that humans could not.
Unlike matter and energy, knowledge is infinite. The only limitation is how fast we can accumulate it. I will argue that human society and what we call the “economy” is one giant “social supercomputer,” taking in massive amounts of input data and producing voluminous output data in return. This ceaseless compute is a search for answers to ever more complex counter-entropic riddles. It’s the search for new knowledge that expands the capabilities of our species in the furtherance of entropy. In the long run, what we call “economic growth,” therefore, is merely a measure of the growth in the total stock of human knowledge in a given period.
Only with continued technological advancement, with expanded counter-entropic capabilities, can we sustain the light of human consciousness. One day, an exhausted Sun will expand and boil Earth’s oceans, if not consume the Earth entirely. When this happens, all life on the pale blue dot will end, and its counter-entropic beauty will cease. The only hope for life is us. Progress has bequeathed our species with nearly limitless technological capability. With this power, the power of knowledge, we have the potential to leave this planet, taking life with us to other star systems. We often ask, why are we here? My answer is, as good stewards of Earth, we are here to spare life from total annihilation from that fusion engine in the sky.
You may also like….
Matter” is better thought of as a measure of intrinsic energy content, or “bound energy.”
Wealth ” is better thought of as a measure of intrinsic knowledge content, or “discovered knowledge.”