Dear Jerry, John H., and colleagues,
I�m convinced that the traditional, long-established argument for the
existence of physical, material (chemical) objects, clearly
distinguished from our purely mental concepts, remains the valid one. No
sensible person would willingly step in front of a speeding automobile,
because it might be a very painful experience. Physical objects have
effects on our senses - we can feel them. (Or see, hear, smell, or taste
them. And, we observe them in experiments.) Obviously, that�s not the
case with a mathematical concept like five, or, for instance, numerical
equality. No one has ever been hurt wrangling an integer. So, I do not
believe that physical objects are all that exists.
And, physical scientists, as distinct from pure mathematicians, say, do
invariably rely on tangible, controlled, reproducible experiments to
establish the scientific validity of our descriptions of the material
world. The physicist, and nobel laureate, Sheldon Glashow, has ardently
emphasized that string theory, while popularly promulgated, and
intriguing, is not established science until it is experimentally
confirmed. I�ve heard proposals for string experiments which would
require machines operating at very high energies. We may recall that the
quark theory was only confirmed after construction of the high energy
Stanford linear accelerator. Other machines have reproduced those
experiments, and reconfirmed that description of nature.
I don�t believe I�ve yet heard an accepted, precise description of
information. Still, I�m sure that, as Landauer taught us, all
information is transported and stored in material objects. I also
understand that it was Szilard, (Zeitschrift fur Physik, 53, 1929, p.
840, english translation in Maxwell�s Demon: Entropy, Information,
Computing, Princeton U. Press, 1992, p. 124.) who introduced, and
exampled in a thermodynamic engine of gas molecules, the information
bit. Information, as I understand it, is stored via the particular
physical arrangement of the four basic protein molecules of DNA.
I take it that information transmission is an �event�, as John H.,
Stanley, and Rafael suggest, in agreement with at least one definition
physicists use for that term. We name certain energy exchanges. as, for
example, the annihilation of an electron and positron to create two
electromagnetic photons, an annihilation-creation event, appropriately
described by a quantum mechanical operator. And, I�ve argued that
information is carried in the configuration of physical objects, which
also determines the energy of that physical system. Thus, information
transfer would also transmit energy, a physical event. I don�t find any
implication, however, that the concept of information is, itself, physical.
Cordially,
Michael Devereux
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Received on Mon Jul 31 07:58:27 2006
