I distinctly recall the sour taste of fear that would catch in my throat upon opening a Where’s Waldo? booklet. The smaller, more zoomed-in scenes were manageable, my eyes flitting across dozens of faces until that red-and-white striped sweater leapt out at me. But when the crowds burgeoned and the tumult escalated, I could feel my heart beginning to palpitate rapidly. I would think: how do I track it all? With every other character intently engaged in some intriguing yet attention-robbing activity, my thoughts scrambled and I wasn’t sure which areas I had just inspected, which figures I had already scrutinized. Before I knew it, I’d altogether forgotten that my original intent was to uproot Waldo from whichever shadowy depth he had hidden within. I couldn’t manage the chaos, the disorder, the movement. And as the settings swelled in size, I recognized that my grasp on each distinct happening slipped. I suppose Waldo made it evident that I simply couldn’t track it all; no matter how I endeavored, chaos emerged as the victor. And to the victor belong the spoils.  

But while Waldo and the terrifying discord that decorated his pages faded into the oblivion of my memory, the fundamental principle I grappled with remains omnipresent: entropy. This thermodynamic concept describes the incredibly simple, yet key idea of disorder—it provides the logical and scientific underpinnings for the chaos that pervades nature. In its most elementary articulation, the second law of thermodynamics posits that the entropy of the entire universe is perpetually increasing. Or, in different terms, everything, in sum, gradually moves towards its most disordered state. To loosely illustrate this, allow us to return to Waldo. Imagine a scenario in which Waldo and each of his companions are neatly organized in a gridlike pattern (how quickly I would have located him!). However, in this now dynamic universe Waldo and his companions are not statues, they are mobile, restless, human. So, in a matter of moments, the figures will have broken their coordinated arrangement. Some begin playing tag at the page’s corner or performing jumping jacks at the page’s top edge or scaling the tall palm trees that dot the terrain. What’s more, their initial organization bears no import. Whether they begin in a human pyramid or some other configuration that tests human imagination, mess will inevitably materialize and chaos will ensue. Or—imagine the collective of friends who enter into this Waldoian universe with one another, intimately bonded and fervidly loyal. Yet as they age, they form connections outside of their group, develop distinct passions, and subscribe to divergent philosophies. Eventually they find themselves scattered across peoples and disciplines, even geographic regions as they venture about their page’s confines. There is a kind of inevitability that plagues both the chaos of crowds and the distancing of friends. Ultimately, this is the portrait that the second law of thermodynamics with its description of entropy paints. 

But these principles of entropy can be extrapolated even further. Upon reconsidering the example of the friend group, it seems that the larger the friend group, the more rapid this scattering: they find connections outside the group more quickly with a wider array of personalities, there are more opportunities for personal variation and divergence to arise, and more encounters outside the group. Thus, this appears to indicate that a band of 30 friends will descend into disorder far quicker than a group of a mere 5. Indeed, larger systems do not escape this ubiquitous tendency towards disorder that marks all of existence. Larger corporations require more managers to handle the increasing scale of their workforce and finances (which at great scales are both more likely to fall into disorder) and larger societies require more convoluted governmental bodies to facilitate their growing population size. Even the globalization of economies is an example of how, at a greater scale, the potential for chaos grows: a trade between two people exchanging two items is simple and little disorder exists, yet trade agreements between multiple nations involving a multitude of goods is, of course, more complex. Evidently, this inevitable descent into chaos that all things endure is linked with an increase in scale. 

It seems then, that everything is doomed to a fate that entails disorder and expansion. In fact, physicists have long theorized that the universe is destined to arrive at a kind of thermal death (colloquially referred to as the “Big Freeze” or “Big Chill”) wherein all energy is equally dispersed. It should be noted that this universal doom that physicists among the likes of William Thomson and Hermann von Helmholtz have postulated since the mid 19th century is only likely to manifest in a future unfathomably distant. Even so, such an absolute and comprehensive thermal death does not occur suddenly; it’s gradual, already transpiring. Even now, we can witness this dispersal of energy unfolding before our eyes, astrophysicists uniformly maintaining that the universe itself is undergoing a rapid expansion. In other words, this increase in disorder is not just some distant occurrence, it is deep-seated in the fabric of our lives, it can already be felt. One particularly chilling manifestation of this phenomenon is present in the case of the rapidly diminishing biodiversity of the planet, the incessant intermixing of all things—explained by the aforementioned theory of increasing disorder—proving detrimental to the distinctiveness of Earth’s separate ecosystems. Applied even more directly, humans themselves (a component of this massive, doomed universe) are also destined for disorder, each of the atoms which comprise our bodies set to spread out into the far reaches of existence, our lives tinged with this pervasive chaos. 

This same gloom surrounding our collective progression towards thermal death is eerily portrayed in a variety of accounts, such as Isaac Asimov’s “Last Question,” a short story in which humans, throughout the ages, repeatedly ask an incredibly advanced computer how the process of entropy might be reversed—it responds that it simply does not have sufficient information to answer. This tale depicts the universe’s descent into a final, ultimate stillness eventually achieved across every aspect of existence. The entire narrative reflects a general apprehension that afflicts most humans in the face of the universe’s ever-augmenting chaos. Yet it is paramount to acknowledge that Asimov’s fiction is not solely pessimistic; he advances the notion that optimism can endure despite the seemingly inescapable clutches of entropy, evidenced by the presence of “light” even when entropy has run its course to the extreme—thermal death. This premise—that good and things of value can exist despite the overwhelming presence and scale of disorder—points to a capacity humans possess to carve out meaning and purpose in a world that is ultimately unpredictable and confused.   

