This article is a summary of the full paper which can be downloaded in pdf format here: https://rational-understanding.com/sst/
We often speak of “information” as though it floats freely in cyberspace or the human mind, detached from anything physical. Yet every bit of information, from the letters on this page to the thoughts in your head, is carried by matter or energy. This simple observation lies at the heart of cognitive physicalism, the view that cognition, communication, and social coordination are all thermodynamic processes.
Information Is Order
In physical terms, information is negative entropy; order among components of a system. When the atoms of a crystal, the base pairs of DNA, or the neurons of a brain are arranged in regular patterns, they hold information by reducing randomness. This definition, first clarified by Léon Brillouin and Erwin Schrödinger, gives information the same physical dimensions as entropy:
Energy provides the capacity for work (
How Physics Becomes Mind
In purely physical systems, energy and entropy simply flow. With life, informational structures emerge that regulate those flows. A cell maintains order by channelling chemical energy through genetic and enzymatic constraints. With evolution, feedback control grows more elaborate: nervous systems model the world, predict outcomes, and choose among options. Agency, the ability to act purposefully, appears when informational form controls energetic process.
At higher levels, the same principle produces cognition, language, and society. Neural firing, conversation, and economic exchange are all manifestations of energy flows organised by information.
Why Equations Matter
When information theory borrowed from thermodynamics, it kept Boltzmann’s equation 
The Structure of Agency
Agency can be described in three physical layers:
| Level | Description | Dimensions |
| Agentic information structure | pattern that directs energy |  |
| Agentic potential | information-structured energy capacity |  |
| Actualised agency | directed energy flow through time |  |
Energy provides the means, information the form, and their coupling the act. Whether in a cell, a mind, or a society, the same dimensional hierarchy holds.
The Sun and the Spectrum of Agency
All terrestrial agency begins with the Sun. Photons striking chlorophyll are converted into chemical potential, which sustains metabolism, cognition, and eventually culture. Every thought, conversation, or social reform is therefore a distant echo of solar radiation; a transformation of sunlight into structured work.
The Cost of Thought and Change
Learning, decision, and communication are thermodynamic operations. Brain imaging shows energy consumption rising during problem-solving; each new memory reduces neural entropy while producing waste heat. The same principle scales up: cultural and institutional change require energy to reorganise shared information. Schools, media, and political movements are energetic engines for lowering societal entropy. When their energy supply falters, coherence and collective agency decline.
Why This Matters for Systems Science
Re-embedding information and agency in physics brings fresh clarity to systems thinking. It explains why order must be sustained by flows, why “effort” feels costly, and why every form of coordination, from metabolism to governance, depends on continual energy input. It also offers a bridge between natural and social sciences: the same thermodynamic grammar governs both.
As Ilya Prigogine showed, local order can grow even while global entropy rises. Life, mind, and society are all such dissipative structures, islands of organisation maintained by throughputs of energy and information. Understanding this continuity reminds us that progress itself carries an energetic price.
From Theory to Application
Recognising the physical nature of information could reshape how we approach education, technology, and governance. Policies and systems that ignore their energetic base risk collapse; those that respect it can harness energy more efficiently to sustain informational order.
Energy is the means, information the form, and agency the dance between them. Seen thermodynamically, every act of understanding is a small victory over entropy; a local flowering of order in the great energetic flow from the Sun.
References:
Brillouin (1956); Landauer (1961); Schrödinger (1944); Prigogine (1977); Lloyd (2006); Morowitz (1970).
Rational-Understanding.com 