Re: physic, entropy and information

From: Fenzl Norbert <[email protected]>
Date: Sun 02 Jun 2002 - 18:36:26 CEST

Dear Fisers
Before making small comments to some very interesting postings, some jockey words about the new NASA pictures of Hubble.

When we look at the universe, we look from some kind of "inside" "out". Our inside is certainly very complex but is only capable to surveive in a very narrow frame of sharply determining parameters. We are intrinsic part and product of its whole evolution. If we consider that there is only one chance to 1 trillion that there are other evoluted planets, there are still uncountable possibilities left that this could happen. In other words, the universe is a huge quantity of mass-energy ruled by very "determined" laws which triggers evolution. This means that "something" from past is transmitted and "survives" in the future! So, this universe can be considered being a real huge Memory with about (maybe) 1033 bites of processing capacity. The number is quite casuistic but represents the aprox. temperature (in� K) of the (actually somehow criticized) Big Bang, considering temperature as a scale to measure movement of mass.

 

So, why should I think that Information only emerges with us?

 

Now to some comments

Christian said:

I would suggest that self-organising physical and chemical systems are not just reactive, but also reflective in the sense of a "widerspiegelung": they not only react in some way, also some influence/stimuli/perturbation results in the emergence of order and structural changes, a stimuli is reflected within the structure as an emerging new quality. this reflection is not a mechanical one, but a non-deterministic one that is constrained by systemic properties.

 

Comment: I agree absolutely, because this is exactly what makes evolution of the universe POSSIBLE. I must say that I called this stage of evolution reactive in lack of a better word to distinguish it from the next step. Maybe reflection and reflex ion are really better options.

 

Jerry:

>"the Second Law and Shannon's Law are two different statements; what
>they have in common is a mathematical formalism. Such sharing of
>formalism is not at all unusual in theoretical physics: thus water waves
>and light waves obey the same differential equations---but nobody would
>conclude from this that light and ripples on water are the same thing."
>(Walter Elsasser, Reflections on a Theory of Organisms, Johns Hopkins
>UP, 1998, p. 46.)

Comment: The common mathematical formalism of the second and Shannon's law is being discussed for quite a lot of years. And there are still a lot of people divides on that question. Personally I don't believe that it is only a pure coincidence of mathematical formalism.

In fact, both equations state the relationship between macroscopic stability and microscopic statistical probabilities of a system. That's why I am not surprised of their similarity.

 

Juan Roederer

 

"...We say that a (complex) system A is in information-based interaction
with a (complex) system B if the configuration of A, or, more precisely,
the presence of a certain spatial or temporal feature in system A causes a
specific alteration in the structure of system B, with a final state that
depends ONLY on whether that particular feature is present in A. ... (I)n
an information-based interaction a one-to-one correspondence is
established between a spatial or temporal feature or pattern in system A
and a specific change triggered in B; this correspondence depends only on
the pattern in question, being independent of other circumstances. ...
While in basic physical interactions there is an energy flow between the
interacting bodies or to and from the interaction mechanism, in
information-based interactions any energy required for the participating
(but not controlling) physical processes must be provided (or absorbed) by
a reservoir external to the interaction process. ... (I)nformation-based
interactions are usually "discontinuous", in the sense that if the
original pattern at the source is modified in a steady, continuous way,
the response in the recipient may not vary at all in a continuous way.
. Although we have been talking about information, we must now provide a
more formal definition: information is the agent that mediates the above
described correspondence--it is what links the particular features or
pattern in the source system A with the specific changes caused in the
structure of the recipient B. In other words, information represents and
defines the uniqueness of this correspondence; as such, it is an
irreducible entity (the footnote here says: Think of the "A-ness" conveyed
in visual interaction with the symbols a, A, alpha, aleph, or the
"three-ness" conveyed by any set containing three elements. Note a certain
analogy between our definition of information with Cantor's definition of
integer number: "that which all coordinable sets have in common"). ...
Note that in a natural system we cannot have "information alone", detached
from any interaction process past, present or future: information is
always there for a purpose. ... (T)his indeed is Kuepper's "pragmatic
information". ... Given a complex system, structural order alone does not
represent information-information appears only when structural order leads
to specific change elsewhere. ..."

 

Comment: This reminds me the excellent definition of Weizs�cker: "Information is a structure, (this means) an order, a form of objects, carriers of potential information, able to release (trigger?) "Self activity" in a receiving system. Objective Information is so far a condition for the possibility of subjective Information".

I hope my translation is ok. Isn't it somehow what you mean?
Received on Sun Jun 2 18:37:53 2002

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