The Second Law Of Thermodynamics Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 690):

Whereas the first law is an equality, the second law is an inequality. It tells us that a different quantity, known as the entropy has a larger (or, at least, not smaller) value after some process takes place than it had before. Entropy is, very roughly speaking, a measure of the ‘randomness’ in the system. Our body moving through the air starts with its energy in an organised form (its kinetic energy of motion) but when it slows down from air resistance, this energy gets distributed in the random motions of air particles and individual particles in the body. The ‘randomness has increased’; more specifically, the entropy has increased.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, energy can be understood as the ability of a process to unfold, and entropy can be understood as the decrease in that ability. In this view, the second law of thermodynamics says that the unfolding of a process has the effect of decreasing the ability of that process to unfold, therefore making the unfolding less probable in the future.