Citation for this page in APA citation style.           Close


Philosophers

Mortimer Adler
Rogers Albritton
Alexander of Aphrodisias
Samuel Alexander
William Alston
Anaximander
G.E.M.Anscombe
Anselm
Louise Antony
Thomas Aquinas
Aristotle
David Armstrong
Harald Atmanspacher
Robert Audi
Augustine
J.L.Austin
A.J.Ayer
Alexander Bain
Mark Balaguer
Jeffrey Barrett
William Barrett
William Belsham
Henri Bergson
George Berkeley
Isaiah Berlin
Richard J. Bernstein
Bernard Berofsky
Robert Bishop
Max Black
Susanne Bobzien
Emil du Bois-Reymond
Hilary Bok
Laurence BonJour
George Boole
Émile Boutroux
Daniel Boyd
F.H.Bradley
C.D.Broad
Michael Burke
Lawrence Cahoone
C.A.Campbell
Joseph Keim Campbell
Rudolf Carnap
Carneades
Nancy Cartwright
Gregg Caruso
Ernst Cassirer
David Chalmers
Roderick Chisholm
Chrysippus
Cicero
Randolph Clarke
Samuel Clarke
Anthony Collins
Antonella Corradini
Diodorus Cronus
Jonathan Dancy
Donald Davidson
Mario De Caro
Democritus
Daniel Dennett
Jacques Derrida
René Descartes
Richard Double
Fred Dretske
John Dupré
John Earman
Laura Waddell Ekstrom
Epictetus
Epicurus
Austin Farrer
Herbert Feigl
Arthur Fine
John Martin Fischer
Frederic Fitch
Owen Flanagan
Luciano Floridi
Philippa Foot
Alfred Fouilleé
Harry Frankfurt
Richard L. Franklin
Bas van Fraassen
Michael Frede
Gottlob Frege
Peter Geach
Edmund Gettier
Carl Ginet
Alvin Goldman
Gorgias
Nicholas St. John Green
H.Paul Grice
Ian Hacking
Ishtiyaque Haji
Stuart Hampshire
W.F.R.Hardie
Sam Harris
William Hasker
R.M.Hare
Georg W.F. Hegel
Martin Heidegger
Heraclitus
R.E.Hobart
Thomas Hobbes
David Hodgson
Shadsworth Hodgson
Baron d'Holbach
Ted Honderich
Pamela Huby
David Hume
Ferenc Huoranszki
Frank Jackson
William James
Lord Kames
Robert Kane
Immanuel Kant
Tomis Kapitan
Walter Kaufmann
Jaegwon Kim
William King
Hilary Kornblith
Christine Korsgaard
Saul Kripke
Thomas Kuhn
Andrea Lavazza
Christoph Lehner
Keith Lehrer
Gottfried Leibniz
Jules Lequyer
Leucippus
Michael Levin
Joseph Levine
George Henry Lewes
C.I.Lewis
David Lewis
Peter Lipton
C. Lloyd Morgan
John Locke
Michael Lockwood
Arthur O. Lovejoy
E. Jonathan Lowe
John R. Lucas
Lucretius
Alasdair MacIntyre
Ruth Barcan Marcus
Tim Maudlin
James Martineau
Nicholas Maxwell
Storrs McCall
Hugh McCann
Colin McGinn
Michael McKenna
Brian McLaughlin
John McTaggart
Paul E. Meehl
Uwe Meixner
Alfred Mele
Trenton Merricks
John Stuart Mill
Dickinson Miller
G.E.Moore
Thomas Nagel
Otto Neurath
Friedrich Nietzsche
John Norton
P.H.Nowell-Smith
Robert Nozick
William of Ockham
Timothy O'Connor
Parmenides
David F. Pears
Charles Sanders Peirce
Derk Pereboom
Steven Pinker
Plato
Karl Popper
Porphyry
Huw Price
H.A.Prichard
Protagoras
Hilary Putnam
Willard van Orman Quine
Frank Ramsey
Ayn Rand
Michael Rea
Thomas Reid
Charles Renouvier
Nicholas Rescher
C.W.Rietdijk
Richard Rorty
Josiah Royce
Bertrand Russell
Paul Russell
Gilbert Ryle
Jean-Paul Sartre
Kenneth Sayre
T.M.Scanlon
Moritz Schlick
Arthur Schopenhauer
John Searle
Wilfrid Sellars
Alan Sidelle
Ted Sider
Henry Sidgwick
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
J.J.C.Smart
Saul Smilansky
Michael Smith
Baruch Spinoza
L. Susan Stebbing
Isabelle Stengers
George F. Stout
Galen Strawson
Peter Strawson
Eleonore Stump
Francisco Suárez
Richard Taylor
Kevin Timpe
Mark Twain
Peter Unger
Peter van Inwagen
Manuel Vargas
John Venn
Kadri Vihvelin
Voltaire
G.H. von Wright
David Foster Wallace
R. Jay Wallace
W.G.Ward
Ted Warfield
Roy Weatherford
C.F. von Weizsäcker
William Whewell
Alfred North Whitehead
David Widerker
David Wiggins
Bernard Williams
Timothy Williamson
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Susan Wolf

