Thermodynamics and Evolution

At the beginning of his book “The Blind Watchmaker”, the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins refers to the work of the British physicist Peter Atkins. Atkins sees evolution as a direct consequence of the laws of thermodynamics. At the same time, biologists often see evolution as a paradoxical phenomenon, because the path from bacteria to elephants seems to contradict the second law of thermodynamics. Put simply, the second law states that in all processes the overall entropy, often equated with chaos, must increase. Dawkins is fascinated by this dichotomy. To bridge the gap, Dawkins uses the metaphor of the blind watchmaker to make the principles of evolution comprehensible to everyone.