Nature is often described through opposites: stability and change, order and disorder, construction and decay. Yet these pairs are less like enemies than like terms in a single account. A crystal…
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Nature is often described through opposites: stability and change, order and disorder, construction and decay. Yet these pairs are less like enemies than like terms in a single account. A crystal appears orderly because its particles occupy constrained positions, while the surrounding world carries the energetic cost of producing and maintaining that arrangement. In this sense, order and disorder are not independent quantities that simply rise and fall in isolation; they are relational. Local order can increase, provided that a greater increase of disorder occurs elsewhere.
The evolution of human beings on Earth offers a striking illustration. Over immense periods, biological organisation became more elaborate: cells combined into tissues, nervous systems coordinated specialised organs, and eventually human societies built languages, institutions and technologies capable of storing information outside the body. None of this suspended the physical tendency toward disorder. Organisms maintain their intricate structures by consuming concentrated energy and releasing heat and waste. A city, similarly, may look like an island of organised activity only because flows of fuel, food and materials enter it and dispersed energy and refuse leave it.
The contrast, then, is real but not absolute. Nature contains both order and disorder, but each becomes intelligible only in relation to the other. The more sharply a system creates and preserves order within a boundary, the more carefully one must ask where the accompanying disorder has been displaced. This is why an increase in order does not refute the growth of disorder; under ordinary physical conditions it depends upon it. The apparent paradox disappears once the scale of observation is widened. Human organisation, biological complexity and technological sophistication are examples not of order defeating disorder, but of local order being purchased by a larger dispersal elsewhere.
Which of the following statements are true about the given passage?
I. The author deliberates on the evolution of human beings on the earth.
II. He acknowledges an inherent contrast in nature.
III. He states a direct relation between order and disorder.
IV. He finds a mutual inter-dependence in order and disorder in nature.
Choose the correct answer from the given options:
The evolution of human beings on Earth offers a striking illustration. Over immense periods, biological organisation became more elaborate: cells combined into tissues, nervous systems coordinated specialised organs, and eventually human societies built languages, institutions and technologies capable of storing information outside the body. None of this suspended the physical tendency toward disorder. Organisms maintain their intricate structures by consuming concentrated energy and releasing heat and waste. A city, similarly, may look like an island of organised activity only because flows of fuel, food and materials enter it and dispersed energy and refuse leave it.
The contrast, then, is real but not absolute. Nature contains both order and disorder, but each becomes intelligible only in relation to the other. The more sharply a system creates and preserves order within a boundary, the more carefully one must ask where the accompanying disorder has been displaced. This is why an increase in order does not refute the growth of disorder; under ordinary physical conditions it depends upon it. The apparent paradox disappears once the scale of observation is widened. Human organisation, biological complexity and technological sophistication are examples not of order defeating disorder, but of local order being purchased by a larger dispersal elsewhere.
Which of the following statements are true about the given passage?
I. The author deliberates on the evolution of human beings on the earth.
II. He acknowledges an inherent contrast in nature.
III. He states a direct relation between order and disorder.
IV. He finds a mutual inter-dependence in order and disorder in nature.
Choose the correct answer from the given options:
- I, II and III only
- I, II and IV only
- II, III and IV only
- I, II, III and IV
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: D - I, II, III and IV
Statement I holds: the second paragraph discusses the evolution of human beings on Earth as its main illustration. II holds: the contrast between order and disorder is called ‘real but not absolute’. III holds: local order can increase only if a greater increase of disorder occurs elsewhere, a direct relation. IV holds: each ‘becomes intelligible only in relation to the other’, which is mutual interdependence. All four statements are supported.
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