Negentropy (nonfiction)
Negentropy has different meanings in theoretical biology and information theory.
In a biological context, the negentropy (also negative entropy, syntropy, extropy, ectropy or entaxy) of a living system is the entropy that it exports to keep its own entropy low; it lies at the intersection of entropy and life. The concept and phrase "negative entropy" was introduced by Erwin Schrödinger in his 1944 popular-science book What is Life?
Later, Léon Brillouin shortened the phrase to negentropy, to express it in a more "positive" way: a living system imports negentropy and stores it.
In 1974, Albert Szent-Györgyi proposed replacing the term negentropy with syntropy. That term may have originated in the 1940s with the Italian mathematician Luigi Fantappiè, who tried to construct a unified theory of biology and physics. Buckminster Fuller tried to popularize this usage, but negentropy remains common.
In the News
Brillouin did not make blood pact with Maxwell's demon.
Fiction cross-reference
Nonfiction cross-reference
External links:
- Negentropy @ Wikipedia