Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in another. Mandolins are tuned G D A E. The physical world has a tropism for disorder, entropy. Man against Nature … the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction. All order is doomed, yet the battle is worthwhile.
— Nathaniel West, Miss Lonelyhearts
Let’s speculate about the end of the world.
Picture this scenario: you stayed up way too late with your buddies, maybe a little drunk and/or high, and together you ponder theories of varying degrees of absurdity—grand posturing of annihilation; what forms it would assume; what would endure—if anything—after the killing blow was dealt.
With the inevitabilities of climate change becoming increasingly rarefied, I’m sure lots of us have had apocalypse on the mind, so I figure it might be fun to synopsize a few different theories and manifestations of the end times—because, why not?
ESCHATOLOGY
That’s a neat word. At first glance, it might be tempting to usher the c into the s in a “shhh” sound (akin to the often troubling "Worcestershire”), but it’s actually pronounced with a hard c, like so: “Eschatology”. (I only outline this because I absolutely butchered the word for the longest time.)
Eschatology is, in essence, the study of the ends of things. This comes in varying elements: death and what comes after it, Armageddon, the final moments of the universe, etc. What discipline you’re exploring eschatology within will dictate what extent of an “end” you’re looking for.
For this post, I’d like to look at two of the most well-known eschatological theories—one theological, the other secular—as well as some of my findings researching the topic.
Let’s get into it, shall we?
THE REVELATION OF SAINT JOHN THE DIVINE
I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. (King James Bible, Revelations. 2-10)
Apocalypse comes from the Greek word apokalypsis, meaning to “uncover”, or to “reveal”. This should come as no surprise given the ultimate book of the Bible is Revelations, which details one of the most well-known examples of eschatology: the Last Judgement.
In Revelations, our author, John of Patmos, recounts receiving a vision delivered upon him by an angel. God, using the angel as conduit, says to John,
I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. (Revelations, 2-18)
John is told that Christ will return to Earth, and his second coming will signal the apocalypse and the final judgement by God of all who’ve dwelled on Earth.
Within the quotation above lies the foundation of Christian eschatology. This premonition of the end of the world, of the second coming of Christ, is predicated upon Jesus Christ having first died for the sins of humanity. In this sense, there is some teleology at play, wherein Christianity can only be understood within the context of its telos—its end. There is a recursion in the Bible that operates thusly:
Scripture tells us that because of original sin, humanity lost the favour of God—but that it was ultimately restored when Jesus Christ died for our sins, delivering salvation to all who would desire it upon the Last Judgement. What’s explicit in this sort of reciprocal history, is that Jesus Christ was on Earth for the purpose of dying for humanities sins, giving all the chance to enter the kingdom of heaven when the apocalypse comes—so long as you understand His sacrifice, and accept Him into your heart.
Ironically, when talking about eschatology, ends often entail beginnings.
ENTROPIC ESCHATOLOGY
Christianity hasn’t the only eschatology that promises rebirth; in fact, many religions do. But one needn’t look solely to theology to find this sort of eternal recursion.
Cosmology is the astronomical study of the evolution of the universe: how it began, how it developed, and where it’s going. Easily the most popular and commonly accepted cosmological theory is the Big Bang, wherein all the matter of the visible universe was originally condensed into a singularity.
The theory purports that our universe’s history began with the collapse of the singularity, causing an explosion of space itself—an isotropic expansion that continues to this day. This theory coincides with Hubble’s law: an empirical law calculated by the redshift of distant galaxies which shows that not only is the visible universe expanding, but the expansion accelerates the farther one is from Earth.
There are two main eschatological theories predicated by the big bang which I’ll attempt to outline below.
BIG CRUNCH
Pictured above is what is known as the “Big Crunch” theory. Here we find an eschatological recursion: The universe expands following the big bang; the expansion eventually slows and begins to reverse, pulling all of the matter of the universe back into a singularity, wherein another big bang is anticipated.
However—given Hubble’s law—this theory has become somewhat doubtful, giving way to a more credible theory.
