"Boltzmann suggested that the entropy was really counting the number of ways we could arrange the components of a system (atoms or whatever) so that it really didn’t matter. That is, the number of different microscopic states that were macroscopically indistinguishable. (If you’re worried that “indistinguishable” is in the eye of the beholder, you have every right to be, but that’s a separate puzzle.) There are far fewer ways for the molecules of air in a box to arrange themselves exclusively on one side than there are for the molecules to spread out throughout the entire volume; the entropy is therefore much higher in the latter case than the former. With this understanding, Boltzmann was able to “derive” the Second Law in a statistical sense — roughly, there are simply far more ways to be high-entropy than to be low-entropy, so it’s no surprise that low entropy states will spontaneously evolve into high-entropy ones, but not vice-versa. (Promoting this sensible statement into a rigorous result is a lot harder than it looks, and debates about Boltzmann’s H theorem continue merrily to this day.)"