It postulates that the most unbiased probability distribution of paths is the one that maximizes their Shannon entropy.
This entropy of paths is sometimes called the "caliber" of the system, and is given by the path integral The principle of maximum caliber was proposed by Edwin T. Jaynes in 1980,[1] in an article titled The Minimum Entropy Production Principle in the context of deriving a principle for non-equilibrium statistical mechanics.
The principle of maximum caliber can be considered as a generalization of the principle of maximum entropy defined over the paths space, the caliber
is of the form where for n-constraints it is shown that the probability functional is In the same way, for n dynamical constraints defined in the interval
of the form it is shown that the probability functional is Following Jaynes' hypothesis, there exist publications in which the principle of maximum caliber appears to emerge as a result of the construction of a framework which describes a statistical representation of systems with many degrees of freedom.