Scientists

David Albert
Michael Arbib
Walter Baade
Bernard Baars
Jeffrey Bada
Leslie Ballentine
Marcello Barbieri
Gregory Bateson
Horace Barlow
John S. Bell
Mara Beller
Charles Bennett
Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Susan Blackmore
Margaret Boden
David Bohm
Niels Bohr
Ludwig Boltzmann
Emile Borel
Max Born
Satyendra Nath Bose
Walther Bothe
Jean Bricmont
Hans Briegel
Leon Brillouin
Stephen Brush
Henry Thomas Buckle
S. H. Burbury
Melvin Calvin
Donald Campbell
Sadi Carnot
Anthony Cashmore
Eric Chaisson
Gregory Chaitin
Jean-Pierre Changeux
Rudolf Clausius
Arthur Holly Compton
John Conway
Jerry Coyne
John Cramer
Francis Crick
E. P. Culverwell
Antonio Damasio
Olivier Darrigol
Charles Darwin
Richard Dawkins
Terrence Deacon
Lüder Deecke
Richard Dedekind
Louis de Broglie
Stanislas Dehaene
Max Delbrück
Abraham de Moivre
Bernard d'Espagnat
Paul Dirac
Hans Driesch
John Eccles
Arthur Stanley Eddington
Gerald Edelman
Paul Ehrenfest
Manfred Eigen
Albert Einstein
George F. R. Ellis
Hugh Everett, III
Franz Exner
Richard Feynman
R. A. Fisher
David Foster
Joseph Fourier
Philipp Frank
Steven Frautschi
Edward Fredkin
Benjamin Gal-Or
Howard Gardner
Lila Gatlin
Michael Gazzaniga
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen
GianCarlo Ghirardi
J. Willard Gibbs
James J. Gibson
Nicolas Gisin
Paul Glimcher
Thomas Gold
A. O. Gomes
Brian Goodwin
Joshua Greene
Dirk ter Haar
Jacques Hadamard
Mark Hadley
Patrick Haggard
J. B. S. Haldane
Stuart Hameroff
Augustin Hamon
Sam Harris
Ralph Hartley
Hyman Hartman
Jeff Hawkins
John-Dylan Haynes
Donald Hebb
Martin Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg
John Herschel
Basil Hiley
Art Hobson
Jesper Hoffmeyer
Don Howard
John H. Jackson
William Stanley Jevons
Roman Jakobson
E. T. Jaynes
Pascual Jordan
Eric Kandel
Ruth E. Kastner
Stuart Kauffman
Martin J. Klein
William R. Klemm
Christof Koch
Simon Kochen
Hans Kornhuber
Stephen Kosslyn
Daniel Koshland
Ladislav Kovàč
Leopold Kronecker
Rolf Landauer
Alfred Landé
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Karl Lashley
David Layzer
Joseph LeDoux
Gerald Lettvin
Gilbert Lewis
Benjamin Libet
David Lindley
Seth Lloyd
Hendrik Lorentz
Werner Loewenstein
Josef Loschmidt
Ernst Mach
Donald MacKay
Henry Margenau
Owen Maroney
David Marr
Humberto Maturana
James Clerk Maxwell
Ernst Mayr
John McCarthy
Warren McCulloch
N. David Mermin
George Miller
Stanley Miller
Ulrich Mohrhoff
Jacques Monod
Vernon Mountcastle
Emmy Noether
Donald Norman
Alexander Oparin
Abraham Pais
Howard Pattee
Wolfgang Pauli
Massimo Pauri
Wilder Penfield
Roger Penrose
Steven Pinker
Colin Pittendrigh
Walter Pitts
Max Planck
Susan Pockett
Henri Poincaré
Daniel Pollen
Ilya Prigogine
Hans Primas
Zenon Pylyshyn
Henry Quastler
Adolphe Quételet
Pasco Rakic
Nicolas Rashevsky
Lord Rayleigh
Frederick Reif
Jürgen Renn
Giacomo Rizzolati
Emil Roduner
Juan Roederer
Jerome Rothstein
David Ruelle
David Rumelhart
Tilman Sauer
Ferdinand de Saussure
Jürgen Schmidhuber
Erwin Schrödinger
Aaron Schurger
Sebastian Seung
Thomas Sebeok
Franco Selleri
Claude Shannon
Charles Sherrington
David Shiang
Abner Shimony
Herbert Simon
Dean Keith Simonton
Edmund Sinnott
B. F. Skinner
Lee Smolin
Ray Solomonoff
Roger Sperry
John Stachel
Henry Stapp
Tom Stonier
Antoine Suarez
Leo Szilard
Max Tegmark
Teilhard de Chardin
Libb Thims
William Thomson (Kelvin)
Richard Tolman
Giulio Tononi
Peter Tse
Alan Turing
Francisco Varela
Vlatko Vedral
Mikhail Volkenstein
Heinz von Foerster
Richard von Mises
John von Neumann
Jakob von Uexküll
C. S. Unnikrishnan
C. H. Waddington
John B. Watson
Daniel Wegner
Steven Weinberg
Paul A. Weiss
Herman Weyl
John Wheeler
Wilhelm Wien
Norbert Wiener
Eugene Wigner
E. O. Wilson
Günther Witzany
Stephen Wolfram
H. Dieter Zeh
Semir Zeki
Ernst Zermelo
Wojciech Zurek
Konrad Zuse
Fritz Zwicky

