Negentropy

The capacity to produce organisation, differentiation and knowledge against the entropic tendency towards dissolution — a concept Stiegler mobilises to think a way out of the Anthropocene towards the “Neganthropocene”.

Negentropy (or “negative entropy”) is a concept drawn from thermodynamics that Bernard Stiegler reworks in order to think the conditions of a viable civilisation. Entropy names the universal tendency towards the degradation of energy and the dissolution of organisations. Negentropy, conversely, names the processes that create order, differentiation, organisation — that “fight” against the entropic tendency.

Stiegler takes up this concept from Schrödinger (What is Life?, 1944), Sadi Carnot and above all Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, the economist who argues in The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971) that the role of the economy should be to “take care of” humanity by producing negentropy. For Stiegler, all knowledge is a process of transindividuation producing “negentropic bifurcations” — that is, new differentiations that enrich the system rather than degrade it.

The contemporary stake is crucial: the Anthropocene corresponds to the epoch in which humanity massively produces entropy — the destruction of biodiversity, global warming, the exhaustion of resources, generalised proletarianisation. Stiegler proposes to leave this entropic era and enter the “Neganthropocene” — an epoch in which human activities would produce negentropy rather than entropy.

Conceptual necessity: This concept makes it possible to think AI not merely as a threat but as a stake of bifurcation. AI can produce massive entropy (homogenisation, proletarianisation, the destruction of jobs) or negentropy (the amplification of knowledge, the creation of differences, the development of capacities). The question is: what political economy of AI?

What this concept is not

Not a metaphorical concept: Negentropy has a rigorous scientific basis (thermodynamics, biology).
Not a naïve optimism: Producing negentropy demands effort, organisation, politics — it is not automatic.
Not a rejection of progress: The stake is not to go backwards but to bifurcate towards other practices.
Physical/social confusion: Transferring thermodynamic concepts to the social requires epistemological precautions.
Naïve voluntarism: Negentropy cannot be decreed — it presupposes material, institutional and economic conditions.
Greenwashing: The term can be co-opted to legitimate superficially “sustainable” practices.

Examples

Education as a negentropic practice

Authentic teaching produces negentropy: it transmits knowledge, creates differentiations (the pupil singularised by what they know), enriches the system (a new knower who can transmit in turn). Standardised education, conversely, tends towards entropy.

Wikipedia as a negentropic model

Free contribution to Wikipedia produces negentropy: an accumulation of knowledge, a differentiation of articles, an organisation of the common. Each contributor individuates themselves while enriching the whole. A model of the economy of contribution.

AI as a stake of bifurcation

ChatGPT can produce entropy (the homogenisation of texts, the loss of writing capacities, proletarianisation) or negentropy (the amplification of knowledge, the democratisation of access, assisted creation). Everything depends on the political economy that frames its use.

counter-exampleCounter-example: The extractive economy

The current capitalist economy maximises entropy: the extraction of resources, the exhaustion of soils, the destruction of biodiversity, the proletarianisation of workers. It produces short-term value at the price of a global degradation — the entropic model par excellence.

The concept in detail

Entropy (thermodynamics)

The founding concept: the second law of thermodynamics establishes that, in a closed system, energy tends to degrade, to dissipate. Entropy measures this degree of disorganisation. Every structure tends towards its own dissolution — this is the thermodynamic “arrow of time”.

Negentropy (Schrödinger)

The physicist Erwin Schrödinger introduces the concept of negative entropy in What is Life? (1944) to explain how the living temporarily resists entropic dissolution. Living organisms capture negentropy from their environment in order to maintain their organisation.

The living as an anti-entropic process

A biological extension: the living is characterised by its capacity to create organisation, differentiation, novelty. It does not merely resist entropy — it actively produces negentropy. This capacity distinguishes the living from the non-living.

Knowledge as negentropy

Stiegler's decisive contribution: all authentic knowledge is negentropic. To know is to produce differentiations, distinctions, new organisations. Forms of knowledge “produce negentropy, what is also called culture”. Conversely, proletarianisation (the loss of knowledge) is entropic.

The Anthropocene as Entropocene

A civilisational diagnosis: the Anthropocene names the epoch in which industrial humanity massively produces entropy — environmental destruction, cultural uniformisation, generalised proletarianisation. Hence the term “Entropocene” is sometimes used to designate this death-dealing tendency.

Neganthropocene

A political and civilisational project: to leave the Anthropocene and enter the Neganthropocene — an epoch turned towards “cooperation, investment, the local and care”. Disruption can serve as a transition if we know how to “bifurcate” towards negentropic practices.

Anthropy / Neganthropy / Anti-anthropy

A precise terminology: Stiegler distinguishes the production of entropy (anthropy), of negentropy (neganthropy) and of anti-entropy (anti-anthropy) at the level of exosomatic life — that is, technical, psychic and social life.