The 2nd Law vs Progress of Physics

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is the main enigma of classical physics left unresolved by modern physicists thus leaving the scene to other scientists. After a 50-year struggle Stephen Wolfram presents a  resolution in the form of computational irreducibility explained in the recent podcast Did Stephen Wolfram Finally Prove the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?

The role of the 2nd Law is to explain irreversibility in macroscopic processes ultimately based on microscopical processes which are reversible in time. From where does the irreversibility come? Why is there an arrow of time pointing forward as an expression of increasing entropy or disorder?

Wolfram seeks an answer viewing physical processes as forms of analog computation subject to speed/cost limitations, which connects to my own explanation explained in the books Computational Thermodynamics and The Clock and the Arrow.  

The common idea is that the evolution of a physical system over a time step from one time instant to a next, can be viewed as a form of analog computation or processing of information subject to certain limitations forcing destruction of information which cannot be retrieved. 

I complement this general idea by offering a reason why necessarily physics evolves into more complex configurations beyond computational resolution and so require destruction of information, with turbulent fluid flow as key example. 

In fluid flow velocity differences/gradients can increase by advection as form of instability, while sharp gradients are smoothed by viscosity as a stabilising effect.  If the viscosity is small, like in air and water, the resulting flow becomes so complex that computational resolution is no longer possible as feature of turbulence, which forces destruction of information into irreversibility. 

The 2nd Law can thus be given a meaning in terms of computation of finite precision + complexity arising from instability, which can be made precise in mathematical terms with turbulent dissipation replacing the role of the mysterious concept of entropy as a measure of disorder or randomness. This is a meaning not asking for any observer, which still lingers in Wolfram's computational irreducibility.  

It is often heard that there has been no/little progress in modern fundamental physics since 1973, when string theory took over, and of course no/little progress in classical physics since 1900 when modern physics took over. 

It took 2000 years for Pythagoras to take over from Euclide with the development of Calculus forming the scientific revolution. 

Da Vinci pondering the nature of turbulent fluid flow as an expression of the 2nd Law,