Order and Disorder, Entropy in Math, Science, Nature and the Arts

摘要

Often, science and engineering students have difficult time in viewing certain concepts in their holistic form. An example for such a concept is the concept of Entropy. Although it originated from the field of thermodynamics, the relation between order and disorder is a profound one and manifests itself in various fields, sometimes unrelated, such as math and science, nature and the arts. In the discipline of physics, the amount of disorder in a system has been quantified by the concept of Entropy. In the area of information theory it provides a quantitative measure of the amount of compression that may be achieved in a coding scheme and in nature it poses an intriguing question when we consider biological systems. In the arts, which is an unrelated field to the previously mentioned, entropy can be seen in the balance and the tension between the regular and irregular, the expected and the unexpected themes, which make a piece of art valuable. In this paper we provide some interesting insights into the concept of Entropy and its implications in the fields of physics, information theory, decision-making, nature and the arts.