SLSL Intro "Entropy"

Wed Nov 20 23:03:26 CST 2002

   "Because the story has been anthologized a
couple-three times, people think I know more about the
subject of entropy than I really do.  Even the
normally unhoodwinkable Donald Barthelme has suggested
in a magazine interview that I had some kind of
proprietary handle on it.  Well, according to the OED
the word was coined in 1865 by Rudolf Clausius ....
after having been worked with in a restrained way for
the next 70 or 80 years, entropy got picked up on by
some communication theorists and given the cosmic
moral twist it continues to enjoy in current usage....

[...]

   "Further, it turns out that not everyone has taken
suach a dim view of entropy...." (SL, "Intro," pp.
12-14)

Donald Barthelme

Which interview?  In the meantime ...

Pynchon, Thomas.  "Introduction."  The Teachings of
   Don B.: The Satires, Parodies, Fables, 
   Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme.
   New York: Turtle Bay Books, 1992.

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_barthelme.html

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/barthelme.html

And see as well ...

http://www.jessamyn.com/barth/index.html

http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/barthelme.html

http://www.nagasaki-gaigo.ac.jp/ishikawa/amlit/b/barthelme21.htm

http://college.hmco.com/english/heath/syllabuild/iguide/barthelm.html

"according to the OED"

entropy ('entr&pI).  Physics.  [f. Gr. trope
transformation (lit. 'turning'), after the analogy of
ENERGY.  First proposed by Clausius (1865) in Ger.
form entropie.
   Clausius (Pogg. Ann. CXXV. 390), assuming
(unhistorically) the etymological sense of energy to
be 'work-contents' (werk-inhalt), devised the term
entropy as a corresponding designation for the
'transformation-contents' (verwandlungsinhalt) of a
system.]
   1. The name given to one of the quantitative
elements which determine the thermodynamic condition
of a portion of matter. Also transf. and fig.
   In Clausius' sense, the entropy of a system is the
measure of the unavailability of its thermal energy
for conversion into mechanical work.... The term was
first used in Eng. by Prof. Tait ... who however
proposed to use it in a sense exactly opposite to that
of Clausius. In this he was followed ... by Maxwell
and others; but subsequently Tait and Maxwell reverted
to the original definition, which is now generally
accepted.

[...]

   2. a. Communication Theory.  A measure of the
average information rate of a message or language ....

[...]

   b. Math. In wider use: any quantity having
properties analogous to those of the physical quantity
....

http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/00076390

Note, of course, entropy AS trope here ...

Rudolf Clausius (1822-1888)

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Clausius.html

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Clausius.html

Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

http://www.phy.hr/~dpaar/fizicari/xmaxwell.html

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Maxwell.html

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Maxwell.html

P.G. Tait (1831-1901)

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Tait.html

J. Willard Gibbs (1839-1903)

http://www.shsu.edu/~icc_cmf/bio/gibbs.html

http://www.aip.org/history/gap/Gibbs/Gibbs.html

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Gibbs.html

http://mechanic.bradley.edu/courses/me302/biographies/Gibbs.html

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Gibbs.html

"in diagram form"

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jolls/

"communication theorists"

Shannon, Claude E.  "A Mathematical Theory of
   Communication," Bell Systems Technical Journal
   27 (1948):379-423.

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/paper.html

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf

Shannon, Claude E. and Warren Weaver.
   The Mathematical Theory of Communication.
   Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1949.

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s99/shannon.html

http://www.uoregon.edu/~felsing/virtual_asia/info.html

>From Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings:
Cybernetics and Society (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1954 [1950]), Preface, "The Idea of a Contingent
Universe," pp. 7-12 ...

"Gibbs' innovation was to consider not one world, but
all the worlds which are possible ....  His central
notion concerned the extent to which answers that we
may give to questions about one set of worlds are
probable among a larger set of worlds....  Gibbs had a
theory that this probability tended naturally to
increase as the universe grows older.  The measure of
this probability is called entropy, and the
chracteristic tendency of entropy is to increase.
   "As entropy increases, the universe, and all closed
systems in the universe, tend naturally to detriorate
and lose their distinctiveness, to move from the least
to the most probable state, from a state of
organization and differentiation in which distinctions
and forms exist, to a state of chaos and sameness...."
(p. 12)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0211&msg=72941&sort=date

"cosmic moral twist"

Rifkin, Jeremy with Ted Howard. Entropy:
   A New World View.  New York: Viking, 1980.

Rifkin, Jeremy.  Entropy: Into the Greenhouse
   World.  Rev. ed.  New York: Bantam, 1989.

http://www.foet.org/JeremyRifkin.htm

http://www.foet.org/

And see as well ...

http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~piccard/entropy/bibliography.html

http://www.chalidze.com/misuse.htm

http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/notebooks/rifkin.html

"the way Isaac Asimov explains it"

Asimov, Isaac.  "Order!  Order!"  The Magazine of
   Fantasy and Science Fiction, Vol. 20, No. 2
   (February 1961):   -  .

__________.  "Order!  Order!"  View from a Height:
   Seventeen Essays on Science.  Garden City, NY:
   Doubleday, 1963.  135-49.

__________.  "Order!  Order!"  Asimov on Physics.
   Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976.  128-39.

http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/Essays/physics.html

http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/Essays/f_and_sf_essays.html

http://ff-asimov.ifrance.com/ff-asimov/Ess-O.html

And see in general ...

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/entropy/

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/entropy/paradox.html

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/slowlearner/entropy.html

As well as, e.g., ...

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/papers_dutta.html

http://www.israel.ru/krok/tr/entr_for.htm

Vanderbeke, Dirk. "Subliminal Cues: Psychoanalysis
   and Entropy in Pynchon's Novels." Pynchon Notes
   44-45 (1999): 51-64

Not to mention ...

http://www.aps.org/apsnews/0200/020008.html

Hear, hear ...

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