What is Malentropy? It is a word you won’t find it in any dictionary or academic paper. It is a concept I coined by combining the Latin originated ‘Mal’ which means bad and is used as a prefix in words like malady and malicious, with what in my opinion is the most basic concept in physics, that is Entropy, The definition of Entropy differs somewhat between various branches of science and even within the confines of thermodynamics but the most heavyweight one is the one is defined by Boltzmann famous equation which defines entropy in terms to the natural log of the number of combinations (microstates) of particles in an isolated system. ,

So, what do I mean by Malentropy?

Entropy is not synonymous with disorder, but disorder is closely associated with entropy. Entropy could be described as a measure of the number of microstates states (combinations of moving particles of matter) that can be formed in an isolated system. Since on a cosmic scale the number of combinations of matter and energy increases with time (that increase is actually the Arrow of Time), it follows that entropy on a cosmic scale increases relentlessly. In a somewhat simplistic way entropy could be described as the ‘Cosmic Solvent’, the cause of the dissolution of order pattern and organized structures.

Somewhat paradoxically the flow of entropy can create temporarily the phenomena of Emergence, that is self-organization of mainly biological matter that is sometimes referred to as Negentropy (negative entropy). However, these islands of self-organization are temporary, in the long run, entropy and by implication, disorder prevails.

Reflecting on the cosmic increase of entropy one can see that it progresses on two levels. There is the linear ‘wear and tear’ of the universe; the dispersion of matter and dilution of energy, and there is non-linear catalytic jumps caused by supernovas, a collision of galaxies, and black holes. If we had a cosmic entropy meter its needle would show a sudden advance every time such cataclysmic events happen. Such explosive increases in entropy are so much different to steady everyday grinding down of the cosmos that they deserve perhaps a different term. Explosive Entropy perhaps?

Now how can the principle of two levels of entropy apply to human affairs?
Mankind’s artefacts, as well as human bodies, are subject to an increase in statistical degrees of freedom in the form o relentless gradual deterioration of structure and function, and therefore to increase of entropy. That process is level 1 entropy that is, ‘normal’ entropy’. However, sudden jumps in entropy could be the result of human action. A building might take centuries to fall apart but take only fraction of a second to be blown up by a bomb. It takes scores of years of malfunctioning for the human body reach the death, but a single bullet does it in a matter of seconds.

I think that MALENTROPY is a fitting term for those human-caused explosive increases in entropy.
So, Auschwitz was malentrop, so were Hiroshima, 9/11, and countless other small and big events in mankind's history. Does the destruction of the Amazon rainforest count as malentropy? Not really,
It does increase entropy but in a gradual non-explosive process, although the suddenness change of entropy resulting from felling a single tree could be defined malentropy.

Philosophically there is something paradoxically about malentropy. Mankind and its artefacts which are products of an ‘anti-entropy’ processes of emergence and negentropy are also the instruments of large scale malentropy.

The great American engineer Richard Buckminster described mankind's mission as a battle with entropy. Like Lite, Civilization by means of its artefacts created order and low entropy structures out of higher entropy row materials. Buckminster-Fuller named this process ‘Negentropy’, Whilst civilization created an island of decreasing entropy that has to be viewed in a purely local and human framework. In global terms, the building of civilization increased the rate which the planet’s entropy grows. deforestation and global warming are good ex\mpe, but being gradual processes I wouldn’t define them as being malentropo. The term should reserved to man-made acts of non-linear destructions.