Indeed, while this steady increase in entropy throughout the universe appears utterly inescapable, it is critical that one understands that this change in entropy is a sum of all the individual changes of entropy throughout the universe. This, in turn, signifies that there can exist smaller systems within the macrocosm of reality which can experience a decrease in entropy (an increase in order), so long as the general tendency of the universe remains oriented towards an increase in entropy. Put differently, the second law of thermodynamics does not imply that nature is incapable of order, but that the order which exists on Earth and in our relatively small lives is atypical in the context of the broader trends of the universe. Nature teems with intricately organized and coordinated ecosystems, organisms, tissues, and cells. It’s a marvel of existence: in spite of entropy’s crescendo, we find moments that defy this universal tendency. There even exist certain social and cultural landmarks, particularly in recent times, that appear to lead a marked trajectory towards order. Countless examples of this seemingly paradoxical shift away from entropic favorability—disorder—can be identified, such the late consolidation in the size of technologies such as phones and televisions or the drastic shortening of song lengths through the decades. Of course, scale and order are not one in the same, but as previously discerned, there is a pronounced correlation between the two. 

Naturally, these infinitesimal portions of the universe which experience a decrease in entropy do not do so naturally; there must be some outside input of energy which drives the system in question away from entropic favorability, away from its tendency. By favorability, I refer to the state that nature tends towards most frequently, without any outside stimulus. Thus, in order for these small, ordered systems—such as those which pervade the field of biology—to exist, they cannot be isolated; they must receive some input from the broader universe. Put in other terms, these systems must remain open such that they retain the capacity to exchange energy with their surroundings. Consider the paragon of organization within the study of life: cells. These fundamental units of life incessantly exchange both materials and energy with their surroundings, allowing them to foster a semblance of order. In any case, these microcosms of order serve as counterexamples to the premise that humanity is doomed to pandemonium and disorder. We are equipped with means of resisting, albeit temporarily, the progression of entropy, and the chaos and dispersal which ensues. All we need is an input of energy, of cosmic order.

To further elucidate this, regard the aforementioned Waldoian universe as its own system—tending towards chaos because it is isolated, restricted by the confines of the page. Further suppose that after the various characters scatter about the landscape, I am able to reach my hand into the bustling scene, acting as a force capable of moving the characters as I please. I could very well position them in their original grid formation, restoring the order that had long deteriorated. I am able to engender order from chaos because I am introducing the system (Waldo’s page) to another aspect of the broader universe (my hand). This clearly illustrates the concept which overarches discussions of entropy: in order to arrive at order from chaos, there must exist some thing, some outside agent, to do the organizing. If we seek to “counter” the natural progression of entropy, we must act as the agents of order, supplying the outside energy towards systems that can propel them towards a more organized state. Order requires effort; it requires work; it requires that we consciously endeavor towards our desired arrangements of society, the world, and the broader universe. It is not something achieved through complacency and inaction.  

However, all of this assumes that any capitulation towards disorder is inherently adverse towards the goal of human contentment and progress. While it is true that certain manifestations of disorder and chaos can be detrimental to human flourishing, entropy can also lead to novel and beneficial outcomes for the whole of humanity. For instance, the breakdown of old systems and structures often pave the way for innovative ideas to emerge and take hold in modern society; the advent of the internet and the digital revolution accompanied the breakdown of traditional forms of communication and information exchange, for example. Particularly in the field of science, many of the most pivotal breakthroughs and discoveries have come about through the collapse of existing theories and the development of superior explanations of the available evidence. Evidently, there is a degree of utility to the ever-compounding nature of disorder as it can serve as a precursor to the advancement of a multitude of human endeavors and aims. Disorder, in many ways, facilitates the progression of humanity as a whole. 

Even on the individual level, our lives are defined by this constant flux of the universe, the process of incessant disruption and change that uproots the potential monotony of our existences and injects them with a sense of unpredictability and excitement. If humans were truly committed to circumventing disorder, they would subscribe to the previously delineated logic surrounding the relation between scale and disorder, resolving to lead their life at the smallest scale possible. They would interact with the minimal quantity of people, discard all of their possessions except those which are most fundamentally necessary, and, in general, heed to the principles of simplicity and order. Yet it’s obvious that such a lifestyle is devoid of certain experiences and values most humans hold dearly, salient examples including the lack of interpersonal connection and the ability to appreciate variety and diversity. Indeed, it seems as though in the pursuit of an ideal marked by order and tranquility, the individual sacrifices other defining aspects of the human experience. This is all to say that perhaps value can be extracted from the universe’s persistent descent into disorder. While it’s true that thermal death and its implications still loom, it would be imprecise to label this fate as a “doom” in the face of all the nuance and complexity the concept of disorder bears. Perhaps it’s not so much a death as it is a rebirth, a rebirth in how we interact with the world in light of its tendency toward disorder—the embrace of entropy.

In many ways each of us stands as our own Waldo, enveloped by the ceaseless and ubiquitous hubbub of existence, yet still standing despite this chaos. Of course, as our communities become inflated with people all touting their own idiosyncratic inclinations and fiercely unique characteristics, as all the minute features of our lives spiral outwards and become sullied with complexity, as the world and its organizations unfurl in a confused mishmash involving countless variables, it is natural that apprehension and anxiety will find purchase in the human psyche. This being true, it is critical that we confront this uncomfortable truth that the universe, including ourselves, is moving inexorably towards disorder, that we must  cherish the fleeting moments of order we encounter along the way and embrace all the good that can emerge from chaos, from the messiness of life, if we are to find meaning in reality. Even I, as fearful as I was, couldn’t resist opening the booklet and eyeing the bustling scenes, observing the chaos in action. Entropy is a scary thing, but who would Waldo be if it weren't for the pandemonium? Where would we be?