Entropy Again

[David L. Pelovitz]

From: Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt <hag at iafrica.com>

>David Pelovitz:
>>In Norbert Wiener's _The Human Use
>> of Human Beings_(which was one of TRP's major sources) wrote:

>Really? Source?
 
The most obvious one I can think of is Slow Learner's introduction
when Pynchon discusses "Entropy" (the short story)

"As it was, after having been worked with in a restrained way for
the next seventy or eighty years, entropy got picked up on
by some communication theorists and given the cosmic moral twist
it continues to enjoy in current usage.  I happened to read
Norbert Wiener's _The Human use of Human Beings_ (a rewrite
for the interested layman of his more technical _Cybernetics_)
at teh same time as _The Education of Henry Adams_, and the
'theme' of the story is mostly derivative of what these two
men had to say." (xxii)

>> "The transfer of information cannot take place without a 
>> certain minimum transfer of energy, so that there is no
>> sharp boundary between energetic coupling and informational
>> coupling.  Nevertheless, for most practical purposes, a light
>> quantum is a very small thing; and the amount of energy 
>> transfer which is necessary for an effective informational
>> coupling is quite small.  It follows that in considering
>> such a local process as the growth of a tree or of a 
>> human being, which depends directly or indirectly on
>> radiation from the sun, an enormous local decrease in
>> entropy may be associated with a quite moderate energy
>> transfer." 

>Why do people still insist on equating thermodynamic entropy and 
>information entropy? The two have absolutely nothing to do with one 
>another! It is this type of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo which has 
>ruined many a earnest engagement with TRP.

The scientific aspect of it is at least part of the point.
TRP claims niot to understand entropy as a concept in
the Slow Learner Introudction but goes on to use informational
and thermodynamic entropy in "Entropy" and claim in COL49
that the two fields are entirely unconnected except by metaphor.

Whether he knows his physics or not, Pynchon employs
all aspects of entropy as a metaphor.  That doesn't
mean he is trying to privilege any of them as
a universal truth.

David Pelovitz - dqp5805 at is.nyu.edu