## What is Entropy?
Entropy governs not only physics, but communication, emotion, and the passage of time itself. While gravity pulls objects together in space, entropy disperses them through time — breaking down systems, structures, and even meaning.
In this month’s Philly Math Counts session, we’ll explore entropy as transformation, not just decay. From the fading tone of a tuning fork to the collapse of social “waveforms” in communication networks, we’ll discuss how systems degrade, harmonize, and sometimes regenerate through resonance.
We’ll connect physical models of entropy to emotional and social systems using a hybrid framework of Fourier analysis, graph theory, and thermodynamics, drawing on Eastern concepts like karma (कर्म) and dharma (धर्म) to describe emotional energy as wave mechanics. These are models that are something expressible by equations, but also through art, sound, touch, smell, and taste, so come with examples of entropy across all these vectors.
Topics include:
Entropy as a universal constraint on systems and signals
Emotional energy as a wave subject to decay and resonance
How information breakdown (miscommunication, misinformation) mirrors thermodynamic entropy
Torque and resonance in social and emotional manifolds
The philosophical limits of reversing entropy — and what “waveform collapse” means in human terms
This conversation also serves as a lead-up to next month’s Math Debate: “Emotion as a Wave.”
Bring your curiosity and turn your camera off if you’d like — this is a welcoming, open discussion where math meets metaphysics.
