The entropic two-step lies at the heart of how a universe heading toward ever-greater disorder can nevertheless yield and support ordered structures like stars, planets, and people. A theme we will encounter repeatedly is that when energy flows through a system—like the energy from burning coal flowing through the steam, driving work, and then exiting to the surrounding environment—it carries away entropy and can thus sustain or even produce order in its wake. It is this entropic dance that will choreograph the rise of life and mind, as well as most everything that minds deem to matter.
