On Order, Simplicity and Entropy

After perusing the various comments generated by my book Entropy and Art: An Essay on Disorder and Order [1], the readers of Leonardo have probably decided either to get hold of the book and see for themselves or to forget about some of the highly sophisticated discussions of issues involving the domains of physics and engineering. Therefore, instead of prolonging the play of claim and counterclaim unduly, I would like below to use some remarks by one of my critics, Richard I. Land [2], to carry the clarification of certain key concepts somewhat beyond where I left them in my book. I shall concentrate on order and simplicity. It may be true that, as Land asserts, the term entropy in its strict technical sense has little metaphorical value. Entropy, however, is the most familiar concept that has been offered to refer to a phenomenon that is fundamentally valuable as a metaphor and as an explanation, namely, the irreversible mechanical events occurring in a closed physical system. Historically, the notion of entropy was introduced with regard to the special limiting case of such a system, i.e. the case in which structural organization approaches zero. I made use of this notion only because it helped me to account for the puzzling contradiction between the physicist's use of the term order and the very different meaning it has for the psychologist and artist. While it may suffice for certain purposes of the physicist, although surely not for all, to call order any particular arrangement of units, the difference between organized and disorganized structures is crucial for the description of biological and mental systems and the term order is needed to characterize organized structure. One speaks of order when the processes governing a system as a whole are supported by all its parts. The concerted activities of all parts constitute an orderly system. Such a system may be more in the nature of a field, based on the direct and free interplay of its components or more like a machine, i.e. a network of rigidly established inter

Epistemology · Simplicity · Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics · Computer Science · Origins and Evolution of Life · Philosophy · Quantum Mechanics and Applications

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