Re: First comment

(from: jgr@gi.alaska.edu)
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Dear colleagues:

It is high time that I enter this discussion. Unfortunately, this
electronic conference is coming smack right into a difficult period for
me: it began last week when I was just back in Alaska from spending several
weeks in Argentina, and now I am at my regular tour at ICTP in Trieste as
senior adviser. Add to this the editors of a book screaming for galley proof
corrections, the general assembly of the Oesterreichische Akademie der
Wissenschaften, etc., etc. In other words, I don't know how to make enough
room in my schedule while in Trieste!
   
Still, I do manage to follow with great interest the ongoing discussion. It
touches on many points raised in the first four sections of my
contribution (On the Concept of Information and its Role in Nature). I
realize that my paper is far too long, but I would appreciate it very much
getting some reactions and criticism from the participants to at least
sections 1-4.

Concerning the ongoing discussion, let me turn specifically to the issue
of "Does information play any role in purely physical (non-biotic)
interactions?", or, equivalently, "Was there information before life?". I
try in my paper to justify negative answers to both questions.

I refer to the statement by Gyuri Darvas:

"When interacting with an other object, a physical object will first
'evaluate' the information .... E.g., a charge recognises the Coulomb
field of an other charge and will interact with it......"

I have difficulty to accept such language in physics. What part of the object
(or the particle) does the evaluating or the recognizing do? How much time
does
this process take? Likewise, what does it mean that "..a given mass, when
it 'feels' a force, cannot make distinction that the source of this effect
was an other mass (gravitation) or an inertia force"? (Leaving aside the
fact that this is a result of the proportionality between gravitational
mass and inertial mass, which a priori are different things). Let me
repeat here a statement from my paper (section 3): "Unfortunately,
in physics we tend to use anthropomorphic analogies and animistic language
by saying such things as "the system 'selects' a path of least action",
"the system 'seeks' a strange attractor", or "the photon 'decided' to go
through the left diffraction slit". One needs a brain to select, seek or
decide!". I also say: "In a statement like 'the process of cosmic evolution
itself generates information' (e.g., p. 131 in ref. 3 of my paper) we should
realize that this is information for us observers--it does not control any of
the natural processes involved unless they pertain to living matter. In a
biological system, indeed, information is an active participant in its own
organization, behavior and multiplication, and information exists and
operates
in total independence of any outside observer".

Of course, we cannot forbid ourselves thinking in these terms--we do it
all the time. But applying the concept of information where it is not
necessary (though perfectly possible given our cognitive apparatus which
happens to work with it) is like insisting in the use of a clearly
defined, but physically worthless, quantity such as 1/3 mv**3.

Please note that in the paper I start my discussion by turning to the process
of "interaction" (between two given systems) as the departing point, as the
most basic concept. I feel that only in this way can one avoid several
semantic
and subjective difficulties--as happened when Ernst Mach introduced it in
fundamental Newtonian dynamics.

Looking forward to your comments,

Cheers, Juan
Received on Thu May 16 09:51:32 2002