Presentations

Biosemiotics
Free Will
Mental Causation
James Symposium
 
Leo Szilard

Leo Szilard is perhaps best known for patenting particle accelerators and nuclear reactions in the 1930's and then preparing a letter to President Roosevelt delivered by Albert Einstein urging the United States to develop atomic weapons.

But Szilard's great contribution to information philosophy is his connecting an increase in thermodynamic (Boltzmann) entropy with any increase in information (he called it order) that results from a measurement.

Many thinkers, beginning with William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and Ludwig Boltzmann in the nineteenth century, had described any increase in entropy as simply a loss of oder and increase in disorder. Now Szilard showed that a gain in information/order in one place must also result in an increase in entropy/disorder in another place, to satisfy the second law of thermodynamics that overall entropy must always increase.

Szilard quantitatively analyzed "Maxwell's Demon," the thought experiment suggested by James Clerk Maxwell, in which a reduction in entropy is possible when an intelligent being interacts with a thermodynamic system.

In the original Maxwell example, the demon measures the speed of molecules approaching a door between two volumes of gas. When fast molecules approach from the left, the demon opens the door to allow them into the right volume. When slow molecules approach from the right, he opens the door for them. The net result is a transfer of heat from left to right volumes, in apparent violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

Szilard considered the simplest possible steam engine, a cylinder with but a single molecule of gas. The cylinder is in contact with a heat reservoir to maintain isothermal conditions. Szilard's minimal intelligent demon inserts a partition into the middle of the cylinder and then notes whether the molecule is above or below the partition.

