The transfer of energy dictates everything on earth from the movement of atoms to the global economy. In high school/first-year chemistry we learn that the rules governing the movement of energy are simply defined by three laws of thermodynamics (four if you count the zeroth law). Yet, this simplicity can be misleading –  as demonstrated by how often the second law is misunderstood, misused and abused. The second law states: The entropy of closed systems undergoing real processes must increase. For some people the second law translates to “everything progresses from order to disorder” or “it is impossible for complexity to arise from randomness.” The biggest promoters for this misguided interpretation are advocates for intelligent design and/or irreducible complexity, which are just thinly veiled pseudonyms for creationism. They argue that complex systems like the flagellum or the human eye could not evolve spontaneously because they are complex – A logically precarious stance to take since these claims have been thoroughly debunked by evolutionary biologists.1 A quick bit of reflection on our day-to-day lives produces examples of complexity arising from less complex components. Ants, neurons, and transistors are just some examples of small building blocks that become infinitely more complex systems when combined in the right circumstances. It is easy to argue that the above examples are the result of agency but there are also many examples of objects naturally...