The Devil Teaches Thermodynamics by Roald Hoffman, taken from "Chemistry Imagined:Reflections on Science"Smithsonian Institute Press;1993.
My second law, your second law, ordains
that local order, structures in space
and time, be crafted in ever-so-losing
contention with proximal disorder in
this neat but getting messier universe.
And we, in the intricate machinery of our
healthy bodies and life-support systems,
in the written and televised word do declar
the majesty of the zoning ordinances
of this Law. But, oh so smart, we think
that we are not things, like weeds,
or rust, or plain boulders, and so
invent a reason for an eternal subsidy
of our perfection, or at least perfectibility,
give it the names of God or the immortal
soul. And while we allow the dissipations
that cannot be hid, like death, and--in literary
stances--even the end of love, we make
the others just plain evil:anger, lust,
pride--the whole lot of pimples of the spirit.
Diseases need vectors, so the old call
goes out for me. But the kicker is that the struts
of God's stave church, those nice seven,
they're such a tense and compressed support
group that when they get through you're really
ready to let off some magma. Faith serves up
passing certitude to weak minds, recruits for
the cults, and too much of her is going to play
hell with the other grand invention
of yours, the social contract. Boring
Prudence hangs around with conservatives,
and Love, love you say! Love one, leave
out the others. Love them all, none will love
you. I tell you, friends, love is the greatest
entropy-increasing device invented by God.
Love is my law's sweet man. And for God
himself, why, his oneness seems too
much for natural man to love, so He comes up
with Northern Irelands and Lebanons...
The argument to be made is not
for your run-of-the mill degeneracy,my
stereotype. No, I want us to awake,
join the imperfect universe at peace with
the disorder that orders. For the cold
death sets in slowly,and there is time,
so much time, for the stars' light to scatter
off the eddies of chance, into our minds,
there to build ever more perfect loves,
invisible cities, our own constellations.
This poem is about entropy, which is the phenomenon whereby things go from order to disorder. Entropy is actually a law of physics, the second law of thermodynamics to be more specific. It states that in a closed system, things will get more and more disordered unless wok is done on them. There are lots of great entropy pages if you are interested in learning more about it.
Days like this, I don't know what to do with myself
All day-and all night
I wander the halls along the walls and under my breath
I say to myself
I need fuel-to take flight-
And there's too much going on
But it's calm under the waves, in the blue of my oblivion
Under the waves in the blue of my oblivion
Is that why they call me a sullen girl-sullen girl-
They don't know I used to sail the deep and tranquil sea
But he washed me ashore and took my pearl-
And left an empty shell of me
And there's too much going on
But it's calm under the waves, in the blue of my oblivion
Under the waves in the blue of my oblivion
It's calm under the waves in the blue of my oblivion
-Fiona Apple from "Tidal" Sony Records, 1996
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