John Dunn

Anti-entropic

The Orphica suggest that the goddess Ananke came first, fully formed with her consort Chronos, and together they brought about the universe from an egg, and it was from this egg that Eros hatched.

The necessity (Ananke) that was in equilibrium with time (Chronos), which existed before Eros, is not to be confused with order, it was Chaos.

Any closed system, which is what the entropic necessity of Chaos represented, is subject to inevitable decay, or entropy.*

This was the Chaos from which Eros, emerged.

Eros, Love, the disrupter of everything, represented LIFE.

For life is the opposite of entropy.

Life is sustained by breaking out of the equilibrium of a closed system and drawing upon life-serving sustenance from outside that system, be this animal, mineral or vegetable.

Plato adapted the Orphic myth in The Timaeus.In his version Ananke was paired with Nous, or intellect, the conscious and thinking mind that is uniquely the possession of mankind.

“The subjugation of Necessity to wise persuasion was the initial formation of the universe” wrote Plato.

In this creation myth “the initial formation of the universe” meant the emergence of life, at the pinnacle of which is mankind.

Why? Because it is with the intellect that mankind opposes Ananke, upends the equilibrium of necessity and defies entropy.

As the highest expression of the anti-entropic development of the universe, man is capable of continuing the creative development of the universe insofar as he the living image of the first Creator.

*Second Law of Thermodynamics - having a tendency to change from a state of order to a state of disorder.

© John Dunn.