On the Entropy of Social Systems: A Revision of the Concepts of Entropy and Energy in the Social Context

The main problem that systems theory tries to solve is the problem of complexity. The notion of complexity is very often correlated to variables such as entropy and energy, organization and disorganization and others that eventually converge to the common ground of comprehensibility or incomprehensibility. In this paper, we try to shed light on the notions of entropy and energy as they should be conceived in the theoretical framework of social sciences. We analyse the different meanings of entropy, dealing with the social systems as if they were information management systems (following Niklas Luhmann), and we also present an initial approach, as to the meaning of energy for those systems, bringing Pierre Bourdieu's theory of symbolic capital into a Luhmannian context.