In hmolscience, anti-entropy is a loose term associated with effects or processes opposite that of entropy, namely order, organization, and improbability as opposed to that of disorder, disorganization and probability; expressing the ascending primacy of life (powered CHNOPS+ matter) over entropy, where life is defined as a kind of anti-entropic or negative entropy process. [1]
Overview
In 1951, French religion-reconciling physical chemist Pierre Teilhard, in his "The Transformation, starting with Man, of the Process of Evolution", dedicated to Julian Huxley, stated the following: [2]
“Anti-entropy is an effect of changes that are seized, draws a portion of matter in the direction of continually higher forms of structurization and centration.”
In 1967, or thereafter, this particular terminology, often considered a post-Teilhardian expression, in that it was used significantly employe in the peculiar venacular of Teilhard, had become common. [1]
In 1974, Belgian physician and cellular biologist Albert Claude, in his Nobel Lecture, stated the following, now popularly requoted statement: [3]
“Life, this anti-entropy, ceaselessly reloaded with energy, is a climbing force, toward order amidst chaos, toward light, among the darkness of the indefinite, toward the mystic dream of love, between the fire which devours itself and the silence of the cold. Such a nature does not accept abdication, nor skepticism.”
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Difficulties
See main: Anti-entropy difficulties
The difficulties with "anti-entropy", as with all entropy antonyms, is that the tendency towards entropy increase in systems, does not translate into the tendency towards chaos or disorder increase in evolution and social terms, but rather into the quantifiable measure of “transformation content” increase or increase in the “equivalence value of all uncompensated transformations”, in the original words of Clausius; which has to do with the concluding supposition that entropy can’t be reversed—or in now-defunct Lavoisier-speak that caloric is not conserved when a body returns to its original state following a cyclical process of heat expansion and cooling contraction. The translation of entropy increase tendency to evolutionary social concerns is that when entropy reaches a maximum, free energy will reach a minimum, equilibrium will be reached, and the process will therein cease to go in the forward direction; which, in respect to the molecular structures involved, e.g. a given human or social structure, in a given state, translates to the quantifiable meaning that each bound state atomic geometry, e.g. Jack or Jill, America or Russia, etc., at the bottom or top of the hill, will have a different free energy of formation in each specific state of existence, as are, by standard methodology, tabulated on free energy tables.
References
1. Cowell, Sion. (2001). The Teilhard Lexicon: Understanding the Language, Terminology and Vision of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: The First English-Language Dictionary of his Writin. (pg. 125). Sussex Academic Press.
2. (a) Teilhard, Pierre. (1951). “The Transformation, starting with Man, of the Process of Evolution”, manuscript, Nov 19.
(b) Teilhard, Pierre. (1976). Activation of Energy (pgs. 302-3). New York: Harvest Book.
3. (a) Claude, Albert. (1974). “The Coming Age of the Cell: Inventory of Living Mechanisms, Biochemistry and Electron Microscope, and the View of the Impact of the the Findings on our Status and Thinking” (Ѻ) (Ѻ), Nobel Lecture, Dec 12.
(b) Gaither, Carl C. and Cavazos-Gaither, Alma E. (2012). Gaither’s Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (pg. 1165). Springer.
Further reading
● Bailly, Francis and Longo, Guiseppe. (2009). “Biological Organization and Anti-Entropy.” Journal of Biological Systems, Vol. 17, No. 1.
