| 释义 |
negentropy|nɛˈgɛntrəpɪ|
[f. negative a. + entropy.]
Negative entropy, as a measure of order or information.
1950L. Brillouin in Amer. Scientist XXXVIII. 594/1 Every observation in the laboratory..is made at the expense of a certain amount of negative entropy (abbreviation: negentropy), taken away from the surroundings. 1956― Sci. & Information Theory p. xii, We prove that information must be considered as a negative term in the entropy of a system; in short, information is negentropy. Ibid. ix. 117 An isolated system contains negentropy if it reveals a possibility for doing mechanical or electrical work. 1958Archivum Linguisticum X. 137 The calculation of redundancy, by the method taken over from information theory, requires the three terms ‘negentropy’, ‘relative negentropy’ and redundancy. 1966S. Beer Decision & Control ix. 188 Hence the energy transferred through the system is exactly balanced by the information flowing the opposite way; to speak of a change in entropy is ipso facto to speak of an equivalent change in negentropy. 1970H. C. Shands Semiotic Approaches to Psychiatry xxiii. 386 Knowing systems lose information as physical systems gain entropy. The continuous input of ‘negentropy’..is required to maintain balance in either context. 1971Sci. Amer. Sept. 183/2 Taking commonly accepted average values for the temperatures of the sun and the earth, the 1·6 × 1015 megawatt-hours of energy radiated to outer space carries with it the capability for an entropy decrease, or ‘negentropy flux’, of 3·2 × 1022 joules per degree K. per year, or 1038 bits per second. |