In the Beginning was Information

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have in common that biological facts are interwoven with subjectiverepresentations which cannot be justified scientifically. Theinformation theorems formulated in this book, should enable thereader to distinguish between truth and folly.Figure 14: Hierarchical representation of matter, information, and life.Certain natural laws are valid for each of the three hierarchical levels; themain concern of this book is the information theorems. The meaning of thearrows are:1. Information requires matter for storage and transmission.2. Life requires information.3. Biological life requires matter as necessary medium.Information and matter fall far short in describing life, but life depends on thenecessary conditions prevailing at the lower levels.The code systems used for communication in the animal kingdomhave not been “invented” by them, but were created fully functionalaccording to Figure 24.82
5 Delineation of the Information ConceptThe question now arises as to the region in which the derived theoremsare valid. Do they only hold for computers, or also above andbeyond that in all technological domains? Are living systems includedor not?And what is the position with regard to unknown systems whichwe might like to evaluate? Are there criteria which enable us todetermine beforehand whether the theorems may be applied, orwhether we have left the domain of validity? We thus require anunambiguous definition.We have already considered a number of examples which we havetacitly included in the domain, viz. a computer program, a book,flag codes, and hieroglyphics. But what about the crystallinestructure of a metal or a salt, or of a snowflake, all of which becomevisible under magnification? The starry skies are investigatedby means of telescopes and we obtain “information” about thestars in this way. A detective gathers “information” at the scene ofa crime and deduces circumstantial evidence from meaningfulclues. A paleontologist may observe the mussel-bearing shale in ageological layer. The scientist “studies the book of nature” andobtains new knowledge in this way. New technological regularitiesare discovered, and, when formulated, they comprise a lot ofinformation. Now which of the above examples belong to ourdomain?Every scientific definition of a concept requires precise formulation,as in everyday communications. A definition serves to fix matters,but it also brings limitations. The same holds for the informationconcept.To be able to define a domain, we require a peculiar property ofinformation, namely its representational function. Information itselfis never the actual object or fact, neither is it a relationship(event or idea), but the encoded symbols merely represent thatwhich is discussed. Symbols of extremely different nature (see83
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Werner GittIn the Beginningwas Info
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ContentsPreface ...................
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A2.1.2 Complexity and Peculiarities
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PrefaceTheme of the book: The topic
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Acknowledgements and thanks: After
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Figure 1: The web of a Cyrtophora s
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3. The Morpho rhetenor butterfly: T
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few days later another wonderful ev
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5. The organ playing robot: Would i
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PART 1: Laws of Nature
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aspects are not covered. Models are
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2.2 The Limits of Science and the P
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numerous mathematical theorems (exc
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mulated on earth, were also valid o
Page 31 and 32: F = G x m 1 x m 2 / r 2The force F
Page 33 and 34: The nine above-mentioned general bu
Page 35 and 36: R2: The laws of nature enable us to
Page 37 and 38: Conservation theorems: The followin
Page 39 and 40: Figure 6: Geometrically impossible
Page 41 and 42: ical bond. The half-life T is given
Page 43 and 44: PART 2: Information
Page 45 and 46: Since the concept of information is
Page 47 and 48: tents and because of the encoding p
Page 49 and 50: chemical quantities can be steered,
Page 51 and 52: and there are 468 Greek words. This
Page 53 and 54: Figure 10: The Rosetta stone.53
Page 55 and 56: As explained fully in Appendix A1,
Page 57 and 58: Theorem 5: Shannon’s definition o
Page 59 and 60: elementary sounds, but pictures are
Page 61 and 62: - Punched cards, mark sensing- Univ
Page 63 and 64: Get nymph; quiz sad brow; fix luck
Page 65 and 66: Theorem 7: The allocation of meanin
Page 67 and 68: Theorem 11: A code system is always
Page 69 and 70: Knowledge of the conventions applyi
Page 71 and 72: Sequences of letters generated by v
Page 73 and 74: system must have been created by an
Page 75 and 76: We can distinguish two types of act
Page 77 and 78: a) Concerning the sender:- Has an u
Page 79 and 80: no purpose or intent; he represents
Page 81: We still have to describe a domain
Page 85: Definition D5: The domain A of defi
Page 88 and 89: 6 Information in Living OrganismsTh
Page 90 and 91: code with four different letters is
Page 92 and 93: Figure 17: The way in which genetic
Page 94 and 95: 6.2 The Genetic CodeWe now discuss
Page 96 and 97: Figure 19: The theoretical possibil
Page 98 and 99: Figure 20: A simplified representat
Page 100 and 101: inevitable interactions ... The ori
Page 102 and 103: We now discuss some theoretical mod
Page 104 and 105: Genetic algorithms: The so-called
Page 106 and 107: “The final result of all my resea
Page 108 and 109: 7 The Three Forms in which Informat
