From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [email protected]
Subject: FW: [Fis] (msg. from Bob Ulanowicz)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 17:50:37 +0200
Bob,
Your point about
‘mutual information between two distributions’ deserves some comments.
If I read you well, you want to address a connection that can exists
between two items/systems that come together
and somehow interact or communicate.
Considering the non organic level, then only physical and chemical laws
apply (besides perhaps some ‘trend to increasing
complexity’). The laws are for material (non living) elements. And
talking ‘meaning’ for interaction in a pre-biotic world looks
to me as being more on the side of metaphysics (putting apart the
possible trend to increasing complexity).
Now, if we reach the level of organisms, then specific local laws are
to be added. The basic one being a ‘stay alive’ constraint.
And there the ‘mutual information’ between an organism and her
environment has to take into account the constraint of the organism.
It looks clear to me that we indeed have there possibility for meaning
generation by the system that carries the constraint so
it can be satisfied (http://cogprints.org/6014/).
Could you tell a bit more about your ‘ascendency’ ? I feel that
‘information cum constraints’ can be a reality only at a biological
level. (but I have no read "Re-inventing the Sacred").
Best
Christophe
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 11:29:31 +0200
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Fis] (msg. from Bob Ulanowicz)
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
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Robert E. Ulanowicz | Tel: (410) 326-7266
Chesapeake Biological Laboratory | FAX: (410) 326-7378
P.O. Box 38 | Email <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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