If the molecule is above, it can bounce against the partition and drive it down, doing work. The molecule loses energy (transferring momentum to the partition) but recovers its average energy from the infinite heat reservoir. If the molecule is below, it can drive the partition up. In either case, the demon can attach a weight to the partition to demonstrate its ability to do work, in apparent violation of the second law. Here is Szilard's description:

A standing hollow cylinder, closed at both ends, can be separated into two possibly unequal sections of volumes V1 and V2 respectively by inserting a partition from the side at an arbitrarily fixed height. This partition forms a piston that can be moved up and down in the cylinder. An infinitely large heat reservoir of a given temperature T insures that any gas present in the cylinder undergoes isothermal expansion as the piston moves. This gas shall consist of a single molecule which, as long as the piston is not inserted into the cylinder, tumbles about in the whole cylinder by virtue of its thermal motion.

Imagine, specifically, a man who at a given time inserts the piston into the cylinder and somehow notes whether the molecule is caught in the upper or lower part of the cylinder, that is, in volume V1 or V2. If he should find that the former is the case, then he would move the piston slowly downward until it reaches the bottom of the cylinder. During this slow movement of the piston the molecule stays, of course, above the piston.

However, it is no longer constrained to the upper part of the cylinder but bounces many times against the piston which is already moving in the lower part of the cylinder. In this way the molecule does a certain amount of work on the piston. This is the work that corresponds to the isothermal expansion of an ideal gas - consisting of one single molecule from volume V1 to the volume V1 + V2. After some time, when the pistol has reached the bottom of the container, the molecule has again the full volume V to move about in, and the piston is then removed. The procedure can be repeated as many times as desired. The man moves the piston up or down depending on whether the molecule is trapped in the upper or lower half of the piston. In more detail, this motion may be caused by a weight, that is to be raised, through a mechanism that transmits the force from the piston to the weight, in such a way that the latter is always displaced upwards. In this way the potential energy of the weight certainly increases constantly. (The transmission of force to the weight is best arranged so that the force exerted by the weight on the piston at any position of the latter equals the average pressure of the gas.) It is clear that in this manner energy is constantly gained at the expense of heat, insofar as the biological phenomena of the intervening man are ignored in the calculation.

Szilard argued that the intelligent being made a "measurement" of the molecule's position, stored that measurement's information in memory, and then used the information to attach the moving partition to a weight in order to get useful work.

Because the measurement was a simple binary decision between the upper and lower volumes, Szilard anticipated the idea in Claude Shannon's information entropy that a single "bit" (a binary digit) of information was involved.

Szilard calculated the mean value of the quantity of entropy produced by a 1-bit measurement as

S = k log 2,

where k is Boltzmann's constant. The base-2 logarithm reflects the binary decision.

The amount of entropy generated by the measurement may, of course, always be greater than this fundamental amount, but not smaller, or the second law would be violated.

Szilard connected the act of measurement to the acquisition of information, which was stored in the memory of the observer. This memory was then used to decide how to extract useful work. His discussion parallels in many respects the problem of measurement in quantum mechanics.

For brevity we shall talk about a "measurement," if we succeed in coupling the value of a parameter y. (for instance the position co-ordinate of a pointer of a measuring instrument) at one moment with the simultaneous value of a fluctuating parameter x of the system, in such a way that, from the value y, we can draw conclusions about the value that x had at the moment of the "measurement." Then let x and y be uncoupled after the measurement, so that x can change, while y retains its value for some time. Such measurements are not harmless interventions. A system in which such measurements occur shows a sort of memory faculty, in the sense that one can recognize by the state parameter y what value another state parameter x had at an earlier moment, and we shall see that simply because of such a memory the Second Law would be violated, if the measurement could take place without compensation. We shall realize that the Second Law is not threatened as much by this entropy decrease as one would think, as soon as we see that the entropy decrease resulting from the intervention would be compensated completely in any event if the execution of such a measurement were, for instance, always accompanied by production of k log 2 units of entropy. In that case it will be possible to find a more general entropy law, which applies universally to all measurements.

