hi stan - I think we need to agree to disagree - for me final cause
involves purpose or intention. A gas that expands into a larger
volume has no intention or purpose and therefore one cannot talk
about final cause because there is no agent - I did enjoy your
argument but I just cannot buy it - Bob
On 12-Oct-07, at 3:01 PM, bob logan wrote:
Loet et al - I guess I am not convinced that information and
entropy are connected. Entropy in physics has the dimension of
energy divided by temperature. Shannon entropy has no physical
dimension - it is missing the Boltzman constant. Therefore how can
entropy and shannon entropy be compared yet alone connected?
I am talking about information not entropy - an organized
collection of organic chemicals must have more meaningful info than
an unorganized collection of the same chemicals.
On 11-Oct-07, at 5:34 PM, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:
Loet - if your claim is true then how do you explain that a
random soup of
organic chemicals have more Shannon info than an equal number of
organic
chemicals organized as a living cell where knowledge of some
chemicals
automatically implies the presence of others and hence have less
surprise
than those of the soup of random organic chemicals? - Bob
Dear Bob and colleagues,
In the case of the random soup of organic chemicals, the maximum
entropy of the systems is set by the number of chemicals involved
(N).
The maximum entropy is therefore log(N). (Because of the
randomness of
the soup , the Shannon entropy will not be much lower.)
If a grouping variable with M categories is added the maximum entropy
is log(N * M). Ceteris paribus, the redundancy in the system
increases
and the Shannon entropy can be expected to decrease.
In class, I sometimes use the example of comparing Calcutta with New
York in terms of sustainability. Both have a similar number of
inhabitants, but the organization of New York is more complex to the
extent that the value of the grouping variables (the systems of
communication) becomes more important than the grouped variable (N).
When M is extended to M+1, N possibilities are added.
I hope that this is convincing or provoking your next reaction.
Best wishes,
Loet
_______________________________________________
fis mailing list
fis@listas.unizar.es
http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
_______________________________________________
fis mailing list
fis@listas.unizar.es
http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
