Submission + - Causal Second Law Extends Entropy Beyond Physics
gyepi writes: A new paper in Noûs proves a "causal second law" that applies across all sciences, not just physics. The law states that each science has its own type of entropy that cannot decrease from a robust cause to its effect. The introduced Boltzmann-like entropy is objective rather than information-theoretic or observer-dependent, and the law doesn't depend on systems with many degrees of freedom or thermal equilibrium. Instead, strict entropy increase is driven by causal multiplicity and the descriptive mismatch between special sciences and fundamental physics. The law avoids the reversibility objection, and the author even suggests that our psychological and biological time arrows might stem from this general causal asymmetry, rather than requiring a reduction to the thermodynamic second law.
