Entropic production is the 1st English-language ebook to contemplate the cultural and spiritual responses to the second one legislations of thermodynamics, from round 1860 to 1920. in keeping with the second one legislations of thermodynamics, as formulated via the German physicist Rudolf Clausius, the entropy of any closed process will unavoidably raise in time, which means that the process will decay and at last lead to a useless kingdom of equilibrium. software of the legislation to the whole universe, first proposed within the 1850s, resulted in the prediction of a destiny 'heat death', the place all existence has ceased and all association dissolved. within the past due 1860s it used to be mentioned that, on account of the warmth demise state of affairs, the universe may have existed just for a finite time period. in keeping with the 'entropic construction argument', thermodynamics warrants the belief that the area as soon as began or used to be created. it's those situations, allegedly results of the technology of thermodynamics, which shape the center of this publication. the warmth dying and the declare of cosmic construction have been greatly mentioned within the interval 1870 to 1920, with individuals within the debate together with eu scientists, intellectuals and social critics, between them the physicist William Thomson and the communist philosopher Friedrich Engels. One explanation for the eagerness of the controversy was once that a few authors used the legislations of entropy raise to argue for a divine construction of the realm. hence, the second one legislations of thermodynamics grew to become hugely arguable. In Germany particularly, materialists and positivists engaged in conflict with Christian - often Catholic - students over the cosmological results of thermodynamics. This heated debate, that is at the present time mostly forgotten, is reconstructed and tested intimately during this publication, bringing into concentration key topics at the interactions among cosmology, physics, faith and beliefs, and the general public means within which those issues have been mentioned within the latter half the 19th and the 1st years of the 20 th century.