Defining ‘Entropy’

Category : Information Architecture

Entropy can be characterized by the term ‘randomness’ to express the phase duration in which a stable system’s state mutates due to expected or unexpected variables. Entropy is fundamentally the erratic behavior of a system caused by external disturbances that leads to a chaotic or disorganized structure of which a system may no longer function as a single unit. In system science, this effect is understood as the natural ‘force’ or movement towards disorder in Nature.

Like natural elements, every system has a life cycle. Depending on the kind of system at stake, closed or open system, and if designed to adapt, a system will survive as a decentralized system regardless of external disturbances (i.e. seemingly randomly dispersed elements of a whole system that behave according to decentralized laws –e.g. a flock of birds). An Open System would be an example of such systems that presents (after observation overtime) a pattern in its motion from order to disorder, and from disorder to order; in which case the system can be said to be stable regardless of ‘entropy’.

source: Flood, Robert L. and Ewart R. Carson. “Systems: Origin and Evolution, Terms and Concepts” Dealing with Complexity: An Introduction to the Theory and Application of Systems Science. (pp. 12-13)

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