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Research concerning the relationship between the thermodynamic quantity entropy and both the origin and evolution of life began around the turn of the 20th century. In 1910 American historian Henry Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume A Letter to American Teachers of History proposing a theory of history based on the second law of ...
The statistical definition of entropy defines it in terms of the statistics of the motions of the microscopic constituents of a system — modelled at first classically, e.g. Newtonian particles constituting a gas, and later quantum-mechanically (photons, phonons, spins, etc.). The two approaches form a consistent, unified view of the same ...
The expression "entropy" is applied here in the context of states of consciousness and their associated neurodynamics, where high entropy means a high level of disorder. The theory proposes a general distinction between two fundamentally different modes of cognition, referred to as primary and secondary consciousness.
Entropy and disorder also have associations with equilibrium. [8] Technically, entropy, from this perspective, is defined as a thermodynamic property which serves as a measure of how close a system is to equilibrium—that is, to perfect internal disorder. [9]
The term "entropy pessimism" was coined to describe the work of Romanian American economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, a progenitor in economics and the paradigm founder of ecological economics. [41]: 116 Georgescu-Roegen made extensive use of the entropy concept in his magnum opus on The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. [42]
The free energy principle is a mathematical principle of information physics: much like the principle of maximum entropy or the principle of least action, it is true on mathematical grounds. To attempt to falsify the free energy principle is a category mistake, akin to trying to falsify calculus by making empirical observations. (One cannot ...
An equivalent definition of entropy is the expected value of the self-information of a variable. [1] Two bits of entropy: In the case of two fair coin tosses, the information entropy in bits is the base-2 logarithm of the number of possible outcomes — with two coins there are four possible outcomes, and two bits of entropy. Generally ...
Social entropy is a sociological theory that evaluates social behaviours using a method based on the second law of thermodynamics. [1] The equivalent of entropy in a social system is considered to be wealth or residence location. [2] The term "social entropy" was first used by physicist Peter Tait in 1874. [3]