III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet, Incubator Lifescape

C. The Information Computation Turn

Bawden, David. Organized Complexity, Meaning and Understanding. Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives. 59/4-5, 2007. In this Association for Information Management journal, the City University London information scientist provides a comprehensive survey to date of the waxing reconception from physical cosmology to biology, evolution, and human societies in terms of the prime presence and influence of informative communication. For a 2013 update see “Deep Down Things:” In What Ways in Information Physical in Information Research (18/3), access from DBs website, along with his Towards Quantum Information Science in JASIST, online June 2014 (search).

The purpose of this paper is to outline an approach to a unified framework for understanding the concept of “information” in the physical, biological and human domains, and to see what links and interactions may be found between them. This analysis is used to re-examine the information system discipline, with a view to locating it in a larger context. In turn, this picture is used to reflect on the possibility that information science may not only draw from these other disciplines, but that its insights may contribute to them. (307)

This paper has argued that information may be seen in the physical domain as patterns of organised complexity of matter and energy, with the added implication that information, and perhaps meaning and consciousness, may underlie and suffuse the physical universe to a remarkable extent. In the biological domain, meaning-in-context emerges from the self-organised complexity of biological organisms. In the human domain, understanding emerges from the complex interactions of World 2, the mental product of the human consciousness, with World 3, the social product of recorded human knowledge. The term “emerges” is used deliberately, for these are emergent properties, that is to say they appear appropriate to their level: physical, biological, conscious and social. The linking thread, and the unifying concept of information here, is organized complexity. The crucial events which allow the emergence of new properties are: (1) the origin of the universe, which spawned organised complexity itself; (2) the origin of life, which allowed meaning-in-context to emerge; and (3) the origin of consciousness, which allows self-reflection, and the emergence of understanding, at least partly occasioned when the self reflects on the recorded knowledge created by other selves. (318-319)

Bawden, David and Lyn Robinson. “Waiting for Carnot:” Information and Complexity. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. Online May, 2015. City University London scholars and authors (search here and web pages) contribute to on-going understandings of these title qualities with regard to parallel, integral, evolutionary relations, set within entropic dimensions. A copious bibliography is appended, from which one might suggest Entropy, Complexity, and Spatial Information by Michael Batty, et al in the Journal of Geographical Systems (16/4, 2014), which finds a similar parallel and course.

The relationship between information and complexity is analyzed using a detailed literature analysis. Complexity is a multifaceted concept, with no single agreed definition. There are numerous approaches to defining and measuring complexity and organization, all involving the idea of information. Conceptions of complexity, order, organization, and “interesting order” are inextricably intertwined with those of information. Shannon's formalism captures information's unpredictable creative contributions to organized complexity; a full understanding of information's relation to structure and order is still lacking. Conceptual investigations of this topic should enrich the theoretical basis of the information science discipline, and create fruitful links with other disciplines that study the concepts of information and complexity. (Abstract)

Bawden, David and Lyn Robinson. Still Minding the Gap? Reflecting on Transitions between Concepts of Information. Information. 11/2, 2020. City University of London, Centre for Information Science scholars continue to consider ways to achieve an integrative definition and synthesis of the prior, disparate expressions of this prime feature of living systems. In regard they specifically cite many entries in this subject section. But again, without any sense of a common, independent existence which proceeds with an evolutionary development, this vital unity will ever allude.

This contribution to the tenth anniversary Special Issue of Information gives a cross-disciplinary review of conceptual theories of information. A selective literature survey is used to update our 2013 article on different views across the physical and biological sciences, and onto the humanities (philosophy) and social sciences. The dissonances between these versions remain, although there has been an increasing interest in a common convergence. The solution is likely to be either a general theory of sufficient flexibility to cope with multiple meanings of information, or multiple and distinct theories for different domains, but with a complementary nature. (Abstract excerpt)

Beck, Christian. Generalized Information and Entropy Measures in Physics. Contemporary Physics. 50/4, 2009. The University of London mathematician (Google for papers and related conferences) considers how the dynamics of physical matter, which tends to “superpositions” so as to form a “superstatistics,” can be seen in an exemplary way as evident in complex biological and economic systems.

Bekenstein, Jacob. Information in the Holographic Universe. Scientific American. August, 2003. At the frontiers of physics is being theorized a ubiquitous presence of information inscribed on two dimensional surface areas of 3D volumes, in an analogous way to holograms, which is seen to complement and embellish matter and energy.

Brenner, Joseph. Information: A Personal Synthesis. Information. 5/1, 2014. A Chemin du College, International Center for Transdisciplinary Research, scholar on this subject assesses a current array of approaches and theories. After alluding to blind men and an elephant, these include among others, mathematical-categorical(Burgin), metaphilosophy (Floridi), computational, (Dodig-Crnkovic, Tegmark) integrative systems and emergence (Hofkirchner), biological scientomics (Marijuan), cybersemiotics, (Brier), humanistic informatics (Kolin, Li), and angeletics (Capurro). All told, a cogent survey of endeavors to express a deep literal, communicative quality as a primary essence of cosmos, evolution, and our novel ability to retrospectively inquire. A tentative synthesis is broached, which once again draws upon John Archibald Wheeler’s version of program and people.

