Order and chaos intersect and collide in every corner of our universe. To explain the impact between both properties, the second law of thermodynamics arises, a fixed rule that tells us that the amount of entropy in the universe tends to increase over time. This indicates the irreversibility of natural processes, something as easy to understand as the fact that it is impossible to smoke a cigarette and then recover its smoke to turn it back into a cigarette; something absurd, the closest thing to a line of dialogue introduced by Paul Auster in the script of the film Smoke.
But returning to reality, we must remember that only those processes that are presented to us as theoretical fiction are reversible and these do not occur in nature. This serves as an example The Portrait of Dorian Graythe novel by Oscar Wilde in which the protagonist manages to make his portrait, and not himself, grow old. In this way, Oscar Wilde gave his character over to the second principle of thermodynamics, since the idea of reducing entropy in one place so that it increases in another leads us to the transfer of heat that flows between two bodies with different temperatures when they enter into thermal connection and the heat is transmitted from the body with the higher temperature to the one with the lower temperature. In fact, the word entropy ἐντροπία comes from the Greek words ενέργεια (energy) and τροπή (transformation).
But if there is a novel whose plot contains several intersecting stories and where the concept of entropy emerges at every step, that novel was written by Adolfo Bioy Casares. It is titled The invention of Morel (Alfaguara) and in it appears the idea of a machine powered by kinetic energy that captures reality, reliving it forever. A device where entropy becomes a reversible fact, since the advance of time, its arrow, breaks to stop and, with it, the perception of time is also broken, thus renewing the theme of eternal return from the very moment in which the characters will eternally repeat the same acts.
Adolfo Bioy Casares’ novel appeared in 1940 and was the subject of praise and criticism, as happens with any work that is intended to endure. Among the critics, it is worth highlighting the one made by Eduardo González Lanuza, an Argentine writer of Spanish origin with scientific studies specializing in chemistry. The review appeared in the magazine SouthNo. 75, December 1940, and it was important because, in turn, another scientist, in this case the physicist and writer Ernesto Sabato, used the second principle of thermodynamics to make a counter-reply. Sabato’s critique appeared in the first issue of the magazine Theseusin 1941, and it is not to be missed.
In it, Sabato shines as if he were interpreting a western, but in comedy style, where the revolvers are water, in this case hot water, to point at González Lanuza who lowers his loaded by the “Sum of Temperatures and by the Second Principle, so that it is more like a double-barrel shotgun” with which until now he was pointing at Bioy Casares to reproach him that, in his novel, he had forgotten the principles of thermodynamics. Sabato reminds González Lanuza that although entropy is “Death”, in the case of The invention of Morel There is also the possibility that it is “the logarithm of the probability.”
“The necessary thus merges with the contingent and random, in a way that would be pleasing to Hegel,” Ernesto Sabato concludes the piece in this way, implying that the progress of one corner of the universe does not always imply the return of another corner of the universe.
The stone axe It is a section where Montero Glezwith a will to prose, exercises his particular siege on scientific reality to demonstrate that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.
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