What is life? The observer prescriptive

Roth, Yehuda

doi:10.1016/j.rinp.2023.106449

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger stated in 1943 that life relies on negative entropy (negentropy) [30,31], which encompasses four viewpoints shown in Box 3. Although Schrödinger's negentropy notion contradicts Boltzmanns correct statement (Section 2), is based on the incorrect notion that entropy represents disorder (Section 5), and erroneously substitutes the microstates (W) in the Boltzmann formula with disorder (D) in its reasoning (Box 3), it has garnered widespread acceptance for nearly 80 years, with only a few criticisms [33][34][35]. Notably, Google Scholar showed at the end of 2023 that Schrödinger's book, What is life, had been positively cited approximately 10,000 times mainly due to the inclusion of this notion.…”

Section: Errors In Schrödinger's Negative Entropy Notionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Notably, Google Scholar showed at the end of 2023 that Schrödinger's book, What is life, had been positively cited approximately 10,000 times mainly due to the inclusion of this notion. In 2022 and 2023, this book was cited for more than 1,000 times by authors from various countries (e.g., [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]) with few doubts about this notion. Coinciding with the popularity of this notion, English Wikipedia and other academic websites deliberately added the word "negative" with brackets in Boltzmann's statement in Box 2 before "entropy" [40,41].…”

Section: Errors In Schrödinger's Negative Entropy Notionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second law of thermodynamics, which states that heat can flow spontaneously from hot objects to cold objects and cannot flow reversely, has been frequently misused. For example, it was assumed by researchers from various fields that many natural or social systems tend to become more disordered over time due to the second law of thermodynamics [2, [4][5][6]18,19,32,[35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42]. The assumption that many natural or social systems tend to become more disordered over time is inherently correct due to some statistical probabilities because it is more probable for these systems to stay at a disordered status than at an ordered status.…”

Section: Misuse Of the Second Law Of Thermodynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Disproving two widely accepted notions regarding entropy

Chen,

Chen

2024

Preprint

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This article systematically disproves two widely accepted notions regarding entropy using multiple novel and compelling arguments. To mathematically describe the second law of thermodynamics, the concept of entropy was created and defined in the 1860s as heat energy divided by thermodynamic temperature, and the entropy of an object increases when it absorbs heat. This is the uncontroversial and fundamental nature of entropy, which is pivotal to current thermodynamics and from which multiple facts are deduced. These facts consistently disprove the notion that entropy is a measure of disorder and disprove Schrödinger's notion of negative entropy (negentropy). Multiple biological facts (e.g., life orderliness is encoded and provided by inherited genes rather than entropy decline) can also disprove Schrödinger's negentropy notion. This article also elucidates the reasoning errors of the two notions regarding entropy. Moreover, the second law of thermodynamics and the notion that many natural or social systems tend to become more disordered over time are due to distinct statistical probabilities and are hence independent of each other.

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