DISORDER
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 946 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Methodology or model |
A general state of lack of coordination between elements.
It would possibly be better to create a neologism for such a state, for example “unorder”, because in common language, disorder really means “seriously altered order”
It is obviously in such a dubious way that R. FIVAZ understands disorder when he defines it as an “arbitrary arrangement in time, space, velocity or other dimension of positions of elements in a system: the arrangement is such that positions in any part of the system cannot be predicted from the knowledge of positions in any other part” (1991, p.31).
It seems however clear that “arrangement” and “disorder” are compatible terms only if disorder is not total.
In accordance with thermodynamic laws, disorder means “a completely featureless distribution of elements”, which corresponds to the state of maximum entropy, and random distribution and movements of the elements.
This is a generally final situation and, in case of systems the “end of the road”. As St. BEER once said: “Death is equifinal”.
As in a disordered state, no constraints exist, or in other terms no algorithmic compression is possible, the quantity of information that would be needed to describe it is maximum. This is the reason (questioned by some authors) why information is many times quoted as corresponding with so-called “negentropy”.
Chaos theory introduces the understanding of a different kind of disorder: the general unpredictability resulting from complex dynamics.