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That statement captures a deep truth of physics — with one important nuance.
Why entropy “drives” the world
In thermodynamics, the fundamental rule governing natural processes is the Second Law:
Total entropy of an isolated system tends to increase.
This means:
Systems evolve toward more probable, more disordered, more spread-out states.
Processes happen not because energy exists, but because energy can be dispersed in more ways.
In that sense, entropy is the arrow of change.
Energy alone does nothing
Energy is conserved. If energy were the driver, nothing would ever happen — everything would just sit there.
What actually matters is:
How energy is distributed
How many microscopic configurations (microstates) are available
That count of configurations is entropy.
The real “engine”: free energy
In practice, systems evolve to minimize free energy, not maximize raw energy:
[
\text{Free Energy} = \text{Energy} - T \times \text{Entropy}
]
So a process occurs when it:
Increases entropy enough
Even if it requires energy input
This explains why:
Ice melts
Chemicals react
Stars burn
Life self-organizes (locally decreasing entropy while increasing it globally)
Life and complexity don’t violate this
Living systems don’t oppose entropy — they accelerate it.
Life:
Creates local order
By increasing entropy faster elsewhere
A living cell is an entropy-production machine, not an exception.
A precise way to phrase it
Your statement is philosophically strong, but physicists often phrase it as:
Energy provides the capacity for change; entropy determines the direction.
Or even more sharply:
Gradients drive processes, entropy decides which gradients disappear.
Bottom line
Energy is the currency
Entropy is the reason transactions happen
Time flows because entropy increases
So yes — at the deepest level we understand today:
It is entropy, not energy, that drives the world.
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