An introduction to nonadditive entropies and a thermostatistical approach of inanimate and living matter

TL;DR

This paper introduces nonadditive entropies within a thermostatistical framework, highlighting their significance in understanding complex systems like living matter and their potential to distinguish inanimate from living systems.

Contribution

It reviews the development and application of nonadditive entropies in generalized statistical mechanics, emphasizing their role in analyzing complex, non-ergodic systems such as living matter.

Findings

Nonadditive entropies provide a new paradigm for complex systems analysis.

Applications include modeling living and inanimate matter.

Predictions align with experimental observations.

Abstract

The possible distinction between inanimate and living matter has been of interest to humanity since thousands of years. Clearly, such a rich question can not be answered in a single manner, and a plethora of approaches naturally do exist. However, during the last two decades, a new standpoint, of thermostatistical nature, has emerged. It is related to the proposal of nonadditive entropies in 1988, in order to generalise the celebrated Boltzmann-Gibbs additive functional, basis of standard statistical mechanics. Such entropies have found deep fundamental interest and uncountable applications in natural, artificial and social systems. In some sense, this perspective represents an epistemological paradigm shift. These entropies crucially concern complex systems, in particular those whose microscopic dynamics violate ergodicity. Among those, living matter and other living-like systems play a central role. We briefly review here this approach, and present some of its predictions, verifications and applications.