In the Beginning was Information

Definition D5: The domain A of definition of information includesonly systems which encode and represent an abstractdescription of some object or idea as illustrated in Figure 15.This definition is valid in the case of the given examples (book,newspaper, computer program, DNA molecule, or hieroglyphics),which means that these lie inside the described domain.When a reality is observed directly, this substitutionary andabstract function is absent, and examples like a star, a house, atree, or a snowflake do not belong to our definition of information(Part B). The proposed theorems are as valid as naturallaws inside the domain we have just defined.It should be noted that the DNA molecule with its genetic informationlies inside the domain A. We shall see later that this is a truecoding system. Three chemical letters comprise the code for a certainamino acid, but the acid itself is not present, neither spatiallynor temporally, as required by Property 1; it is not even presentelsewhere. The actual acid is only synthesised at a later stageaccording to the code which substitutes for it.The energy law is valid and exists regardless of our knowledgeabout it. It only became information after it had been discoveredand formulated by means of a coding system (everyday languageor formulas). Information thus does not exist by itself, it requirescognitive activity to be established.We can now formulate another information theorem:Theorem 24: Information requires a material medium for storage.If one writes some information with chalk on a blackboard, thechalk is the material carrier. If it is wiped off, the total quantity ofchalk is still there, but the information has vanished. In this casethe chalk was a suitable material medium, but the essential aspectwas the actual arrangement of the particles of the chalk. And thisarrangement was definitely not random, it had a mental origin. Thesame information that was written on the blackboard, could alsohave been written on a magnetic diskette. Certain tracks of thediskette then became magnetised, and also in this case there is acarrier for the information as stated by Theorem 24. The quantity85