Just another word about the nature of information: As humans we are naturally self-centered and self-interested. Well and good. But we often miss connections by not casting our nets of interest a little wider. In particular and as regards information, there is a tendency to become bogged down in the theory of communication and digital forms of information, because that's what's closest to our immediate interests. But analog information was around long before evolution brought digital forms on the scene. What's more, the calculus of information theory, patterned after the leads of Boltzmann and Shannon, apply nicely to analog information as well. In the larger sense information can be regarded as constraint -- that which causes a non-random response to a random input. The beauty of this identification is that it allows information to be tied to the concept of work. This is done quite nicely by Stu Kauffman in Chapter 7 of his latest book, "Re-inventing the Sacred". Stu follows the lead of Peter Atkins in defining work as "the constrained release of energy into a few degrees of freedom". Stu then marries that definition with the notion of information cum constraint and the result is a work function resembling my own "ascendency", which Stu refers to without naming it. Notice there's nothing in the narrative about senders or receivers or alphabets. Those are particular instantations of a much more general phenomenon. And Boltzmann's calculus generalizes without difficulty, as well. I realize many are impatient with the Boltzmann/Shannon type of information, feeling that it cannot apprehend the concept of "meaning". Simply put, I do not agree. The *mutual* information between two distributions captures proto-meaning quite well. One can use it, for example, to quantify such things as the correspondence between the protein structures of antigen and antibody to each other. The mutual information between their surfaces peaks when they match in lock-and-key fashion -- precisely when each has greatest importance (meaning) to each other. The gulf between information and thermodynamics has now been bridged. The late Gregory Bateson once lamented, "Ecology has currently two faces to it: the face which is called bioenergetics-the economics of energy and materials and, second, an economics of information, of entropy, negentropy [exergy], etc. These two do not fit together very well precisely because the units are differently bounded in the two sorts of ecology." But identifying information with the constraint that identifies work melds the two faces into one (with consistent dimensions, I might add.) The best to all, Bob ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert E. Ulanowicz | Tel: (410) 326-7266 Chesapeake Biological Laboratory | FAX: (410) 326-7378 P.O. Box 38 | Email <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 1 Williams Street | Web <http://www.cbl.umces.edu/~ulan> Solomons, MD 20688-0038 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
--- Begin Message ---Dear Pedro,Apparently, the Fis server is identifying me as spam. (A lot of people think that about my ideas! :) Could you kindly forward my remarks to the list.Muy agracido! Bob ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2008 14:42:39 -0400 (EDT) From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Returned mail: see transcript for details The original message was received at Tue, 3 Jun 2008 14:42:30 -0400 (EDT) from localhost.cbl.umces.edu [127.0.0.1] ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- <[email protected]> (reason: 550 5.7.1 Mensaje de spam. Ver http://webmail.unizar.es/spam) ----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to relay.unizar.es.:DATA<<< 550 5.7.1 Mensaje de spam. Ver http://webmail.unizar.es/spam 554 5.0.0 Service unavailableReporting-MTA: dns; cbl.umces.edu Received-From-MTA: DNS; localhost.cbl.umces.edu Arrival-Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2008 14:42:30 -0400 (EDT) Final-Recipient: RFC822; [email protected] Action: failed Status: 5.7.1 Remote-MTA: DNS; relay.unizar.es Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 5.7.1 Mensaje de spam. Ver http://webmail.unizar.es/spam Last-Attempt-Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2008 14:42:39 -0400 (EDT)--- Begin Message ---Just another word about the nature of information:As humans we are naturally self-centered and self-interested. Well and good. But we often miss connections by not casting our nets of interest a little wider.In particular and as regards information, there is a tendency to become bogged down in the theory of communication and digital forms of information, because that's what's closest to our immediate interests. But analog information was around long before evolution brought digital forms on the scene.What's more, the calculus of information theory, patterned after the leads of Boltzmann and Shannon, apply nicely to analog information as well.In the larger sense information can be regarded as constraint -- that which causes a non-random response to a random input. The beauty of this identification is that it allows information to be tied to the concept of work. This is done quite nicely by Stu Kauffman in Chapter 7 of his latest book, "Re-inventing the Sacred".Stu follows the lead of Peter Atkins in defining work as "the constrained release of energy into a few degrees of freedom". Stu then marries that definition with the notion of information cum constraint and the result is a work function resembling my own "ascendency", which Stu refers to without naming it.Notice there's nothing in the narrative about senders or receivers or alphabets. Those are particular instantations of a much more general phenomenon.And Boltzmann's calculus generalizes without difficulty, as well.I realize many are impatient with the Boltzmann/Shannon type of information, feeling that it cannot apprehend the concept of "meaning". Simply put, I do not agree. The *mutual* information between two distributions captures proto-meaning quite well. One can use it, for example, to quantify such things as the correspondence between the protein structures of antigen and antibody to each other. The mutual information between their surfaces peaks when they match in lock-and-key fashion -- precisely when each has greatest importance (meaning) to each other.The gulf between information and thermodynamics has now been bridged. The late Gregory Bateson once lamented,"Ecology has currently two faces to it: the face which is called bioenergetics-the economics of energy and materials and, second, an economics of information, of entropy, negentropy [exergy], etc. These two do not fit together very well precisely because the units are differently bounded in the two sorts of ecology."But identifying information with the constraint that identifies work melds the two faces into one (with consistent dimensions, I might add.) The best to all, Bob ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert E. Ulanowicz | Tel: (410) 326-7266 Chesapeake Biological Laboratory | FAX: (410) 326-7378 P.O. Box 38 | Email <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 1 Williams Street | Web <http://www.cbl.umces.edu/~ulan> Solomons, MD 20688-0038 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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