DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | FMS Digest, v. 1, issues 1-5, February - July 1941

Transcribe
Translate

FMS Digest, v. 1, issues 1-5, February - July 1941

v.1:no.1: Page 9

F M S DIGEST     Page 9

DIALECTICS VERSUS ENTROPY

Science fiction fans are all familiar with the entropy theory of the universe. Entropy is a process based upon the second law of thermodynamics and operates through the gradual dissipation of heat and energy throughout the universe to a common level of low temperature heat. The popular conception of the end of this entropy process is amply delineated in stf stories such as Schachner's "Entropy," Kaletsky's "End of the Universe" and on a more elaborate, detailed and sensitive scale in Stapledon's "Star Maker."
Two news items tend to shed new light on this heat death theory. The first item concerns a speech made by Albert Einstein before the American Scientific Congress when he stated that physics admittedly no longer possesses any logical theoretical basis. The only certainty left, he said, seemed to be Heisenburg's Principle of Uncertainty. Nature, said Einstein, seemed to be operating on the throw-of-the-dice method.
The second item was a restatement by Dr. Henry Norriss Russel of Princeton of the classical entropy proposition. The good doctor saw for our cosmos only the usual slow decay, at the end of which was a final state of quiescence.
An article by the internationally famous Professor J. B. S. Haldane brings correlation to these two items. Professor Haldane[[?]] stated the proposition that, assuming human society to be influenced in its development by the theory of dialectical materialism and vice-versa, the whole tending to raise the level of the dialectic and with it the condition of society, in a rising spiral, it was logical to assume that the universe was subject to the same changing conditions. What he meant was that natural laws no longer need to be considered as unchanging and eternal, but dynamic.
Dialectical Materialism is the theory that human society is, always has been and always will be in a state of conflicting opposites, that as certain stages of the development of this condition, changes occur which tend to raise the basis of these conflicts to a higher and higher level.
From the standpoint that dynamisn is better than staticism dialectics utterly antequates both the Uncertainty Viewpoint and the static theories, replacing them with a developing theory which arises from and influences the forces replaced by the ever conflicting, ever changing phases of the Cosmos.
Applied to the cosmical outlook, dialectics raises the status of the cosmos from the conception of a sentient whole, developing onward and upward, not backward and downward, toward an at present unknowable goal.
It is perhaps the time that stf fans and other "star-begottens" began to seriously question the present static theories of cosmic evolution.

Illustration from ADUMB LINX MEETS AUNTY SCIENCE, in ECLIPSE for January, 1941.

Saving...

F M S DIGEST Page 9 DIALECTICS VERSUS ENTROPY Science fiction fans are all familiar with the entropy theory of the universe. Entropy is a process based upon the second law of thermodynamics and operates through the gradual dissipation of heat and energy throughout the universe to a common level of low temperature heat. The popular conception of the end of this entropy process is amply delineated in stf stories such as Schachner's "Entropy," Kaletsky's "End of the Universe" and on a more elaborate, detailed and sensitive scale in Stapledon's "Star Maker." Two news items tend to shed new light on this heat death theory. The first item concerns a speech made by Albert Einstein before the American Scientific Congress when he stated that physics admittedly no longer possesses any logical theoretical basis. The only certainty left, he said, seemed to be Heisenburg's Principle of Uncertainty. Nature, said Einstein, seemed to be operating on the throw-of-the-dice method. The second item was a restatement by Dr. Henry Norriss Russel of Princeton of the classical entropy proposition. The good doctor saw for our cosmos only the usual slow decay, at the end of which was a final state of quiescence. An article by the internationally famous Professor J. B. S. Haldane brings correlation to these two items. Professor Haldane[[?]] stated the proposition that, assuming human society to be influenced in its development by the theory of dialectical materialism and vice-versa, the whole tending to raise the level of the dialectic and with it the condition of society, in a rising spiral, it was logical to assume that the universe was subject to the same changing conditions. What he meant was that natural laws no longer need to be considered as unchanging and eternal, but dynamic. Dialectical Materialism is the theory that human society is, always has been and always will be in a state of conflicting opposites, that as certain stages of the development of this condition, changes occur which tend to raise the basis of these conflicts to a higher and higher level. From the standpoint that dynamisn is better than staticism dialectics utterly antequates both the Uncertainty Viewpoint and the static theories, replacing them with a developing theory which arises from and influences the forces replaced by the ever conflicting, ever changing phases of the Cosmos. Applied to the cosmical outlook, dialectics raises the status of the cosmos from the conception of a sentient whole, developing onward and upward, not backward and downward, toward an at present unknowable goal. It is perhaps the time that stf fans and other "star-begottens" began to seriously question the present static theories of cosmic evolution. Illustration from ADUMB LINX MEETS AUNTY SCIENCE, in ECLIPSE for January, 1941.