In our world, complexity flourishes, and those looking to science for a general understanding of nature’s habits will be better served by the laws of chaos. Somehow, after all, as the universe ebbs toward its final equilibrium in the featureless heat bath of maximum entropy, it manages to create interesting structures. Thoughtful physicists concerned with the workings of thermodynamics realize how disturbing is the question of, as one put it, “how a purposeless flow of energy can wash life and consciousness into the world.”
