Energy, Information, Feedback, Adaptation, and Self-organization: The Fundamental Elements of Life and Society

This unique book offers a comprehensive and integrated introduction to the five fundamental elements of life and society: energy, information, feedback, adaptation, and self-organization. It is divided into two parts. Part I is concerned with energy (definition, history, energy types, energy sources, environmental impact); thermodynamics (laws, entropy definitions, energy, branches of thermodynamics, entropy interpretations, arrow of time); information (communication and transmission, modulation–demodulation, coding–decoding, information theory, information technology, information science, information systems); feedback control (history, classical methodologies, modern methodologies); adaptation (definition, mechanisms, measurement, complex adaptive systems, complexity, emergence); and self-organization (definitions/opinions, self-organized criticality, cybernetics, self-organization in complex adaptive systems, examples in nature).