One of the ideas in that book revolved around the linkage between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. The authors believed it would have the best odds of being found in Thermodynamics or a related field.

This article is making my hair stand up….

If you can handle stoichiometric algebra and mid level calculus, then you can get full mileage out of OOoC. Don’t be bashful: Just Dig Right In!

Such assumption has nothing to do with string theory, so it cannot be another form of it (until we consider, every suffuciently abstract insight is in fact sort of string theory). But every theory is defined by its postulate set and everything else is just grant politics.

The connection between physical entropy and information entropy were noted for years (decades, really) by no less luminary figures than Claude Shannon, and remarked as mere curiosities and quirks of mathematical form. Of course, we now know they’re not, and that the connection is deep, fundamental, and informative: Information is physical, and there is no two ways around it.

So I force myself to maintain a sympathetic eye to arguments which run, “this math over here corresponds to that math over there,” as long as the reasoning behind the comparison is itself deep and mathematical. That this is one involving entropy (again) is just gravy.