Textbooks written by chemists, physicists, and thermodynami-cists, by contrast, usually adopted the Brillouin explanation, deve-loping the concept of information through its connection with ther-modynamic entropy.20 Maxwell’s Demon figured prominently in these explanations and led to the expected conclusion that entropy and information should have opposite signs. For these authors the problem of how thermodynamic entropy related to informational entropy was compelling; most of them devoted several pages to the question. The ability of both heuristics to replicate themselves through several generations of textbooks is striking evidence of the effectiveness of disciplinary traditions in erecting boundaries that marginalize or trivialize what happens outside of them. In fact, the problem of how Brillouin’s negentropy relates to Shan-non’s entropy is not especially complex or difficult. More than twenty years ago, John Arthur Wilson (1968) demonstrated that Brillouin’s proofs still hold true if the signs are reversed and the “negentropy” concept is dropped. But the debate continues because the heuristics are informed by other associations. Brillouin’s heuris-tic grew out of his analysis of Maxwell’s Demon, and this analysis makes sense only if information and entropy are opposites. Shan-non’s heuristic, by contrast, concentrates on the circuits necessary to transmit messages, and these circuits emphasize the intrinsic uncer-tainty of message transmissions. Embodied in the heuristics are values extraneous to the formal theories but essential to the mindsets out of which they grew.
Textbooks written by chemists, physicists, and thermodynami-cists, by contrast, usually adopted the Brillouin explanation, deve-loping the concept of information through its connection with ther-modynamic entropy.20 Maxwell’s Demon figured prominently in these explanations and led to the expected conclusion that entropy and information should have opposite signs. For these authors the problem of how thermodynamic entropy related to informational entropy was compelling; most of them devoted several pages to the question. The ability of both heuristics to replicate themselves through several generations of textbooks is striking evidence of the effectiveness of disciplinary traditions in erecting boundaries that marginalize or trivialize what happens outside of them. <br><br>In fact, the problem of how Brillouin’s negentropy relates to Shan-non’s entropy is not especially complex or difficult. More than twenty years ago, John Arthur Wilson (1968) demonstrated that Brillouin’s proofs still hold true if the signs are reversed and the “negentropy” concept is dropped. But the debate continues because the heuristics are informed by other associations. Brillouin’s heuris-tic grew out of his analysis of Maxwell’s Demon, and this analysis makes sense only if information and entropy are opposites. Shan-non’s heuristic, by contrast, concentrates on the circuits necessary to transmit messages, and these circuits emphasize the intrinsic uncer-tainty of message transmissions. Embodied in the heuristics are values extraneous to the formal theories but essential to the mindsets out of which they grew.
正在翻译中..