Information, Entropy, Life and the Universe

Download or read book Information, Entropy, Life and the Universe written by Arieh Ben-Naim and published by World Scientific Publishing Company Incorporated. This book was released on 2015 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this book is to explain in simple language what we know and what we do not know about information and entropy -- two of the most frequently discussed topics in recent literature -- and whether they are relevant to life and the entire universe. Entropy is commonly interpreted as a measure of disorder. This interpretation has caused a great amount of "disorder" in the literature. One of the aims of this book is to put some "order" in this "disorder." The book explains with minimum amount of mathematics what information theory is and how it is related to thermodynamic entropy. Then it critically examines the application of these concepts to the question of "What is life?" and whether or not they can be applied to the entire universe.