Quantitative assessment of increasing complexity

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to quantitatively assess the increasing complexity of systems from gases to biological and social structures using entropy, highlighting the challenges in applying this approach across diverse systems.

Contribution

It introduces a unified entropy-based framework for measuring complexity across physical, biological, and social systems, addressing key methodological challenges.

Findings

Entropy can be used to quantify complexity across diverse systems.

A method to compare entropy of physical systems and complex molecules is proposed.

Discussion of obstacles in applying entropy-based complexity measures.

Abstract

We study the build up of complexity on the example of 1 kg matter in different forms. We start on the simplest example of ideal gases, and then continue with more complex chemical, biological, life and social and technical structures. We assess the complexity of these systems quantitatively, based on their entropy. We present a method to attribute the same entropy to known physical systems and to complex organic molecules up to a DNA. The important steps in this program and the basic obstacles are discussed.