Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle

Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle states that all life, at every scale of organization – from single cells to the human brain, with its billions of neurons – is driven by the same universal imperative, which can be reduced to a mathematical function. It shows how the brain operates in a self-organisational way to counter the dispersive action of entropy (the measurement of degree of randomness – the increase in the disorganization within a system.). Such a principle is necessary if we are to achieve an explanation for the way in which rational thought and memory bring about order, an essential component of consciousness. According to The Second law of Thermodynamics the universe tends toward entropy, toward dissolution; but living things resist it. We wake up every morning nearly the same person that we were the day before, with clear separations between our cells and organs, and between us and the world without. To be alive, Friston says, is ‘to act in ways that reduce the gulf between your expectations and your sensory inputs’.