Inspired by foundational studies in classical and quantum physics, and by information retrieval studies in quantum information theory, we prove that the notions of 'energy' and 'entropy' can be consistently introduced in human language and, more generally, in human culture. More explicitly, if energy is attributed to words according to their frequency of appearance in a text, then the ensuing energy levels are distributed non-classically, namely, they obey Bose-Einstein, rather than Maxwell-Boltzmann, statistics, as a consequence of the genuinely 'quantum indistinguishability' of the words that appear in the text. Secondly, the 'quantum entanglement' due to the way meaning is carried by a text reduces the (von Neumann) entropy of the words that appear in the text, a behaviour which cannot be explained within classical (thermodynamic or information) entropy. We claim here that this 'quantum-type behaviour is valid in general in human language', namely, any text is conceptually more concrete than the words composing it, which entails that the entropy of the overall text decreases. In addition, we provide examples taken from cognition, where quantization of energy appears in categorical perception, and from culture, where entities collaborate, thus 'entangle', to decrease overall entropy. We use these findings to propose the development of a new 'non-classical thermodynamic theory' for human cognition, which also covers broad parts of human culture and its artefacts and bridges concepts with quantum physics entities.

翻译：受经典与量子物理学基础研究以及量子信息理论中信息检索研究的启发，我们证明“能量”与“熵”的概念可以一致地引入人类语言，更广泛地说，可引入人类文化中。具体而言，若根据词汇在文本中出现的频率赋予其能量，则其能级分布呈现非经典特征，即遵循玻色-爱因斯坦统计而非麦克斯韦-玻尔兹曼统计，这是文本中词汇“量子不可区分性”的直接结果。其次，由文本意义承载方式导致的“量子纠缠”会降低文本中词汇的（冯·诺依曼）熵，这种特性无法用经典（热力学或信息）熵解释。我们主张这种“类量子行为”在人类语言中普遍成立：任何文本在概念上均比其组成词汇更为具体，这导致整体文本熵降低。此外，我们提供从认知领域（范畴感知中的能量量子化）与文化领域（实体协作“纠缠”以降低整体熵）中选取的实例。基于这些发现，我们提出发展一种适用于人类认知的新型“非经典热力学理论”，该理论同时涵盖人类文化及其产物的广泛领域，并架起概念与量子物理学实体之间的桥梁。