In hmolscience, Joseph Samuel Bois (1892-1978) was a French-born Canadian-American Jesuit priest turned clinical psychologist noted, in human thermodynamics, for having, supposedly, introduced the entropy antonym term centropy as the central organizing energy effect of evolution, opposite to that of entropy. [1]
Overview
In the late 1930s, Bois read Polish-born American science philosopher Alfred Korzybski's 1933 Science and Sanity and was shaken by it. The foundation of his primary assumptions about our humanness was rocked, so he went and studied with Korzybski and became his most adventurous student. Korzybski had started the Institute of General Semantics (IGS), first in Chicago, and later in Lakeland, Connecticut. After he died, Bois became the heir apparent, and was the chief lecturer. Bois went on to develope his own work, epistemics, as a further elaboration of what Korzybski started, and as a new development that introduced factors which warranted calling it a new discipline. [3]
In 1996, Bois, in The Art of Awareness, for example, comments: [2]
“They bring to a higher order of existence the energies that surround them; they form islands of order in the sea of entropy where the non-living world disintegrates into chaos. Man is the highest form of life, the most resourceful of ...”
Bois cites, among others, Ludwig Bertalanffy and Pierre Teilhard in his work, which is likely from where he gained his understanding of entropy.
Bois was a French Canadian Jesuit priest who was forced out of the Church in the 1920's for his radical, against-doctrine views; similar in theme to Pierre Teilhard. After Bois left the Church he completed a degree in psychology from McGill University in Canada.
It remains to be determined if in fact Bois actually used the term ‘centropy’, or if this is a secondary interpretation; although, according to Irving Simon, Bois coined the term. Bois, however, does discuss entropy in a number of his books.
References
1. (a) Simon, Irving. (1980). Centropy: the Vertical Aspect of Evolution (CopyrightSearch.org). 70-pgs. Publisher.
(b) Simon, Irving. (1989). Centropy: Evolution of Energy Systems. D.A.I. Publishers.
(c) IrivingSimon.com/Centropy.htm (2004) – Wayback Machine.
2. Bois, Joseph S. (1966). The Art of Awareness (pg. #). W.C. Brown.
3. Rothery, Brian. (2003). “World’s Great Epistemicist”, Mar 25, Amazon Review.
External links
● Bois, Joseph Samuel – WorldCat Identities.
