Re: [Fis] Physical Information

Dear Stanley,

not to forget the relation between information and rhetorics in Aristotle
which makes a *pendant* to the nature-oriented view of the *aitiai*
(causes). You probably know the classic study by L.W. Rosenfeld: Aristotle
and Information Theory. A Comparison of Causal Assumptions on Two Theories
of Communication (The Hague 1971).

This brings us back to our former discussion: there *is* the *material*
world but we *live* also in a *symbolic* world. It seems to me that (to put
it in a simplified way) we argue with two theories of information, one which
is related to the *material world* (physical information) and the other
which is founded in the *symbolic world*. It seems to me that we have
discovered that there is something *similar* to what we call information in
the *symbolic world* in the material world (semantic information)(, and that
this is what makes information theory especially appealing for both
perspectives. This discovery is the view that natural processes can be
understood in terms of *message* communication (and not just in the
Aristotelian terms of *in-formation* of matter through form)

kind regards

Rafael

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Received on Sat Jul 22 21:26:19 2006