9. Extrascientific Applications. In summary, it
should be remarked that the notion of entropy or,
equivalently, the Second Law of Thermodynamics,
“the most metaphysical law of nature” (Henri Bergson,
Creative Evolution), had considerable influence also on
extrascientific considerations. Because of their prox-
imity to cosmological speculations, philosophy and
theology were of course most affected.
Ever since Boltzmann (1895), in his rebuttal of
Zermelo's recurrence objection, reduced (local)
anisotropy of time (the “arrow of time”) to statistical
irreversibility, the entropy concept has played an im-
portant role in philosophical discussions on the nature
of time (A. S. Eddington, H. Reichenbach, A. Grün-
baum, H. Mehlberg, P. W. Bridgman, K. R. Popper).
The concept became also a battleground between
idealism (Jeans, 1930) and materialism (Kannegiesser,
1961).
The dysteleological tenet of the energy dissipation
principle and its gloomy prediction of a heat death
touched upon profound religious issues, and was bound
to provoke theological polemics. Examples of such
controversies on the acceptability of theological con-
sequences from the entropy principle are the discussion
between Abel Rey (Rey, 1904) and Pierre Duhem
(Duhem, 1906) and the published correspondence be-
tween Arnold Lunn and J. B. S. Haldane (Lunn, 1935).
