My Friend is Wrong 

Editor:

Barry Evans and I are friends. We both know that scientific truth is derived at by experimentation and lively debate. You recently published a response of his (Mailbox, Nov. 7) to a letter I had written in response to "Mirror Universes"( Oct. 24). What I wrote was, "When it comes to living systems, the universe is not tending toward chaos at all, but rather, it is highly ordered and organized." Barry left out the bit about "living system," which changes the content of the sentence completely.

My point was that living systems are doing the exact opposite of what the universe is doing. The universe is heading toward chaos, living systems are moving toward order. This in Taoism is yin and yang, the dynamic balance between order and chaos. Physics sees life as a mistake that occurs by a series of random interactions. The universe is lifeless, life is a fluke and at some point the universe is going to run out of energy. And physicists see life as something that is outside of the making of the universe. Anyone who studies life sciences knows that there is something very special about life. The Buddha said that the greatest mystery in the universe is life itself. Who can argue with that. 

Charles Davy, Bayside