Article ID: | iaor1992185 |
Country: | Austria |
Volume: | 1988 (Jan), 43 pp., 6.00, RR-88-1 |
Start Page Number: | 23 |
End Page Number: | 35 |
Publication Date: | Apr 1991 |
Journal: | IIASA Reports |
Authors: | Ayres Robert U. |
Keywords: | information, biology |
This report reviews some of the basic relationships between energy, entropy, order, and information, especially in the context of self-organizing dissipative systems. It has two parts. Four general ideas are discussed in the first part: (1)Information (negative entropy) can be captured and stored in dissipative structures, including living organisms. (2)‘Evolutionary level’ can be usefully defined as the ability of living organisms to capture and store information in structures. This is a variant of Lotka’s principle. It is further suggested (3)that intelligence can be defined as the ability to modify or create