Perhaps, in our uncertainty time, the importance of the concept of "information" in any area of human activity is obvious. For many decades, publications on the theory of information and its application in science and technology have indicated two mutually exclusive approaches to assessing the nature of information entropy. Who is right?
This is not the topic for one answer. This requires at least a paper or book. Very briefly there are existing three distinct streams of thought about entropy.
* Thermodynamics. Clausius.
* Kinetic theory of gasses. Boltzmann.
* Information theory. Shannon.
Those three approaches developed in different periods of time, for different reasons, and using different mathematical tools. We must know all of them in order to understand fully.
The richest approach is the last one. Under certain assumptions, information entropy is the umbrella to all other entropies.
With respect to the abstractness of entropy. Entropy is a measure of missing information about the system. More specifically, how many microstates that we cannot measure are associated with the given, measurable macrostate.
Obviously when the system is uniform entropy is zero because there is just one state. When there is many, hidden, impossible to discern microstates to given macrostate, entropy is high. This is the missing information.
Such a concept of entropy is applicable to all disciplines.
Hopefully, it elucidated the concept a bit.
Who is right? You are, of course! Your opinion is what matters :)
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