BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

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MAXWELL's DEMON 2)

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An imaginary being endowed with sufficiently keen perceptions to be able to reverse entropic disorder in an isolated system by controlling in a selective way the movements of its elements.

Such a being would be capable by its action to violate the second law of thermodynamics.

However, as stated by A. RAPOPORT: "MAXWELL's argument… contains a basic fallacy. If the demon is placed inside the system, the processes going on within him must also be taken in account in computing the total change in entropy. It was subsequently shown by L. SZILARD (1929) and later by L BRILLOUIN that the processes within the demon (whether he is a mechanism or an organism) must be such that the decrease in entropy effected by his intervention is at least compensated (in general, over-compensated) by an increase of entropy in the demon. If, on the other hand, the demon intervenes from outside the system, then the system can no longer be considered to be isolated, and the Second Law does not apply" (1966, p.7).

The point can also be made by observing that the demon must acquire information through an observational process that is not gratuitous in energy terms and, moreover, needs energy in order to move the elements in an ordering way.

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

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