ECTROPY
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 1018 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Methodology or model |
- “…the ability of open and organized systems to use the environmental substances, rich in easily released energy, to maintain… a given level of entropy or even to lower it” (V.I. KREMYANSKIY, l969, p.142).
Systems do this as they “maintain irregular distributions (gradients) of substance concentration and support synthesis processes founded on the binding and simultaneously the dispersing of energy” (Ibid).
The concept was imagined by AUERBACH, according to whom “…life is an organization created to avert the menacing entropy-death of the universe” (L.von BERTALANFFY, 1969, p.77).
BERTALANFFY states: “Ectropy does not exist. However, thermodynamics was concerned only with closed systems, and its extension to open systems leads to very unexpected results” (Ibid).
Originally the notion of ectropy was no more than a purely verbal explanation, in finalistic terms, of a still quite ill understood situation, i.e. the existence of some compensation to the entropic degradation of energy. More recently, PRIGOGINE and his school developed the new thermodynamics of open systems and extended it to the irreversible systems with structurating dissipation of energy and eventual emergence into higher levels of complexity.
However, in his 1960 paper, KREMYANSKIY was already giving a satisfactory meaning to the concept of ectropy.