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Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Nature’s First Law What Is Energy? The Emergence of the First Law of Thermodynamics Impossibility of Perpetual Motion Machines Radioactivity and Perpetual Energy 2. Nature’s Second Law The Beginning of a New Science The Birth of the Second Law of Thermodynamics Nature’s Irreversible Trend What Is That Quantity Called Entropy? Maxwell’s Demon Attempts to Demolish Nature’s Law of Entropy Entropy as “Time’s Arrow” Boltzmann’s Entropy Relation 3. Nature’s Laws in Action The Relentless Increase of Entropy From a Clockwork Universe to the Heat Death of the Universe Thermodynamics and Cosmology Entropy as a Measure of Ignorance and Uncertainty Humans as an Open Thermodynamic System Why Do We Age Irreversibly? Is Evolution a Miracle in Violation of the Second Law? 4. Knowledge and Entropy Knowledge Undergoes Thermodynamic Transformation Thermodynamic View of the Educational System Disorder in Knowledge 5. The United States in High Entropy The High-Entropic Life in the United States Possessions Generate Entropy and Dissipate Time Drowning in a Sea of Words More Choices but Less Time Are We Freeing Ourselves from Machines, at Last? 6. The Agricultural-Industrial Complex Modern Agriculture and the Second Law Chemical Control of Insects Soil Erosion and Degradation of the Environment 7. What Does the Second Law Really Say? The Availability of Energy and Natural Resources Revisited Entropy: The Supreme Manager of All Natural Processes The Greenhouse Effect High Tech’s Environmental Entropy Can We “Control” Natural Processes? 8. Economics, the Environment, and the Laws of Thermodynamics Economic Theories The Economics of Computers and Technology The Concept of Environmental Externalities in Economics Economics as an Applied Science 9. Why Things Look So Good on the Horizon—Until We Get There Why Great Expectations Turn to Disillusionments Is Nuclear Fusion Our Response to the Second Law? Space: The Unlimited Frontier? Entropy and Global Interdependence 10. The World Through the Eyes of Thermodynamics The Concept of “Doing More with Less” Change and Technological “Progress” Re-examined Recognizing Low- and High-Entropic Actions and Life-styles 11. The Thermodynamic Imperative Does Science Tell Us How to Live? The Necessity of Projecting a Consistent Scientific Message Making Entropy a Part of Our Daily Language Thermodynamics and the Unity of Knowledge Notes Index

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