HEAT DEATH
In Germany the conversion of the natural forces, for instance, heat into mechanical energy, etc., has given rise to a very absurd theory—that the world is becoming steadily colder … and that, in the end, a moment will come when all life will be impossible. I am simply waiting for the moment when the clerics seize upon this theory.
— Friedrich Engels in a letter to Karl Marx (March 21st, 1869)
The “big freeze” is the more plausible antonym to the “big crunch”, and is the leading eschatological theory in physics due to its agreements with Hubble’s law.
In this scenario, the universe expands until it reaches thermodynamical equilibrium, i.e. a state of uniform temperature.
KELVIN’S PARADOX
Interestingly, the idea of heat death was allegedly first postulated by Lord Kelvin (one of the forefathers of thermodynamics) in the 1850s, and later explicitly expressed in a paper in 1862. Kelvin’s paradox—also known as “Clausius’ paradox”, referring to its use of Clausius’ second law of thermodynamics—was articulated as an argument against the rather mainstream belief of an eternal universe.
In this thought experiment, Kelvin invokes the first two laws of thermodynamics, which can be generalized as such:
Spontaneous heat flow is unidirectional and irreversible: Heat travels from hot bodies to cold bodies.
Clausius’ statement: Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer body without some other change, connected therewith, occurring at the same time. (Link)
In order to comprehend either law, it’s important to know what is meant by “spontaneous”. We are used to thinking of spontaneity as synonymous with either “instantaneous”, or “unprovoked”, but the latter is the more apt sense of the word in this case. Regarding physics, a spontaneous action is one which requires no external work, which, in a physical sense, means a transfer of energy into/out of a closed system.
To summarize: In a closed system (no external work), heat can never transfer from a cold body to a warm body. Conversely: in a closed system, heat will always transfer from a warm body to a colder one.
Kelvin’s argument goes something like this:
Given the laws of thermodynamics, if the universe has existed for eternity, then everything would be the same temperature. Everything is not the same temperature, therefore the universe has not existed for eternity.
This conclusion follows fairly straight forwardly from the first two laws of thermodynamics; if the universe had been around for eternity, then thermodynamic equilibrium would have been achieved by now.
“Heat death” is actually somewhat of a misnomer, given the eschatological mode entails more of a freeze than an immolation. In his work From Apocalypse To Entropy And Beyond, Peter Freese notes that “the confusion that occurs over the concept of heat death arises due to poor translation: ‘Wiirmetod’ […] which was soon translated into English as heat-death, refers to the 'death of heat' and not to a 'death by heat"' (Freese, pp. 336)
So, what exactly does heat death look like?
Well, in Kelvin’s own words, heat death is
a state of universal rest and death, if the universe were finite and left to obey existing laws. [1]
This eschatology is certainly cynical, drenched in a cold finality—devoid of any form of recurrence or resurrection. However, I stumbled upon an interesting French writer who felt otherwise.
OMEGA: THE LAST DAYS OF THE WORLD
While scouring the internet for Helmholtz’ contributions to Kelvin’s paradox (as indicated in the wiki page), I stumbled upon an interesting webpage about heat death.
In the post, the author makes mention of a French writer by the name of Camille Flammarion.
Flammarion, besides having a Pokemon-ass name, was a late 19th century polymath. He was primarily an astronomer and an author, but had a deep speculative interest in spiritism—the study of spirits. In 1894 he published a novel titled La Fin Du Monde, which was eventually translated into an English edition as Omega: The Last Days of the World.
In the novel (which is public domain and available for free through project gutenberg), Earth is struck by a comet which brings about the end of humanity. The narrative encompasses a vast timeline—Flammarion’s knowledge of astronomy peppered throughout as he details the moment of the comet’s creation, its trajectory through space, the moment of impact with Earth, the eons after, and, eventually, the heat death of the universe.
The most compelling parts of the novel, in my opinion, are Jean Paul Laurens’ illustrations.