Any answer thus requires, as a minimum, a more complete statement of at least three opposing positions and of the definitions of information corresponding to them. I give here only my preferred position which I refer to as It-and-Bit: (1). Energy and information are the most fundamental entities in the universe, but neither is ontologically prior to the other. (2). Information and energy emerge together from, or are different aspects of, an as yet undefined primordial substrate more fundamental than either. (149)

The position developed recently by Diaz Nafria and Zimmermann (search) suggests that both matter-energy and information are two different, associated aspects of the same underlying and still unknown primordial structure of the world. The best picture is that they emerge together from this substrate: the concepts of energy and information are always present in fundamental physics. The authors refer to Smolin’s view that a theory of cosmology must, in order to be self-consistent, be a theory of the self-organization of the universe and “the very aspect of organization entails a concept of information on an equal footing with the concept of energy”. (149)

In conclusion, I see this article as a contribution to the process that Hofkirchner calls “informationalization” and Wu calls “informational scientification”, operating on world society to, if possible, raise the level of collective intelligence to be able to cope with the problems arising from its own development. In my opinion, however, the focus must not only be on problem-solving, but achieving a minimum increase in the capacity of the society to understand itself. The effort to understand information will then have its real justification. (166-167)

Brier, Soren. Cybersemiotics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. A Copenhagen Business School philosopher argues that cybernetic and communication studies have long suffered as mechanistic reductions. Rather a ‘second-order cybernetics’ akin to biological systems, drawn from semiotics founder Charles Peirce, and melded with the autopoiesis theory of Francisco Varela and Niklas Luhmann, is advanced to illume the self-organization of knowledge. Such an evolution occurs in five phases from quantum fields to thermodynamics, chemical phenomena, multicellular life, and human self-consciousness. These stages spring from Pierce’s scheme of First, Second, and Third-ness, and, I add, track Terence Deacon’s model of First, Second, and Third Order Emergence. But these abstractions seem an end in themselves, sans any consideration that a greater natural genesis is being described and discovered.

Bub, Jeffery. Quantum Mechanics is About Quantum Information. Foundations of Physics. 35/4, 2005. A review of QM history points out that while certain theories gain ascendancy, such as those of Niels Bohr, other versions such as David Bohm’s, could apply just as well. In this regard, a readjustment is merited today whereof information becomes a primary principle on its own.

I argue that quantum mechanics is fundamentally a theory about the representation and manipulation of information, not a theory about the mechanics of nonclassical waves or particles. (541)

Bub, Jeffery. Why the Quantum? Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. 35B/2, 2004. Further thoughts on the CBH formulation of an informational reason, which is seen as “…a major revolution in the aim and practice of physics.” (A news item on p. 1896 of the June 25, 2004 issue of Science comments on this conceptual shift.)

….a quantum theory is fundamentally a theory about the possibilities and impossibilities of information transfer in our world, given certain constraints on the acquisition, representation, and communication of information, not a theory about the mechanics of nonclassical waves and particles. (263)

Budd, John. Re-Conceiving Information Studies: A Quantum Approach. Journal of Documentation. 69/4, 2013. Akin to David Bawden’s work, a University of Missouri, School of Information Science & Learning Technologies, professor contends that this expansive integration can provide a beneficial appreciation of and better access to knowledge content and its communication.

Burgin, Mark. Evolutionary Information Theory. Information. Online April, 2013. The Russian-American, UCLA mathematician engages a cross-fertilization between life’s complex emergence as a computational process, and a continuance of these natural formative principles onto an evolving electronic intelligences. By this view, a “pancomputational” universe accrues, which may then be seen lately passing, as intended, to its human continuance and enhancement.

Evolutionary information theory is a constructive approach that studies information in the context of evolutionary processes, which are ubiquitous in nature and society. In this paper, we develop foundations of evolutionary information theory, building several measures of evolutionary information and obtaining their properties. These measures are based on mathematical models of evolutionary computations, machines and automata. To measure evolutionary information in an invariant form, we construct and study universal evolutionary machines and automata, which form the base for evolutionary information theory. In particular, it is proved that there is an invariant and optimal evolutionary information size relative to different classes of evolutionary machines. To give an example of applications, we briefly describe a possibility of modeling physical evolution with evolutionary machines to demonstrate applicability of evolutionary information theory to all material processes. (Abstract excerpts)

Evolutionary information reflects aspects and properties of information related to evolutionary processes. Many information processes, such as software development or computer information processing, have evolutionary nature. Evolutionary approach explicates important properties of information, connecting it to natural computations and biological systems. At the same time, in the context of pancomputationalism or digital physics, the universe is considered as a huge computational structure or a network of computational processes, which following fundamental physical laws, compute (dynamically develop) its own next state from the current one. As a result, the universe or reality is essentially informational, while all information flows in the universe are carried out by computational processes, while all evolutionary processes are performed by evolutionary automata. There are several computational models, such as natural computing, that are suitable for the idea of pancomputationalism. Thus, from the perspective of pancomputationalism, the algorithmic approach to evolutionary information theory is the most encompassing methodology in dealing with information processes going on in the universe. (126)

Calude, Cristian, et al. Preface to the Special Issue on Physics and Computation: Towards a Computational Interpretation of Physical Theories. Applied Mathematics and Computation. 219/1, 2012. The Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on the subject, September 2010, held on a Nile cruise between Luxor and Aswan. The First landmark workshop occurred in 1982, whose papers are in the International Journal of Theoretical Physics (21/3-4). A contribution by Arturo Carsetti is cited in Current Vistas.

For the third edition of the workshop, original papers were submitted via EasyChair in diverse areas of Physica and Computation (and related fields), such as analogue computation, axiomiatization of physics (completeness, decidability), Church-Turing thesis, computing beyond the Turing barrier, philosophy of computation, quantum computation (digital, analogue), quantum logics, relativity (spacetimes, computation, time travel, speedup) and theories of complexity. (1)

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