One can (fecetiously?) take the law of action/reaction as indicating that there is "nothing new under the sun": when I push a bike (with a kid on it) the sum of force that I and the bike exert on each other are equal. And so it is with the mechanical forces within my body as I move while floating in space. There is no such thing as an individual efficient cause, no starting point of motion. Merely the transfer of movements already there.
But to interpret movement in this way would be to take a mathematical abstraction as the complete story. Something was left out at the beginning, something given in the common sense regard for the situation. And in this case, common sense is no mere "folk physics" to be overturned.
On the other hand, if common sense is correct, then the way in which there is more to this situation than is recognized by Newtonian consideration of the forces, and this "more" does not contradict the abstraction.... just as the "more" (common sense) and the "less" (Newtonian analysis of the sum of forces) are both correct and non-contradictory (for one who doesn't absolutize an abstraction)..... this coexistence of truths about nature is a kind of model for how a materialistic analysis of nature can be true as far as it goes as long a it has an openendedness to the aspects of reality that don't fall under its abstractions.
It certainly is the case that entropy increases in each (closed) system. Yet order is quite impressive in a small part of a system called an organism. No contradiction here either.
Maybe there are other ways in which this analogy applies...
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