BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

ENTROPY (Negative) 1)5)

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"A measure of improbability or of information" (L.von BERTALANFFY, 1956, p.5).

BERTALANFFY comments: "… entropy is a measure of disorder; hence negative entropy or information is a measure of order or of organization since the latter, compared to distribution at random, is an improbable state. In this way information theory comes close to the theory of open systems, which may increase in order and organization, or show negative entropy. But negative entropy can be considered a measure of decisions, taken out of equally probable ones" (p.5).

R. ROSEN points out: "… it was considered a great insight when SCHRÖDINGER characterized the obvious persistence of spatial order in biological organisms as arising from their feeding on "negative entropy" (SCHRÖDINGER, 1945, quoted in ROSEN, 1960, p.267).

It must be pointed out that the concept of negative entropy has received various, not universally accepted interpretations (see hereafter).

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

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