“The possibility of terrestrial life results from the vast increase of entropy associated with the transformation of hot solar radiation into colder terrestrial radiation.”

“As a student, I read with advantage a small book by Franz Wald entitled The Mistress of the World and her Shadow. These meant energy and entropy. In the course of advancing knowledge the two seem to me to have exchanged places. In the huge manufactory of natural processes, the principle of entropy occupies the position of manager, for it dictates the manner and method of the whole business, whilst the principle of energy merely does the bookkeeping, balancing credits and debits.”

— Robert Emden (1938), “Why do we Have Winter Heating?”; cited by Arnold Sommerfeld (1952); Joseph Kestin (1956); Norman Dolloff (1975), and others [2]