Although Szilard's fundamental relation between the information gained in all measurements and the necessary increase in entropy has been studied by many scientists, including Leon Brillouin, Gunter Ludwig, Norbert Wiener, Rolf Landauer, Charles Bennett, and Wojciech Zurek, it has never been seriously challenged - although some information theorists would like to limit information as meaningful messages between a sender and a receiver (Bernd-Olaf Kuppers, Juan Roederer), the theory of the communication of information has never included meaning or purpose.

Information physics takes the Szilard relation one step further and identifies the moment that information is encoded stably in the universe as the von Neumann/Heisenberg "cut" between the microscopic quantum world and the macroscopic classical world.

References
On the Decrease in Entropy in a Thermodynamic System by the Intervention of Intelligent Beings
For Teachers
For Scholars
ON THE DECREASE OF ENTROPY IN A THERMODYNAMIC SYSTEM BY THE INTERVENTION OF INTELLIGENT BEINGS

The objective of the investigation is to find the conditions which apparently allow the construction of a perpetual-motion machine of the second kind, if one permits an intelligent being to intervene in a thermodynamic system. When such beings make measurements, they make the system behave in a manner distinctly different from the way a mechanical system behaves when left to itself. We show that it is a sort of a memory faculty, manifested by a system where measurements occur, that might cause a permanent decrease of entropy and thus a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, were it not for the fact that the measurements themselves are necessarily accompanied by a production of entropy. At first we calculate this production of entropy quite generally from the postulate that full compensation is made in the sense of the Second Law (Equation [1]). Second, by using an inanimate device able to make measurements — however under continual entropy production — we shall calculate the resulting quantity of entropy. We find that it is exactly as great as is necessary for full compensation. The actual production of entropy in connection with the measurement, therefore, need not be greater than Equation (1) requires.

There is an objection, already historical, against the universal validity of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which indeed looks rather ominous. The objection is embodied in the notion of Maxwell's demon, who in a different form appears even nowadays again and again; perhaps not unreasonably, inasmuch as behind the precisely formulated question quantitative connections seem to be hidden which to date have not been clarified. The objection in its original formulation concerns a demon who catches the fast molecules and lets the slow ones pass. To be sure, the objection can be met with the reply that man cannot in principle foresee the value of a thermally fluctuating parameter. However, one cannot deny that we can very well measure the value of such a fluctuating parameter and therefore could certainly gain energy at the expense of heat by arranging our intervention according to the results of the measurements. Presently, of course, we do not know whether we commit an error by not including the intervening man into the system and by disregarding his biological phenomena.

Apart from this unresolved matter, it is known today that in a system left to itself no "perpetuum mobile" (perpetual motion machine) of the second kind (more exactly, no "automatic machine of continual finite work-yield which uses heat at the lowest temperature") can operate in spite of the fluctuation phenomena. A perpetuum mobile would have to be a machine which in the long run could lift a weight at the expense of the heat content of a reservoir. In other words, if we want to use the fluctuation phenomena in order to gain energy at the expense of heat, we are in the same position as playing a game of chance, in which we may win certain amounts now and then, although the expectation value of the winnings is zero or negative. The same applies to a system where the intervention from outside is performed strictly periodically, say by periodically moving machines. We consider this as established (Szilard, 1925) and intend here only to consider the difficulties that occur when intelligent beings intervene in a system. We shall try to discover the quantitative relations having to do with this intervention.

Smoluchowski (1914, p. 89) writes: "As far as we know today, there is no automatic, permanently effective perpetual motion machine, in spite of the molecular fluctuations, but such a device might, perhaps, function regularly if it were appropriately operated by intelligent beings...."

A perpetual motion machine therefore is possible if — according to the general method of physics — we view the experimenting man as a sort of deus ex machina, one who is continuously and exactly informed of the existing state of nature and who is able to start or interrupt the macroscopic course of nature at any moment without expenditure of work. Therefore he would definitely not have to possess the ability to catch single molecules like Maxwell's demon, although he would definitely be different from real living beings in possessing the above abilities. In eliciting any physical effect by action of the sensory as well as the motor nervous systems a degradation of energy is always involved, quite apart from the fact that the very existence of a nervous system is dependent on continual dissipation of energy.

