Radomski Bartosz Michał, Dołęga Krzysztof
Institute for Philosophy II, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, D-44780 Bochum, Germany.
Center for Research in Cognition & Neurosciences, Université libre de Bruxelles, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium.
Entropy (Basel). 2024 Sep 18;26(9):797. doi: 10.3390/e26090797.
The claim that the free energy principle is somehow related to Hamilton's principle in statistical mechanics is ubiquitous throughout the subject literature. However, the exact nature of this relationship remains unclear. According to some sources, the free energy principle is merely similar to Hamilton's principle of stationary action; others claim that it is either analogous or equivalent to it, while yet another part of the literature espouses the claim that it is a version of Hamilton's principle. In this article, we aim to clarify the nature of the relationship between the two principles by investigating the two most likely interpretations of the claims that can be found in the subject literature. According to the strong interpretation, the two principles are equivalent and apply to the same subset of physical phenomena; according to the weak interpretation, the two principles are merely analogous to each other by virtue of their similar formal structures. As we show, adopting the stronger reading would lead to a dilemma that is untenable for the proponents of the free energy principle, thus supporting the adoption of the weaker reading for the relationship between the two constructs.
自由能原理在某种程度上与统计力学中的哈密顿原理相关这一说法在整个学科文献中随处可见。然而，这种关系的确切性质仍不清楚。根据一些资料来源，自由能原理仅仅类似于哈密顿的平稳作用原理；另一些人则声称它与哈密顿原理要么类似要么等价，而文献的另一部分则支持它是哈密顿原理的一个版本这一说法。在本文中，我们旨在通过研究学科文献中关于这一说法的两种最有可能的解释来阐明这两个原理之间关系的性质。根据强解释，这两个原理是等价的，并且适用于同一子集的物理现象；根据弱解释，这两个原理仅仅由于其相似的形式结构而彼此类似。正如我们所表明的，采用更强的解读会导致一个对自由能原理的支持者来说站不住脚的困境，从而支持对这两个概念之间的关系采用较弱的解读。
