Listening to the speeches and statements of many politicians can become an interesting game if one tries to perceive the “entropy” (disorder, chaos) associated with their speech. The use of insignificant speech entails loss of clarity, and therefore increased entropy. Here’s a political beauty: “And so, at last, I come to the one firm conviction that I mentioned at the beginning: it is that the subject is too new for final judgments” (1). Indeed, politicians are renowned for saying a lot without saying much.
Entropy applied to language is indeed a very real concept – just as it is in science and engineering. And as a governing principle, like the law of gravity, it can always be counted on. By itself, entropy proves that evolution cannot take place. For if the observable tendency in any movement of mass, energy, and information is toward an overall decay of order (increasing disorder), how can an overall increase of order and information, as we see in the creation, have ever occurred? – unless God created and programmed the order and information in the first place, as the Bible tells us!
Chaos and disorder in communication theory are correctly called “entropy”. In 1948, C.E. Shannon, when developing a mathematical theory for communication systems, arrived at the Boltzmann entropy distribution (2). Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann had famously derived the same expression for probabilities of dispersion of particles and energy from the kinetic theory of gases. The function, H, in Shannon’s equation was known in Boltzmann’s derivation to be “entropy”. Entropy (disorder) within a closed system always increases. It was originally conceived of and named by physicists William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and Rudolf Clausius when they established the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (the law of increasing entropy) in their studies of heat transfer in the early 1850s. Therefore, on the advice of mathematician John von Neumann, Shannon called his function “entropy,” although his work was in the theory of communications. There was considerable debate as to whether his function was the same or merely an analog to the entropy of Thomson and Clausius. But in 1961, it was clearly demonstrated that “the two entropies were examples of the same idea and therefore not merely analogies” (3). Information transfer is plagued with the same problem that plagues energy transfer; the incessant spread of disorder.
In communications theory, superfluous, redundant, and imprecise information is called “noise”. Noise interferes with communication of the message, just as static does in a radio broadcast. All sources of unclarity – redundant, ambiguous, imprecise, equivocating words and phrases – are “noise” sources. Noisy, chaotic (unclear) language is the result if we don’t order our thoughts and speak the truth. It takes real work to order our language with precision and clarity for good communication, just as it always takes work to overcome increasing entropy. This is a symptom of the natural tendency toward disorder (decay) in a creation fallen from innocence because of sin, which the Bible speaks of – “(the creation’s) bondage to decay (corruption)” (Romans 8:21). Decay is in many ways the process of death.
There is, in fact, a serious danger to disorderly language through the use of superfluous, redundant, and imprecise words. It is that the language can be misleading and deceptive. Noisy communication transfers confusion rather than understanding. By increasing the disorder of language, noisy communication can be used to conceal things and deceive people. The Bible warns us against ambiguous, disordered speech because it tends to come from deceit. “But let your communication be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; and anything beyond these is of evil” (Matthew 5:37). The Bible says it’s a good idea not to talk too much (James 1:19; 3:5-8). It says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21).
So, with all this in mind, consider the language entropy in the following quote from a congressional hearing some years ago: “I may have, I’m not, I’m not, I am not currently recalling the precise incident that you are describing. It does not sound like something I would not have done, but I don’t recall having voted specifically for that measure. But it’s quite possible that I did.”
– Mark Cadwallader, Board Chairman of Creation Moments
1) Einstein, C., How to Communicate: The Manning, Selvage, and Lee Guide to Clear Writing and Speech, McGraw-Hill Book Co, New York, New York, 1985.
2) Harr, M. E., Reliability-Based Design in Civil Engineering, pg 87,88, McGraw-Hill Book Co, New York, New York, 1987.
3) Ibid, pg 89, quoting Tribus M., 1969.
Photo: AI creation of a “Word Salad.”
Permission is granted to reprint this material on the condition that it is not modified and that it is attributed to Creation Moments, Inc.
