In the Beginning was Information

principle. A law of nature need not necessarily be represented byquantitative values. The description of an observation in qualitativeand verbal terms suffices, if the observation is generally valid, i. e.can be reproduced as often as you like. It is only important toremember that laws of nature know no exceptions. These aspectsshould be made clearer in the following examples:a) Rotary direction of a whirlpool: In the northern hemisphere ofthe earth, the whirlpool caused by water flowing out of a receptaclerotates in an anticlockwise direction, in the southern hemispherein a clockwise direction. If this test should be carried outon other planets a connection between the sense of rotation ofthe planet and the location of the test site above or below theequator could be established as well.b) The Right Hand Rule: According to the discovery made by theEnglish physicist Michael Faraday (1791 – 1867) in 1831, electricityis induced in a metal conductor if it is moved into a magneticfield. The direction of the electrical flow is described inthe law of nature which the English physicist John AmbroseFleming (1849 – 1945) described by means of the “Right HandRule” in 1884: “If one creates a right angle with the first threefingers of the right hand, and the thumb indicates the directionin which the conductor is moving and the forefinger indicatesthe direction of the lines of force, then the middle finger indicatesthe direction of the flow of electricity.”c) The Pauli Principle: In 1925 the Austrian physicist and NobelPrize winner Wolfgang Pauli (1900 – 1958) put forward theprinciple which carries his name (the exclusion principle). Itmaintains, among other things, that only electrons which aredifferent from each other at least in one of the quantum numberscan be involved in forming atoms and molecules. That is, noidentical electrons can exist next to one another. This principleis a law of nature which was not mathematically formulated butwhich is of greatest importance for the understanding of theperiodic table of elements.d) Le Chatelier’s Principle of Least Restraint: The principle formulatedin 1887 by the French chemist Henry-Louis de Chatelier(1850 – 1936) and the German Nobel Prize winner inPhysics (1909) Karl Ferdinand Braun (1850 – 1918) qualitativelydescribes the dependence of the chemical equilibrium onexternal conditions. According to the principle, the equilibrium129