In the Beginning was Information

Theorem 5: Shannon’s definition of information exclusivelyconcerns the statistical properties of sequences of symbols;meaning is completely ignored.It follows that this concept of information is unsuitable for evaluatingthe information content of meaningful sequences of symbols.We now realise that an appreciable extension of Shannon’s informationtheory is required to significantly evaluate information andinformation processing in both living and inanimate systems. Theconcept of information and the five levels required for a completedescription, are illustrated in Figure 12. This diagram can beregarded as a nonverbal description of information. In the followinggreatly extended description and definition, where real informationis concerned, Shannon’s theory is only useful for describingthe statistical level (see Chapter 5).4.2 The Second Level of Information: SyntaxWhen considering the book B mentioned earlier, it is obvious thatthe letters do not appear in random sequences. Combinations like“the”, “car”, “father”, etc. occur frequently, but we do not find otherpossible combinations like “xcy”, “bkaln”, or “dwust”. In otherwords:– Only certain combinations of letters are allowed (agreed-upon)English words. Other conceivable combinations do not belongto the language. It is also not a random process when wordsare arranged in sentences; the rules of grammar must beadhered to.Both the construction of words and the arrangement of words insentences to form information-bearing sequences of symbols, aresubject to quite specific rules based on deliberate conventions 9 foreach and every language.9 In the case of all artificial and formal languages these conventions were laiddown deliberately. The origin of natural languages is discussed in Appendix A2,“Origin of Languages”.57