I’m currently in a phase where I wake up quite early, which means I necessarily go to bed earlier too. I’m trying to shift my sleep schedule a bit later and also extend it, but that always takes longer to adjust. So I have plenty of quiet morning time, which I use for work, and today I got around to the most essential task – cleaning. While doing so, I listened to Hyde Park Civilizace, where Daniel Stach was speaking with renowned physicist and mathematician Brian Greene.
I definitely recommend the interview, as it’s a very intelligent discussion about string theory, God, mathematics, or why we’re just particles and always will be (even after our death). What really amused me, though, was when Stach asked Greene about an event from 1984. The Harvard yearbook stated, and there was also a photo, that Greene had the messiest room at that time. Greene confirmed this and added: “I simply gave up. I gave up trying to maintain any order there. I succumbed to the second law of thermodynamics. Completely!” [52:35].
This is a popular joke among physicists and scientists, and I expect it definitely appeared in The Big Bang Theory, but I hadn’t heard it before or I’ve forgotten it.
A brief explanation: The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that entropy (or the measure of disorder) in an isolated system always increases or remains the same, but never decreases. Put more simply – things have a natural tendency to transition from an ordered state to a disordered state unless we expend energy to maintain order, which is something I know very well in my life as a “messy person.”
So when Brian Greene said he “succumbed to the second law of thermodynamics,” he was suggesting that the mess in his room was inevitable, almost a natural process. His room represented a system where entropy (disorder) naturally increased unless he actively expended energy on cleaning and organization, which he eventually gave up on, letting “nature” take its course, thus earning his mention in the yearbook.
Shortly after, though, Greene said something more important to me: that nowadays he can’t stand messiness. That he needs to have everything clean and a tidy desk and office. He explained it by saying that when things are messy, he can’t think at all. He needs everything around him to be organized because he thinks about things that are very disturbing and disordered.
Yes! That’s it. And it’s not just about obsessive cleaners who occasionally come to my counselling practice. All my life, I’ve been slowly moving from total messiness (which my father couldn’t stand) toward more and more system and order (which my father loved). As my close ones would confirm, I’m still very imperfect at this and constantly succumb to the second law of thermodynamics. But the older I get, I see more and more places and situations where I no longer create mess, and I’ve finally managed to create a system I can maintain. For example, I put nice shirts on hangers – I hate folding. I only fold more ordinary shirts where slight wrinkles don’t matter, and I’ve learned a simple folding style that doesn’t bother me. Similarly, I keep work and other important electronic documents carefully synchronized in Dropbox – and I no longer lose anything important when I lose a computer.
And I also see how important a certain orderliness is for me. I can simply find things then. But not only that. In my life, I have lots of chaos and randomness. I have children, and not just one or two. Clients bombard me with various horrors in individual and couples’ therapy. I teach tons of students. I have many friends and acquaintances. I read a lot. And because of all this, I need a large portion of basic calmness. And that comes to me especially from order, a certain slowness (I’m only fast in sports and when I have to be), solitude, or spending time in nature.
I still succumb to the second law. But I see the trend. Whether I’ll manage before my death to become a person who can be described as orderly, I don’t know. But I’m heading there. I just feel a bit like Achilles trying to catch the tortoise. Whenever I move forward a bit, that darn tortoise moves too, so maybe I’ll never catch up…
Hyde Park Civilization – English version here: https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/10441294653-hyde-park-civilizace/9271-english-versions/45733-brian-greene/