During the Hadeon, from 4.6 Ga, the total number of minerals or “species” in the crust is estimated to have been only 12. 400 million years later, 4.56 Ga, this has the number increased to 250. In another 100 million years, the number had quadrupled to 250. Within another 500 million, it rose to 400. After another billion years, entering the Eeoarcheon, the number of minerals increases to 1500.
Entering the Paleoarcheon, in the initially anoxic environment, the number remains the same. But within 1 billion years, 2 Ga, during the Great Oxidation event, in the Paleoproterozoic, the number climbs sharpy thanks to oxygen to 4000 species. By the time the earth enters the Phanerozoic epoch, the total number of minerals has reached 5413. According to computer models based on the so-called “Large number of rare events” LNRE, there should be 6300 minerals, 900 more than the 5400 present estimate.
We are thus forced to conclude that in closed systems under thermodynamic equilibrium, that is not gaining or losing energy, complexity will always increase until it reaches a maximum, then leveling off and eventually reducing to zero as the entropy gradient is exhausted.
The law of Cosmic Progress, therefore, states that as long as the Earth is habitable, complexity, both organismal, geological, and mineral, will increase. The corollaries of organismal complexity, advanced intelligence, will commensurably increase, leading to more and more elaborate mega-civilizations where higher races dominate a greater share of the earth’s surface, displacing lower races.