Order

1. Evenness, regularity, or discipline of terms or elements, or of their connection. Any connection of quantitative, qualitative, mechanical, or teleological reference. Complete or perfect order is complete equality and is equal to zero-entropy, since any increase in entropy destroys order and organization.

2. Order basically consists of a set of similar differences which (although they may be distinguished) also mutually relate to one another. Two types of differences may be distinguished, constitutive differences (which determine the essence of the order) and distinctive differences (which form some pattern and in another sense the formation of part of an overall hierarchy of orders). So that what at one level of consideration is a constitutive difference may at another be a distinctive difference, thus permitting the organization of orders into hierarchies to proceed without limit.

3. A surrounding may be said to possess order if a simple description of it can be supplied.

4. Orderliness, whether energy or structure based, may be described both abstractly (namely from a quantitative point of view) and concretely (namely from the point of view of the specifics which characterize a given system). The analysis of the orderliness of a living system, for example, includes: the definition of the quantity of orderliness of energy in thermodynamic entropy units (with reverse sign), and of structures in negentropy information units; the definition of the rate of change of orderliness as an index of the rate of evolution of the energic and structural aspects; and the definition of the specifics of energic and structural orderliness, that is the content of the corresponding information.