Whether - considering these circumstances - real living beings could continually or at least regularly produce energy at the expense of heat of the lowest temperature appears very doubtful, even though our ignorance of the biological phenomena does not allow a definite answer. However, the latter questions lead beyond the scope of physics in the strict sense.

It appears that the ignorance of the biological phenomena need not prevent us from understanding that which seems to us to be the essential thing. We may be sure that intelligent living beings — insofar as we are dealing with their intervention in a thermodynamic system — can be replaced by nonliving devices whose "biological phenomena" one could follow and determine whether in fact a compensation of the entropy decrease takes place as a result of the intervention by such a device in a system.

In the first place, we wish to learn what circumstance conditions the decrease of entropy which takes place when intelligent living beings intervene in a thermodynamic system. We shall see that this depends on a certain type of coupling between different parameters of the system. We shall consider an unusually simple type of these ominous couplings. For brevity we shall talk about a "measurement," if we succeed in coupling the value of a parameter y. (for instance the position co-ordinate of a pointer of a measuring instrument) at one moment with the simultaneous value of a fluctuating parameter x of the system, in such a way that, from the value y, we can draw conclusions about the value that x had at the moment of the "measurement." Then let x and y be uncoupled after the measurement, so that x can change, while y retains its value for some time. Such measurements are not harmless interventions. A system in which such measurements occur shows a sort of memory faculty, in the sense that one can recognize by the state parameter y what value another state parameter x had at an earlier moment, and we shall see that simply because of such a memory the Second Law would be violated, if the measurement could take place without compensation. We shall realize that the Second Law is not threatened as much by this entropy decrease as one would think, as soon as we see that the entropy decrease resulting from the intervention would be compensated completely in any event if the execution of such a measurement were, for instance, always accompanied by production of k log 2 units of entropy. In that case it will be possible to find a more general entropy law, which applies universally to all measurements. Finally we shall consider a very simple (of course, not living) device, that is able to make measurements continually and whose "biological phenomena" we can easily follow. By direct calculation, one finds in fact a continual entropy production of the magnitude required by the above-mentioned more general entropy law derived from the validity of the Second Law.

The first example, which we are going to consider more closely as a typical one, is the following. A standing hollow cylinder, closed at both ends, can be separated into two possibly unequal sections of volumes V1 and V2 respectively by inserting a partition from the side at an arbitrarily fixed height. This partition forms a piston that can be moved up and down in the cylinder. An infinitely large heat reservoir of a given temperature T insures that any gas present in the cylinder undergoes isothermal expansion as the piston moves. This gas shall consist of a single molecule which, as long as the piston is not inserted into the cylinder, tumbles about in the whole cylinder by virtue of its thermal motion.

Imagine, specifically, a man who at a given time inserts the piston into the cylinder and somehow notes whether the molecule is caught in the upper or lower part of the cylinder, that is, in volume V1 or V2. If he should find that the former is the case, then he would move the piston slowly downward until it reaches the bottom of the cylinder. During this slow movement of the piston the molecule stays, of course, above the piston.

However, it is no longer constrained to the upper part of the cylinder but bounces many times against the piston which is already moving in the lower part of the cylinder. In this way the molecule does a certain amount of work on the piston. This is the work that corresponds to the isothermal expansion of an ideal gas - consisting of one single molecule from volume V1 to the volume V1 + V2. After some time, when the pistol has reached the bottom of the container, the molecule has again the full volume V to move about in, and the piston is then removed. The procedure can be repeated as many times as desired. The man moves the piston up or down depending on whether the molecule is trapped in the upper or lower half of the piston. In more detail, this motion may be caused by a weight, that is to be raised, through a mechanism that transmits the force from the piston to the weight, in such a way that the latter is always displaced upwards. In this way the potential energy of the weight certainly increases constantly. (The transmission of force to the weight is best arranged so that the force exerted by the weight on the piston at any position of the latter equals the average pressure of the gas.) It is clear that in this manner energy is constantly gained at the expense of heat, insofar as the biological phenomena of the intervening man are ignored in the calculation.

