In the Beginning was Information

according to equation (10). This is equal to the information contained in750,000 typed A4 pages each containing 2,000 characters.Example 2: The statistical information content of the Bible: The KingJames version of the English Bible consists of 3,566,480 letters and783,137 words [D1]. When the spaces between words are also counted,then n = 3,566,480 + 783,137 - 1 = 4,349,616 symbols. The average informationcontent of a single letter (also known as entropy) thus amounts toH = 4.046 bits (see Table 1). The total information content of the Bible isthen given by I tot = 4,349,616 x 4.046 = 17.6 million bits. Since the GermanBible contains more letters than the English one, its information contentis then larger in terms of Shannon’s theory, although the actual contentsare the same as regards their meaning. This difference is carried toextremes when we consider the Shipipo language of Peru which is madeup of 147 letters (see Figure 32 and Table 2). The Shipipo Bible then containsabout 5.2 (= 994/191) times as much information as the EnglishBible. It is clear that Shannon’s definition of information is inadequateand problematic. Even when the meaning of the contents is exactly thesame (as in the case of the Bible), Shannon’s theory results in appreciabledifferences. Its inadequacy resides in the fact that the quantity of informationonly depends on the number of letters, apart from the language-specificfactor H in equation (6). If meaning is considered, the unit of informationshould result in equal numbers in the above case, independent ofthe language.The first four verses of the Gospel of John is rendered in three African andfour American languages in Table 2. In my book “So steht’s geschrieben”[“It is written”, G12, p 95 – 98] the same verses are given in 47 differentEuropean languages for purposes of comparison. The annotation “86 W,325 L” means that 86 words and 325 letters are used. The seventh languagein Table 2 (Mazateco) is a tonal language. The various values of Band L for John 1:1-4 are plotted for 54 languages in Figure 32. These 54languages include 47 European languages (italics) and seven African andAmerican languages. It is remarkable that the coordinates of nearly allEuropean languages fall inside the given ellipse. Of these the Maltese languageuses the least number of words and letters, while the Shipipo Indiansuse the largest number of letters for expressing the same information.The storage requirements of a sequence of symbols should be distinguishedfrom its information content as defined by Shannon. Storage spaceis not concerned with the probability of the appearance of a symbol, butonly with the total number of characters. In general 8 bits (= 1 byte) arerequired for representing one symbol in a data processing system. It followsthat the 4,349,616 letters and spaces (excluding punctuation marks)of the English Bible require eight times as many bits, namely 34.8 million.179