Entropy

The tendency of all matter and energy in the universe ? including all systems, societies, etc. ? to change toward a state of disorder or randomness. The works of earth artists ? Robert Smithson (American, 1938-1973), for example ? reflect an interest in the concept of entropy. Related to this is the use of the term in information theory, where entropy is a measure of the apparent disorder of a system, so that the more there is known about it, the less entropy it seems to have. In this vein, entropy is understood as the number of possibilities, which decreases as knowledge grows.(pr. EN-troh-pee)Also see chaos, composition, interdisciplinary, and order.