Marty's Poetry - 6. Entropy

Fascinating poem. 🙂 So you found out that "the constantly changing" is some part of truth. Lyssa

What a poem. Wonderfully surreal, and dreamlike. And it certainly illustrates your realization well. 

I don't know if you can see it in your country, but here is First and Second Law, by Flanders and Swann. 

"That's entropy, man." 

The First Law of Thermodymamics:
Heat is work and work is heat
Heat is work and work is heat
Very good!

The Second Law of Thermodymamics:
Heat cannot of itself pass from one body to a hotter body
(scat music starts)
Heat cannot of itself pass from one body to a hotter body
Heat won't pass from a cooler to a hotter
Heat won't pass from a cooler to a hotter
You can try it if you like but you far better notter
You can try it if you like but you far better notter
'Cos the cold in the cooler with get hotter as a ruler
'Cos the cold in the cooler with get hotter as a ruler
'Cos the hotter body's heat will pass to the cooler
'Cos the hotter body's heat will pass to the cooler

First Law:
Heat is work and work is heat and work is heat and heat is work
Heat will pass by conduction
Heat will pass by conduction
Heat will pass by convection
Heat will pass by convection
Heat will pass by radiation
Heat will pass by radiation
And that's a physical law
Heat is work and work's a curse
And all the heat in the Universe
Is gonna cooool down 'cos it can't increase
Then there'll be no more work and there'll be perfect peace
Really?
Yeah - that's entropy, man!

And all because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which lays down:
That you can't pass heat from the cooler to the hotter
Try it if you like but you far better notter
'Cos the cold in the cooler will get hotter as a ruler
'Cos the hotter body's heat will pass to the cooler
Oh, you can't pass heat from the cooler to the hotter
You can try it if you like but you'll only look a fooler
'Cos the cold in the cooler will get hotter as a ruler
That's a physical Law!

Oh, I'm hot!
Hot? That's because you've been working!

Oh, Beatles - nothing!
That's the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics!"

Fascinating little piece. Truth is a fascinating concept, really. Truth is what people believe it to be. This is not to be confused with fact, which refers to the genuine sequence of events in any given situation. Take three witnesses to a crime, and all three can give close approximations of what really happened, or three totally different versions, because what we see and hear is subject to interpretation by our brains, which are quite fallible, and which tend to filter our realities through a screen of uncertain knowledge and sometimes traumatic past experiences.

The danger of truth is that fact can sometimes be lost. If someone we admire and trust says that real facts are 'fake news', then we come to believe an untruth as truth. Some people have no sense of fact, and will believe a ridiculous truth even in the light of cold, hard facts. Most humans do not know truth, because they will always believe what they want to believe. Other people can sense facts, and form their truths from them. But they will always be at war with people who think the truth is what they think is the truth.

So the quest for truth really is not worth the effort. What needs to be determined are facts, which no amount of misdirection, prevarication, or outright bullshit can ever obscure.

Good luck with that. Facts are like snowflakes on a too warm day. Just when you have them in sight, they're gone.

On 3/11/2019 at 5:48 AM, Lyssa said:

Fascinating poem. 🙂 So you found out that "the constantly changing" is some part of truth. Lyssa

Maybe, @Lyssa...

Or perhaps all I realised is the fact that there is no universal truth.  

On 3/11/2019 at 3:31 PM, AC Benus said:

I don't know if you can see it in your country, but here is First and Second Law, by Flanders and Swann. 

"That's entropy, man." 

Yea, I was able to watch it. And it certainly made me laugh! 😄

I can't resist asking, though... Is that actually true?  

On 3/11/2019 at 2:03 PM, Parker Owens said:

What a poem. Wonderfully surreal, and dreamlike. And it certainly illustrates your realization well. 

Thanks, Parker!

On 3/11/2019 at 4:01 PM, Geron Kees said:

Fascinating little piece. Truth is a fascinating concept, really.

Spoiler

 

Truth is what people believe it to be. This is not to be confused with fact, which refers to the genuine sequence of events in any given situation. Take three witnesses to a crime, and all three can give close approximations of what really happened, or three totally different versions, because what we see and hear is subject to interpretation by our brains, which are quite fallible, and which tend to filter our realities through a screen of uncertain knowledge and sometimes traumatic past experiences.

 

The danger of truth is that fact can sometimes be lost. If someone we admire and trust says that real facts are 'fake news', then we come to believe an untruth as truth. Some people have no sense of fact, and will believe a ridiculous truth even in the light of cold, hard facts. Most humans do not know truth, because they will always believe what they want to believe. Other people can sense facts, and form their truths from them. But they will always be at war with people who think the truth is what they think is the truth.

 

So the quest for truth really is not worth the effort. What needs to be determined are facts, which no amount of misdirection, prevarication, or outright bullshit can ever obscure.

Good luck with that. Facts are like snowflakes on a too warm day. Just when you have them in sight, they're gone.

We were about seventeen years old at the time. We were studying sciences for A-Level. So we were used to gathering and studying facts. I suspect that a large part of the reason we decided (by ourselves I should maybe mention - not because any of our teachers asked us to) to try our hands at writing poetry was to prove to ourselves (and to our other friends who were not studying science) that we could. And maybe also to try to disprove the suggestion that we were simply illiterate scientists (as opposed to our other friends, who we jokingly referred to as innumerate artists). And we didn't restrict ourselves to writing about Truth. We did try other ideas as well. I certainly remember a period when we tried our hands at Haiku.  

I do agree with most of what you say, though, @Geron Kees. Even if your use of the word snowflake near the end did make me smile.

Fascinating, I'm in awe of your talent. 

On 9/10/2019 at 11:45 AM, Mancunian said:

Fascinating, I'm in awe of your talent. 

Thanks for the kind words.

I find poetry particularly difficult to write, so feel somewhat humbled by your expression of awe.