Information, Entropy, Life, and the Universe

Arieh Ben-Naim*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

In 2015, I wrote a book with the same title as this article. The book’s subtitle is: “What we know and what we do not know.” On the book’s dedication page, I wrote: “This book is dedicated to readers of popular science books who are baffled, perplexed, puzzled, astonished, confused, and discombobulated by reading about Information, Entropy, Life and the Universe.” In the first part of this article, I will present the definitions of two central concepts: the “Shannon measure of information” (SMI), in Information Theory, and “Entropy”, in Thermodynamics. Following these definitions, I will discuss the framework of their applicability. In the second part of the article, I will examine the question of whether living systems and the entire universe are, or are not within the framework of applicability of the concepts of SMI and Entropy. I will show that much of the confusion that exists in the literature arises because of people’s ignorance about the framework of applicability of these concepts.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1636
JournalEntropy
Volume24
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the author.

Keywords

  • entropy
  • information
  • life and the universe
  • Shannon’s measure of information
  • the second law
  • thermodynamics

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