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

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  Brillouin did not make blood pact with Maxwell's demon.

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Information theory (nonfiction)

External links:

• Negentropy @ Wikipedia