ABSTRACT
In his article, “Life, Thermodynamics, and Cybernetics,” Dr. L. Brillouin offers an objection to the conception that the recording of information involves a change in entropy as now defined thermodynamically. Such an entropy change would have to take into account whether or not the information was previously known to the observer, whether the observer can understand, and whether he is interested in, the observation. Dr. Brillouin suggests an analogy with the computation of the entropy of light beams which depends upon the absorption spectrum of the recording instrument. A new definition of entropy, he suggests, involving the nature of the receiving instrument, is therefore required for use in biology.
