PubMed · 7744971
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H J Morowitz. 1995-05-15. Digitoma.. https://doi.org/10.1080/21548331.1995.11443189
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Information is by itself intrinsically diachronic, whereas synchronic information conceived by referring to an invariant source matrix of information is no more than a theoretical artifact constructed in the limit of ignoring the historicity. Information is the basic attribute of local dynamics of internal measurement, in which any dynamics is taken to proceed through detection internal to interacting material participants of whatever kind. Information dynamics of a local character is semantic by virtue of constructing the global principle of conservation of energy from the inside. Material embodiment of information actualizes in the form of energy consumers acting toward the outside from their inside. Global dynamics such as mechanics is simply a phenomenon emerging from information dynamics.
The notion of bioinformation is central to the biosciences. This short paper examines a number of metaphors which are intimately related to this idea. These include metaphors about 'system' as well as metaphors associated with biosystem as 'text'. A framework its presented which allows ideas about biosystems and computer systems to be displaced and a number of specific topics are then discussed. Firstly, information processing in non-neural tissues is given as an example of parallel distributed processing. This is followed with a number of metaphors associated with 'text', including 'glue', 'verbs' and 'interpretation'. The paper concludes with a proposal on how to integrate general ideas of bioinformation using the idea of the 'ecology of domains'.
A theory is proposed which considers information to be a basic property of the universe the way matter and energy are. Operationally--just as energy is defined in terms of its capacity to perform work--so is information 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; physicists have been able to ignore the information parameter principally for two major reasons. First, historically, just as there was no need to define energy prior to the advent of increasingly complex, powered machinery and cannons (Galileo was a military engineer), so was there no need until the 20th Century to define information. It was the telephone engineers who first preoccupied themselves with developing a theory of information. The second reason is that physicists invented accounting devices such as potential energy and entropy to explain the apparent disappearance of energy yet maintain the law of the conservation of energy. The proposed theory would consider that what is conserved is the sum of information and energy. The mathematical relationship between information and entropy is provided by the equation: I = (Io)e-S/k while the conversion of energy into information involves the relationship: 1 J/degree K = 10(23) bits (approximately) Acceptance of the theory would require paradigm shifts in a number of interrelated areas.