The non-physicist finds it hard to believe that really the ordinary laws of physics, which he regards as the prototype of inviolable precision, should be based on the statistical tendency of matter to go over into disorder. I have given examples in chapter 1. The general principle involved is the famous Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy principle) and its equally famous statistical foundation. On pp. 69–74 I will try to sketch the bearing of the entropy principle on the large-scale behaviour of a living organism – forgetting at the moment all that is known about chromosomes, inheritance,
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