Information, Entropy, Life, and the Universe

In (2015), I wrote a book with the same title as this article. The book's subtitle is: "What we know and what we do not know." On the book's dedication page, I wrote [¹]: In the first part of this article, I will present the definitions of two central concepts: the "Shannon measure of information" (SMI), in Information Theory, and "Entropy", in Thermodynamics. Following these definitions, I will discuss the framework of their applicability. In the second part of the article, I will examine the question of whether living systems and the entire universe are, or are not within the framework of applicability of the concepts of SMI and Entropy. I will show that much of the confusion that exists in the literature arises because of people's ignorance about the framework of applicability of these concepts.