Entropy, Information, and Complexity or Which Aims the Arrow of Time? Scientific Explanation

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the interrelationships among such notions as entropy, information, complexity, order and chaos and show using the theory of categories how to generalize the second law of thermodynamics as a law of increasing generalized entropy or a general law of complification. This law could be applied to any system with morphisms, including all of our universe and its subsystems. We discuss how such a general law and other laws of nature drive the evolution of the universe, including physicochemical and biological evolutions. In addition, we determine eliminating selection in physicochemical evolution as an extremely simplified prototype of natural selection. Laws of nature do not allow complexity and entropy to reach maximal values by generating structures. One could consider them as a kind of “breeder” of such selection. Irreversibility of time is expressed as the increase in entropy, information, degrees of freedom, and complexity, which raise monotonically with respect to each other.