Let's take entropy, for example.

As a vague concept, it can be very useful and can be meaningfully employed as a

successful reference.
One can talk, for example, about maximal entropy or maximizing it. One can discuss it
as thus vaguely conceived at length without more precisely defining entropy, dealing
with it as an abstraction.
As you know, there are many types of entropy, each with rather precise definitions,
each --- not only vaguely referencing, but --- precisely describing a domain specific
state.
The fast & frugal heuristics of common sense primarily employ abduction, both
instinctual, as in both animals and humans, and inferential, as in humans alone. In
addition to that form of abduction known as retroduction (reasoning backwards from
properties), we employ transduction (reasoning from analogy, metaphor, similarities).
So, again, with a vague reference like entropy, our common sense can locate and
meaningfully discuss the many analogs that are evoked in our considerations of
entropy across specific domains regarding various states.
What common sense can lose sight of, however, are that, as in all analogies,
dissimilarities also abound. This is to recognize, then, that, as we encounter various
states, variously epistemic, ontic or epi-ontic, whether isolated or open, micro- or
universal, finite or infinte, bounded or unbounded, gravitational or not, near or far
from equilibrium, and on and on, our precise descriptions of entropy will diverge, one
from the next, in a very domain-specific way.
As with many other physical concepts, then, there is little epistemic warrant for
extrapolating classical, mechanical and thermodynamic descriptions to either quaint
quantum or gigantic cosmological domains. There are NO successful concrete
descriptions of an entropy of the universe, as a whole. There are only putative
abstractions and mathematical formulations, which may or may not even successfully
refer and which compete with other modeling attempts, which may or may not involve
such accounts as would even include the heat death you religiously invoke.
So, too, common sense and common sensibilities employ vague conceptions of truth,
beauty, goodness and unity. And we realize many values by our successful references
to same, even though our theories of same diverge and our concrete descriptions of
their precise natures flower in various fields of philosophy and religion.
Our common sense and sensibilities involve our participatory imaginations moreso
than our cognitive mapmaking. It is suited to our spatiotemporally local environment.
When those imaginations run wild, beyond this domain, a more rigorous map-making
is necessary to ensure that we don't over-extrapolate our vague conceptions. We do
need to extrapolate, to reason abductively, to develop heuristic conceptions as
placeholders where explanatory adequacy has eluded us, but we should not confuse
such phenomenological taxonomies for sufficient explanations. Such conceptions
may gift us with various evaluative dispositions and affective attunements but they lack

a more universal normative impetus, morally and juridically, precisely because they
lack sufficient probative value, epistemically.
So, for example, there's nothing wrong with waxing poetic about entropy maximization,
evaluatively, and it's got some competing heuristic value, theoretically, but it's way too
highly speculative, interpretively, to deliver any normative impetus, morally. The latter
case ain't gonna happen under any circumstances because it will never become an
affective inclination or evaluative disposition as it's not a pragmatic, ecological
affordance, just an epiphenomenal waste.
Addendum: I've already located our impasse re: entropy and consciousness. I'm with
those who don't conflate informational and thermodynamical entropies, the latter
which plays no significant explanatory role in the emergence of anthroposemiotic
reality.
I will summarize the objections that I've made previously then bow out of this thread,
because it does risk digression, which is why I've already largely backed off. If you want
to take this up under a Physics topic, perhaps I'll join you there.
My objections:
1) Information and thermodynamic entropies are analogous not identical.
2) Not only does no specific description of entropy apply to the universe as a whole,
there's no formulation of entropy applicable to all possible thermodynamic regimes.
3) Not only does no specific description of entropy, in particular, apply to the universe
as a whole, neither does thermodynamics, in general.
4) We can't a priori know whether the 2nd Law emerged or not from more fundamental
axioms.
5) Epistemic entropy extends naught but the principle of insufficient reason, is but a
principle of inference , a mere heuristic motivation, measuring both information and
uncertainty.
6) Statistical mechanics have both epistemic content and dynamical ontic aspects, the
former addressing only our state of knowledge of a physical system, from which we
draw inferences about those systems given only incomplete information.
7) Even knowing the values of the macroscopic variables, many microstates remain
compatible with them and our uncertainties may or may not correspond to
thermodynamic fluctuations.
principle of maximal entropy, entropy of the universe, informational entropy,
thermodynamic entropy, statistical mechanics, phenomenological taxonomy, ecological
affordance, epistemic, ontic, epi-ontic, participatory imagination