In the Beginning was Information

a) Concerning the sender:– Has an unambiguous purpose been defined?– What purpose is intended for the recipient?– Can this purpose be recognised directly, or could it only bededuced indirectly?b) Concerning the recipient:– What purpose is achieved through the actions of the recipient?– Does the result obtained in the recipient correspond to thepurpose which the sender had in mind?– Did the recipient find a purpose which the sender had notintended? (e. g. the evaluation of historical documents couldserve a purpose which was never thought of by the author).The sender’s intention can be achieved in various ways by therecipient:– completely (doing exactly what the sender requested)– partly– not at all– doing exactly the oppositeThe response to an unambiguously formulated purpose (e. g. computerprogram, commands given personally, or promotional material)could be any one of these different actions. The purpose could,however, not even be mentioned, or could not have been imaginedby the sender (e. g. documents with trivial contents surviving fromprevious centuries which provide researchers with important cluesnot intended by the original author).In this case also we can formulate significant empirical theorems:Theorem 19: Every piece of information is intentional (the teleologicalaspect) 15 .15 Information on tombstones: In the sense of Theorem 19 it does not matterwhether the originally intended purpose or a different one has been achieved. Itshould become clear from the following episode that even the informationfound on tombstones could have a far-reaching effect. Some years ago a77