Information.

Any observed ``ordering'' in a collection of particles can be interpreted as information. For example, a pair of coins on a table could be examined to determine whether there are zero, one or two ``tails'' showing. Typically, much of the ``ordering'' in a collection is ignored when examining it for its informational content. In the foregoing case of a pair of coins, for example, we might be uninterested in their location on the table. In general, an entropic object contains information only if we can enumerate various possible states of that object. We could extract this information if we were allowed to examine the object sufficiently carefully, to determine which state it is in. In our pair-of-coins example, there are three states: 0, 1, and 2.

Information is thus entropy with a syntax, that is, a structural context which allows enumeration.