ABSTRACT
The communist dogma of an infinite material universe even became enshrined in the officially approved definition of cosmology. The law of entropy, including its cosmological implications, became a matter of dispute in the Soviet Union, where it was discussed in a variety of ways, not all of them relating to physics. To some revolutionary minds, entropy seemed opposed to revolution. In the earlier period several works of a theological orientation included treatment of cosmological questions, among these the consequences to be drawn from the second law of thermodynamics. The distinguished British philosopher and historian of ideas Stephen Toulmin pointed out that to say about a law, such as the entropy principle, that it holds universally is not the same as to say that it holds for the universe. The physicist J. R. Plotkin argued in 1950 that the law of entropy increase was invalid for an infinite universe, irrespective of its concrete structure.
