Hi Fisers,
I agree. Communication may be the key concept in developing a theory of informaton. Just as it is impossible to define what energy is without defining the thermodynamic system under consideration (e.g., energy is conserved only in an isolated system and not in closed or open systems; the Gibbs free energy content decreases only when a spontaneous process occurs in non-isolsted systems with a constant temperature and pressure, etc), so it may be that 'information' cannot be defined rigorously without first defining the "communication system" under consideration. If this analogy is true, we can anticipate that, just as there are many different kinds of energies depending on the characteristics of the thermodynamic systems involved, so there may be many different kinds of 'informations' depending on the nature of the communication systems under consideration. The properties or behaviors of all thermodynamic systems depend on their environment, and there are three system-environment relations -- (i) isolated (e.g., the Universe, or the thermos bottle), (ii) closed (e.g., refriegerator), and (iii) open (e.g., the biosphere, living cells). It is interesting to note that, all communication systems (e.g., cell, organs, animals, humans) may embody ITR (Irreducible Triadic Relation) which I found it convenient to represent diagramamatically using a 3-node network arrows as shown below: f g A ----------> B ---------> C | ^ | | |__________________| h Figure 1. The Irreducible Triadic Relation (ITR) of C. S. Peirce (1839-21914) represented as a 3-node, closed and directed network. The arrows form the commutative triangle of category theory, i.e., operations f followed by g leads to the same result as operation h, here denoted as fxg = h. f = information production; g = information interpretation; h = correspondence or information flow. Please note that Processes f and g are driven by exergonic physicochemical processes, and h requires a pre-existing code or language that acts as the rule of mapping A and C. Again, just as generations of thermodynamicists in the 19-20th centuries have defined various kinds of "energies" (enthalpy, Helmholtz free energy, Gibbs free energy) applicable to different kinds of thermodynamic systems, so 'information scientists' of the 21st century may have the golden opportunity to define as many kinds of 'informations' as needed for the different kinds of "communcation systems" of their interest, some examples of which being presented in Table 1. ________________________________________________________________________ Table 1. A 'parametric' definition of information based on the values of the three nodes of the ITR, Figure 1. ________________________________________________________________________ Communication system A B C (Information) ________________________________________________________________________ Cells DNA/RNA Proteins Chemcal reactions (Biological informations) or chemical waves _________________________________________________________________________ Humans Sender Message Receiver (Linguistic informations) _________________________________________________________________________ Signs Object Representamen Interpretant (Semiotic informations, or 'Universal informations' (?)) __________________________________________________________________________ With all the best. Sung ________________________________ From: Fis <fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es> on behalf of JOHN TORDAY <jtor...@ucla.edu> Sent: Saturday, September 23, 2017 10:44:33 AM To: fis@listas.unizar.es Subject: [Fis] Principles of IS Dear Fis, I am a newcomer to this discussion, but suffice it to say that I have spent the last 20 years trying to understand how and why physiology has evolved. I stumbled upon your website because Pedro Maijuan had reviewed a paper of ours on 'ambiguity' that was recently published in Progr Biophys Mol Biol July 22, 2017 fiy. Cell-cell communication is the basis for molecular embryology/morphogenesis. This may seem tangential at best to your discussion of Information Science, but if you'll bear with me I will get to the point. In my (humble) opinion, information is the 'language' of evolution, but communication of information as a process is the mechanism. In my reduction of evolution as communication, it comes down to the interface between physics and biology, which was formed when the first cell delineated its internal environment (Claude Bernard, Walter B Cannon) from the outside environment. From that point on, the dialog between the environment and the organism has been on-going, the organism internalizing the external environment and compartmentalizing it to form what we recognize as physiology (Endosymbiosis Theory). Much of this thinking has come from new scientific evidence for Lamarckian epigenetic inheritance from my laboratory and that of many others- how the organism internalizes information from the environment by chemically changing the information in DNA in the egg and sperm, and then in the zygote and offspring, across generations. So here we have a fundamental reason to reconsider what 'information' actually means biologically. If you are interested in any of my publications on this subject please let me know (jtor...@ucla.edu<mailto:jtor...@ucla.edu>). Thank you for any interest you may have in this alternative way of thinking about information, communication and evolution.
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