A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to the ancient worldviews of Materialism and Idealism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's also a Theory – of – Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.
Post 137.September 13, 2024
Active Information, Meaning & Form
Information is Energy and Meaning
Information was negatively defined by Claude Shannon, for his communication engineering purposes, in terms of dubious Uncertainty and disorganized Entropy, ignoring its meaningful denotation or connotation for the human sender or receiver. However, to be meaningful or symbolic, the message must be definable in terms of positive Negentropy⁶, an organized form of Energy. That term was coined by quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger in his book : What is Life?. A related concept is Syntropy : "the tendency towards energy concentration, order, organization and life". Theoretical physicist, Rolf Landauer asserted that “Information is not an abstract entity but exists only through a physical representation”. Yet, other physicists have found that Energy and Information are “coupled values”⁷. In the topical article, David Peat postulated, “Information is something that could play a significant role in understanding the nature of the physical universe and, at the same time, have a key role in the operation of consciousness”. Hence, he proposes to “elevate Information to the level of a new physical concept. One that can be placed alongside Matter and Energy”.
Energy : Experimental physicists have discovered that such “active information” can be transformed from mathematical information (metaphysical ; conceptual) to physical forms, and vice-versa⁸. Peat also notes the relationship between Plato’s ideal “Form”; and “Information” as mind-to-mind communi-cation, and its active role in sub-atomic physics : “The section below, on Form, also discusses ways in which form (related to in-form-ation) plays a significant role in quantum physics”. Lienhard Pagel ─ professor emeritus of microsystems and device technology ─ has published a physically based definition of Information, in which that mind-stuff is equated with causal Energy⁹. Ironically, Shannon’s mathematical Information dispensed with its traditional association with meaningful ideas¹⁰. And yet, in Ted Gross’s Medium article, Information Theory — A Short Introduction, he concluded that it is “fundamental to everything”.
David Peat’s article says, “At first sight ‘information’ plays no role in the world of physics. Facts, data and information are contained in books or on the Web, or collated by scientists, but have no independent, objective existence in the physical world apart from their interpretation by human subjects.” Never-theless, he goes on to say, “The breakthrough in giving information a more ‘physical’ role comes with Bohm’s proposal that information plays an active role in quantum systems”. Many other physicists have reached the same conclusion¹¹, including Paul Davies. In his 2010 book, Information and the Nature of Reality, he edited articles by a variety of scientists and philosophers describing the many & varied roles of Information in the real world. Also, specialist in brain physics, Paul Nunez commented in an Amazon review : “Why should one take this idea of [information-as-fundamental] seriously? A short answer addressed by several authors is that known physical laws, relativity, quantum mechanics, and thermo-dynamics, are all laws about information, especially limits on the speed, quantity, and quality of information transfer. Relativity limits speed; quantum mechanics limits quantity. The wave function of a system of quantum particles encapsulates all that is known about the system; it is essentially an information field.”
6. Negentropy : “a portmanteau of ‘negative’ and ‘entropy’ and describes the difference between the energy in a system and the maximum possible energy in a system.” https://www.kinfolk.com/stories/word-negentropy/
9. Information is Energy “An objective, dynamic and physically justified concept of information is elaborated starting from Shannon's concept of entropy and applied to information technology, artificial intelli-gence (consciousness) and thermodynamics.” https://books.google.com/books/about/Information_is_Energy.html?id=5CSfzwEACAAJ
11. Information as a basic property of the universe : “A theory which considers information to be a basic property of the universe the way matter and energy are. . . .just as energy is defined in terms of its capacity to perform work--so is inform-ation defined in terms of its capacity to organize a system. Pure energy can perform no 'useful' (entropy reducing) work without a concomitant input of information. Conversely, all expenditures of energy lead to a reorganization of the universe, hence to a change in its information status. Energy and information are interconvertible;” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8734520/
Blog Post 137 continued . . . click Next
Active Information, Meaning, and Form
Information as a
physical activity
F. David Peat
Quantum Physicist
“Elevate ‘Information’ to the level of a new physical concept, one that can be placed alongside Matter and Energy”
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