Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 337
ENTROPY AND THE FINITE UNIVERSE يَوْمَ نَطْوِى السَّمَاءَ كَطَيِّ السِّجِلِ لِلْكُتُبِ كَمَا بَدَانَا أَوَّلَ خَلْقٍ تُعِيْدُهُ وَعْدًا عَلَيْنَا إِنَّا كُنَّا فَعِلِينَ* 21:105. Remember the day when We shall roll up the heavens like the rolling up of written scrolls by a scribe. As We began the first creation, so shall We repeat it - a promise binding upon Us; We shall certainly perform it. ³ n ow we quote some eminent scientists in support of what we have claimed in the foregoing passages. . Paul Davies, Professor of Natural Pl. Philosophy at the. University of Adelaide, and winner of the prestigious. Templeton Prize states: 'These problems began to force themselves on scientists during the mid-nineteenth century. Until then the physicists had dealt with laws that are symmetric in time, displaying no favoritism between past and future. Then the investigation of the thermodynamic processes changed that for good. At the heart of thermodynamics lies the second law, which forbids heat to flow spontaneously from cold to hot bodies, while allowing it to flow from hot to cold. This law is therefore not reversible: it imprints upon the universe an arrow of time, pointing the way of unidirectional change. Scientists were quick to draw the conclusion that the universe is engaged in a one-way slide toward a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. This tendency toward uniformity, wherein temperatures even out and the universe settles into a stable state, became known as the "heat death. " It represents a state of maximum molecular disorder, or entropy. The fact that the universe has not yet so died - that is, it is still in a state of less326