Page 110 and 111: and methods of transfer (e. g. the
Page 112 and 113: 8 Three Kinds of Transmitted Inform
Page 114 and 115: languages, creating a programming l
Page 116 and 117: 9 The Quality and Usefulness ofInfo
Page 118 and 119: vertently), deliberately falsified,
Page 120 and 121: 10 Some Quantitative Evaluationsof
Page 122 and 123: such diverse topics as technology,
Page 124 and 125: 11 Questions Often Asked Aboutthe I
Page 126 and 127: Q10: Natural languages are changing
Page 128 and 129: A19: Biological systems are indeed
Page 130 and 131: continually shifts in order to avoi
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A23: If we are talking about true l
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The information concept was discuss
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The close link between information
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13 The Quality and Usefulness of Bi
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iguously instructed to “Let the w
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Figure 27: God as Sender, man as re
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way its understanding is also a spi
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dom prepared for you since the crea
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would be known about his Person and
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Missionary and native: After every
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the case, as shown in Figure 29; no
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and defects of the information sent
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- Man did not develop through a cha
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15 The Quantities Used for Evaluati
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him: “Today salvation has come to
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16 A Biblical Analogy of the FourFu
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with God (Ephesians 5:18-20). The p
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- energy is utilised, and- the cons
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God’s testing fire; only fruit in
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A1 The Statistical View of Informat
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Figure 31: Model of a discrete sour
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a) the factor n, which indicates th
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) Expectation value of the informat
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A1.2 Mathematical Description of St
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Figure 32: The number of letters L
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A1.2.2 The Information SpiralThe qu
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184
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186
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188
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Figure 34: The ant and the microchi
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a degree of integration of 11.72 mi
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194
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as expressing the highest possible
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H syll = 8.6 bits/syllable. (16)The
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Figure 36: Frequency distributions
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202
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the voluminous data requirements, c
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A2 Language: the Medium for Creatin
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The words of a language are linked
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(tongo), or from the same level (ba
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It should be clear from these examp
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A2.1.4 Written LanguagesThe inventi
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mation as discussed above, are foun
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“Speaking birds”: Parrots and b
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Figure 41: Speechless.(Sketched by
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we might realise. There are countle
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- The impossibility of a perpetual
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Figure 42: Three processes in close
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228
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Figure 44: Ripple marks on beach sa
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glucose is produced from 6 mol CO 2
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individual catalytic enzyme reactio
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nature: mechanical work is performe
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All human nutritional problems coul
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intricately constructed light proje
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p = 0.006/h) to produce propulsion
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leg they fly back to Canada over Ce
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south-east and fly right across the
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[E2] Eigen, M.: Stufen zum Leben- D
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[G15] Gitt, W.:[G16] Gitt, W.:[G17]
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Automatisierungstechnische Praxis 2
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H. 12, pp. 68-87[W2] Weibel, E. R.:
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Kemner, H. 146, 167Kessler, V. 11Ki
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