Catching up on old mail since I have been dealing with visa and banking issues
(someone got into my account the old way with phone calls and faxes and stole
$650). Nothing is resolved yet, but I have some spare time from these grueling
necessities.
First: All energy has form. Without differences energy would just be a uniform
0. So matter and energy do not differ in this respect.
Second: In sufi (Islamic mystics) tradition the first mane of God is Hu. It is
an aspiration cutting off silence from noise. All the names of God have an
icon9ic sound (Allah is a downthrust from the head to the heart and back to the
head). A friend of mine who had studied with sufis for some time and was also a
mathematician familiar with information theory suggested that this was the
first distinction from which all others emerge, basically the distinction
between something and nothing. This is in line with the sufi tradition. We can
find sufi influences in the rationalist philosophy of both Spinoza and Leibniz.
Leibniz, of course, is known for his attempt to found existence on distinction.
Third: I suspect that information and energy are the same at a very basic
level, but they can become separated. Information is more closely tied to
boundary conditions, which guide energy (and all change, as it turns out).
These can be decoupled to a greater or lesser degree. Once we get to biology
there is a strong decoupling, as I have argued numerous times elsewhere in
connection with my work with Brooks and Wiley in the 80s, and the energy and
information budgets are thus also decoupled, though never entirely separated.
To prove this the common dimensional grounds of information and energy need to
be established. I think that dimensional analysis gives us an equivalence by
way of temperature, which is average kinetic energy per degree of freedom.
Using Brillouin's characterization of information in terms of the complement of
entropy, it works out that information has dimensions of degrees of freedom,
which makes some sense.
John
At 10:13 AM 2014-09-09, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote:
- Original Message -
From: Joseph Brennermailto:joe.bren...@bluewin.ch
To: Stanley N Salthemailto:ssal...@binghamton.edu ;
fismailto:fis@listas.unizar.es ; Robert Ulanowiczmailto:u...@umces.edu
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2014 6:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Fis] information.energy
Dear Stan, Bob and All,
This was a very interesting thread which I feel is worth coming back to. First
of all, I see the attitudes of Stan and Bob as not mutually exclusive but
complementary. What 'history' means in the 'dim region' where it all began is
pretty dim. Second, I agree with Stan's formulation that information implies
more than one entity. This suggests to me that it, like energy, is a dualism,
sharing some of the dualistic properties of that dim region, somwhere between
what is and, to use Arthur Eddington's phrase, what is not.
Please do not ask me if and how the above idea can be proven. I consider it as
worth mentioning in the context of the foundations of information science
because it leaves the door open to the complexities and contradictions of
information you much earlier and later I have been struggling with.
It is even possible that Peirce's notions of Firstness and Secondness could be
related to the above. The problems with these notions would be, then, a
consequence of his trying to keep them separate to avoid contradictions, which
he did not like.
Best regards,
Joseph
- Original Message -
From: Stanley N Salthemailto:ssal...@binghamton.edu
To: fismailto:fis@listas.unizar.es
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2014 4:21 PM
Subject: Re: [Fis] information.energy
Bob -- Note that I was pointing out a sense in which information implies
something different from energy -- especially in the context of dialectics,
which is the basis of Joseph's approach. There can be no 'precipitated' energy
(matter) without some kind of form, realizing one or some constraints, but the
concept of information (its history) tends to imply interaction.
STAN
On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 11:13 PM, Robert E. Ulanowicz
u...@umces.edumailto:u...@umces.edu wrote:
Stanley N Salthe ssal...@binghamton.edumailto:ssal...@binghamton.edu
9:32 AM (0 minutes ago)
to Joseph
Joseph -- Commenting on:
...
Is there not also a sense that information implies more than one entity
(sender-receiver, object-interpreter)? That too would tend to align with
the idea of energy being primary.
But Stan, you were one of the first to recognize the broader nature of
information as constraint. It is also inherent in structure (Collier's
enformation). Hence, wherever inhomogeneities exist, so does information
-- an argument for a common origin. Bob
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