English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Inspired by foundational studies in classical and quantum physics, and byinformation retrieval studies in quantum information theory, we prove that thenotions of 'energy' and 'entropy' can be consistently introduced in humanlanguage and, more generally, in human culture. More explicitly, if energy isattributed to words according to their frequency of appearance in a text, thenthe ensuing energy levels are distributed non-classically, namely, they obeyBose-Einstein, rather than Maxwell-Boltzmann, statistics, as a consequence ofthe genuinely 'quantum indistinguishability' of the words that appear in thetext. Secondly, the 'quantum entanglement' due to the way meaning is carried bya text reduces the (von Neumann) entropy of the words that appear in the text,a behaviour which cannot be explained within classical (thermodynamic orinformation) entropy. We claim here that this 'quantum-type behaviour is validin general in human language', namely, any text is conceptually more concretethan the words composing it, which entails that the entropy of the overall textdecreases. In addition, we provide examples taken from cognition, wherequantization of energy appears in categorical perception, and from culture,where entities collaborate, thus 'entangle', to decrease overall entropy. Weuse these findings to propose the development of a new 'non-classicalthermodynamic theory' for human cognition, which also covers broad parts ofhuman culture and its artefacts and bridges concepts with quantum physicsentities.

Development of a Thermodynamics of Human Cognition and Human Culture