Development of a Living Matter: Entropic Ground of Quantitative Descriptions

摘要

Entropy has been widely referred to as a measure of biological order. The validity of this notion is discussed in conjunction with its relation to the spontaneous creation of order. Information theory offers a quantitative method for characterization of order, however, it is not fundamentally connected to formalisms of irreversible thermodynamics, and it is severely limited because the meaning and value of the information is neglected (Smith, 1975). The paper presents an entropy approach to quantitative description of living matter development as a process of gathering information. The presentation is accompanied by a thorough analysis of related themes of (Pashchenko, 2001, 2007) relating to the notion of entropy and some attempts of its generalizations.