Flammarion describes heat death as such:
Energy will not then be susceptible of transformation. This does not mean annihilation, a word without meaning, nor does it mean the absence of motion, properly speaking, since the same sum of energy will always exist in the form of atomic motion, but the absence of all sensible motion, of all differentiation, the absolute uniformity of conditions, that is to say, absolute death. (Flammarion, pp. 277)
In this sense, heat death isn’t annihilation; it is the rendering of a multitude of modes of existence into one—a base form whose energy persists solely as heat. But that is no cause for lament, Flammarion urges, for the “best definition of the universe ever given, to which there was nothing to add, is Pascal’s, ‘A sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere’” (Flammarion, pp. 283).
For Flammarion, the fact that things can persist in any form—even if it is in the basest of modes, such as in heat death—entails an underlying will, an imperishable Absolute.
There is an incommensurable Power, which we are obliged to recognize as limitless in space and without beginning or end in time, and this Power is that which persists through all the changes in those sensible appearances under which the universe presents itself to us.
For this reason there will always be suns and worlds, not like ours, but still suns and worlds succeeding each other through all eternity.
And for us this visible universe can only be the changing appearance of the absolute and eternal reality. (Flammarion, pp. 284-285)
And just like that, we’ve come full circle!
The Last Judgement and heat death are two great examples of eschatology which exist at either end of a spectrum of beliefs. But, they are also distant, one hailing from a supposed prophesized apocalypse, the other from the end of our known universe. They’re interesting, but not entirely worrisome. Their distance renders them hypothetical, making it easy to shrug off their existential threat.
How about something a little closer to home?
NUCLEAR WARNINGS
I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
In 1950, William Faulkner opened his Nobel Prize acceptance speech with a zinger:
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?
The inception of nuclear bombs was perhaps the first time humanity had collectively understood that they held the keys to their own extinction in their hands. All other threats of extinction prior—be they plague, drought, famine, ice ages, asteroids, volcanic activity, etc.—were at the behest of nature. But, for the first time, humans had manufactured the means of their own total destruction—and it was no secret.
In 1993, Sandia National Laboratories released a report for the US Department of Energy detailing how best to represent the dangers of nuclear contamination zones to future civilizations—whether they’re to be human or otherwise. Their mission was to conjure non-linguistic warnings that any being with some form of rational cognition could understand.
In the report, Sandia explicitly states the warnings they wanted these hypothetical representations to convey:
This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
Some of what the collective of scientists, anthropologists, and linguists settled on were a series of concept images designed to evoke the warnings above, the most striking of which are titled “Landscape of Thorns”, and “Spike Field”.
Yeah, its not hard to imagine an alien species stumbling upon those and being like “Nah, fuck that”, which I suppose was the point.
The truth about all this—even more terrifying than grand theories and spooky iconography—is that we flirt with apocalypse each and everyday. Our collective end has been accelerated by the need for profit, power, and our disregard for the climate. What’s crucial to understand is that the Last Judgement and heat death are conjecture. They are the telos of theories—sets of premises brought about to their natural conclusions. In this way, they are theoretically inevitable.
But climate catastrophe and nuclear arms aren’t inevitabilities; at least, not yet. For now, they bear the burden of human responsibility—of our agency. That we will be blown up, or that the earth will become uninhabitable are not inevitabilities—they are probabilities, and one mustn’t succumb to the impulse of treating them as the former. We must act while we have agency, before theoretical inevitabilities shift to factual inevitabilities, before probabilities reach certainties.
Toodeloo!
[1] Thomson, William. (1862). “On the age of the sun’s heat”, Macmillan’s Mag., 5, 288-93; PL, 1, 394-68.
Byrne, John, Toly, Noah, and Glover, Leigh. (2006). Transforming Power: Energy, Environment, and Society in Conflict (pg. 39). Transaction Publishers.
The Bible: Authorized King James Version. Edited by Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett, Oxford UP, 2008.
"From the Apocalyptic to the Entropic End: From Hope to Despair to New Hope?" The Holodeck in the Garden: Science and Technology in Contemporary American Fiction. Eds. Peter Freese and Charles B. Harris. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive P, 2004.