Re: Order is being created from disorder ?

[LUDWIK KOWALSKI <kowalskil@alpha.montclair.edu>]

On Mon, 19 May 1997 Leigh Palmer wrote 

> It is easy to confuse the concepts when people get cute and use an
> established term [entropy] for what is really a new concept [Shanon's
> "entropy" described by David]. 

I am not totally convinces that entropy and intropy are funadamentally
different. Consider a set ten adjacent square windows in a row. It is
used to record interacting particles (large molecules, smoke, etc.). 
Each particle is about as large as one window. At any given moment each 
window either has a particle in it or not. The system is dynamic and the 
average distance between particles is such that, on the average, six 
widnows have particles in them and four are empty. What we observe can 
be described as changing sets of ten bits with zeros and ones.

Now suppose you read something typed in English on a very long tape.
The particles are letters and each window, at any given moment, either
has or does not have a vowel in it. Again we can describe the sitations
as changing sets of ten bits with zeros and ones. My guess is that the 
probability of catching a fowel in a single window is close to 0.6

In both cases we are dealing with patterns which fluctuate randomly 
around a well defined average pattern. What counts is randomness, not 
the mechanism of shuffling. In one case the shuffling is through 
collisions and temperature in another it is due to activity of a writer.

                                           Ludwik Kowalski