Development of a Thermodynamics of Human Cognition and Human Culture

Inspired by foundational studies in classical and quantum physics, and by information retrieval studies in quantum information theory, we have recently proved that the notions of 'energy' and 'entropy' can be consistently introduced in human language and, more generally, in human culture. More explicitly, if energy is attributed to words according to their frequency of appearance in a text, then the ensuing energy levels are distributed non-classically, namely, they obey Bose-Einstein, rather than Maxwell-Boltzmann, statistics, as a consequence of the genuinely 'quantum indistinguishability' of the words that appear in the text. Secondly, the 'quantum entanglement' due to the way meaning is carried by a text reduces the (von Neumann) entropy of the words that appear in the text, a behaviour which cannot be explained within classical (thermodynamic or information) entropy. We claim here that this 'quantum-type behaviour is valid in general in human cognition', namely, any text is conceptually more concrete than the words composing it, which entails that the entropy of the overall text decreases. This result can be prolonged to human culture and its collaborative entities having lower entropy than their constituent elements. We use these findings to propose the development of a new 'non-classical thermodynamic theory for human cognition and human culture', which bridges concepts and quantum entities and agrees with some recent findings on the conceptual, not physical, nature of quantum entities.