In order to understand the essence of the man's effect on the system, one best imagines that the movement of the piston is performed mechanically and that the man's activity consists only in determining the altitude of the molecule and in pushing a lever (which steers the piston) to the right or left, depending on whether the molecule's height requires a down- or upward movement. This means that the intervention of the human being consists only in the coupling of two position co-ordinates, namely a co-ordinate x, which determines the altitude of the molecule, with another co-ordinate y, which determines the position of the lever and therefore also whether an upward or downward motion is imparted to the piston. It is best to imagine the mass of the piston as large and its speed sufficiently great, so that the thermal agitation of the piston at the temperature in question can be neglected.

In the typical example presented here, we wish to distinguish two periods, namely:

1. The period of measurement when the piston has just been inserted in the middle of the cylinder and the molecule is trapped either in the upper or lower part; so that if we choose the origin of co-ordinates appropriately, the x-co-ordinate of the molecule is restricted to either the interval x > 0 or x < 0;

2. The period of utilization of the measurement, "the period of decrease of entropy," during which the piston is moving up or down. During this period the x-co-ordinate of the molecule is certainly not restricted to the original interval x > 0 or x < 0. Rather, if the molecule was in the upper half of the cylinder during the period of measurement, i.e., when x > 0, the molecule must bounce on the downward-moving piston in the lower part of the cylinder, if it is to transmit energy to the piston; that is, the co-ordinate x has to enter the interval x < 0. The lever, on the contrary, retains during the whole period its position toward the right, corresponding to downward motion. If the position of the lever toward the right is designated by y = 1 (and correspondingly the position toward the left by y = —1) we see that during the period of measurement, the position x > 0 corresponds to y = 1; but afterwards y = 1 stays on, even though x passes into the other interval x < 0. We see that in the utilization of the measurement the coupling of the two parameters x and y disappears.

We shall say, quite generally, that a parameter y "measures" a parameter x (which varies according to a probability law), if the value of y is directed by the value of parameter x at a given moment. A measurement procedure underlies the entropy decrease effected by the intervention of intelligent beings.

One may reasonably assume that a measurement procedure is fundamentally associated with a certain definite average entropy production, and that this restores concordance with the Second Law. The amount of entropy generated by the measurement may, of course, always be greater than this fundamental amount, hut not smaller. To put it precisely: we have to distinguish here between two entropy values. One of them, S1 , is produced when during the measurement y assumes the value 1, and the other, S2, when y assumes the value —1. We cannot expect to get general information about S1 or S2 separately, but we shall see that if the amount of entropy produced by the "measurement" is to compensate the entropy decrease affected by utilization, the relation must always hold good.

e-S1/k + e-S2/k ≤ 1     (1)

One sees from this formula that one can make one of the values, for instance S1, as small as one wishes, hut then the other value S2 becomes correspondingly greater. Furthermore, one can notice that the magnitude of the interval under consideration is of no consequence. One can also easily understand that it cannot be otherwise.

Conversely, as long as the entropies S1 and S2, produced by the measurements, satisfy the inequality (1), we can he sure that the expected decrease of entropy caused by the later utilization of the measurement will be fully compensated.

Before we proceed with the proof of inequality (1), let us see in the light of the above mechanical example, how all this fits together. For the entropies S1 and S2 produced by the measurements, we make the following Ansatz:

S1 = S2 = k log 2     (2)

This ansatz satisfies inequality (1) and the mean value of the quantity of entropy produced by a measurement is (of course in this special case independent of the frequencies ω1, ω2 of the two events):

S = k log 2     (3)

REFERENCES

Smoluchowski, F. Vorträge über die kinetische Theorie der Materie u. Elektrizitat. Leipzig: 1914.

Szilard, L. Zeitschrift. fur Physik, 1925, 32, 753.


Chapter 1.5 - The Philosophers Chapter 2.1 - The Problem of Knowledge
Home Part Two - Knowledge
Normal | Teacher | Scholar