Gibbs’s insight was to find a way showing how the two laws of thermodynamics drive all chemical reactions. He chose to start his argument with a restatement of those laws, so let’s follow his lead: First law: The energy in the universe is constant. Second law: The entropy of the universe tends to increase. Gibbs then showed how all processes of change can be judged by these two laws. He did this, essentially, by turning the two laws into one new law we can call Gibbs’s law: The flow of energy is the means by which the entropy of the universe is increased.
