Negentropy, Information and the Feeding of Organisms

Details Negentropy, Information and the Feeding of Organisms Negentropy, Information and the Feeding of Organisms

Mar 1967

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1967natur.213..952w&link_type=abstract

Nature, Volume 213, Issue 5079, pp. 952 (1967).

Mathematics

Logic

6

Scientific paper

IN a recent reply to Büchel, concerning entropy and information in the universe, Popper1 persists in the use of a biological example which appears to be incorrect. This concerns the developing birds' eggs which ``appear to produce structural negentropy by increasing their structural organization; they are, as far as we know, ``fed'', in Schrödinger's sense, exclusively on heat (that is, on entropy)''. This does not constitute a counter example to Schrödinger's views2 because the developing embryo in the egg ``feeds'' on the negentropy of the yolk; this conversion process, in common with most biological energy conversion processes, is not very efficient and in the course of it entropy (as heat) is generated. The purpose of incubation is to reduce the rate of flow of heat away from the egg which is poorly insulated, no doubt inevitably so as a consequence of the structural requirements for gas exchange. Thus over the whole period of incubation there is a net loss of radiant energy from the egg and it is therefore misleading to suggest, as Popper does, that the egg has fed on entropy. To have asked of Schrödinger (as Popper requires) that he say something of organisms which distinguishes them from heat engines was scarcely possible in the strictly thermodynamic context of Schrödinger's famous remark, because it would have required going beyond the then available limits of thermodynamics to say something about the form or information content of the received energy.

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