Big History – The Unfolding of “Information”
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Dec 31, 2017
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Abstract
This essay’s central thesis is that information and its “flows” are just as crucial as energy flow densities for the realization of increasingly complex systems over the course of big history. In fact, it is the requisite interplay between at least these two phenomena that make complexity possible. As with any endeavor of a philosophical or scientific nature, definitions are a crucial beginning point for building any argument. Hence, critical definitions will form an important basis for the content of this essay. If we assert that information plays just as essential a role as energy flows do for the realization of complex systems, then we must also propose the role information plays on a more basic physical level to support this contention. After all, complex systems don’t “spring fully formed from the head of Zeus like Athena.” Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we must have a better intuitive grasp of what information is or at the very least, what it does. As an example, physicists still don’t know what “energy” fundamentally is, just what it does, e.g., “energy is the capacity to do work.”
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References
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Fewster, Helen, et al, 2016. Big History, Examines our Past, Explains our Present, Imagines our Future, New York, DK Publishing
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Gleick, James, 2011, The Information, a History, a Theory, A Flood, New York, Vintage Books
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Parker, Geoffrey, 1986. The World, An Illustrated History, New York, Harper & Row Publishers
Pollock, Steven, 2003. Particle Physics for the Non-Physicist: A Tour of the Microcosmos Guidebook, The Great Courses, Chantilly, VA
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Schrodinger, Erwin, 1967. What is Life?, Cambridge, U.K., Cambridge University Press
Seif, Charles, 2007. Decoding the Universe, How the New Science of Information is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from our Brains to Black Holes, London, England, Penguin Books
Shannon, C.E. 1948, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” The Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27, pp 379-423, 623-656, American Telephone & Telegraph Co.
Shannon, C.E. 1993, Collected Papers, ed. By N.J.A. Sloane and A.D. Wyner, New York, IEEE Press
Spier, Fred, 2015. Big History and the Future of Humanity, Chichester, West Sussex, UK, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Stone, James V., 2015, Information Theory, A Tutorial Introduction, Lexington, KY, Sebtel Press
Wheeler, John A., 1990. "Information, physics, quantum: The search for links". In Zurek, Wojciech Hubert. Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information. Redwood City, California: Addison-Wesley
Chaisson, Eric J., 2001. Cosmic Evolution, The Rise of Complexity in Nature, Harvard University Press Christian, David, 2011. Maps of Time, an Introduction to Big History, Berkely and Los Angeles, California, University of California Press
Christian, David, 2008. Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth and the Rise of Humanity, Chantilly, Virginia, The Teaching Company
Deacon, Terrence W., 2010. “What is Missing from Theories of Information?” In Information and the Nature of Reality, From Physics to Metaphysics, edited by Paul Davies and Niels Henrik Gregersen, New York, Cambridge University Press
DeGrasse Tyson, Neil and Goldsmith, Donald, 2004. Origins, Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Doyle, Bob. www.theinformationphilosopher.com
Fewster, Helen, et al, 2016. Big History, Examines our Past, Explains our Present, Imagines our Future, New York, DK Publishing
Floridi, Luciano, 2011. The Philosophy of Information, Oxford University Press
Gleick, James, 2011, The Information, a History, a Theory, A Flood, New York, Vintage Books
Layzer, David, 1990. Cosmogenesis, The Growth of Order in the Universe, Oxford University Press
Layzer, David, 1970. “Cosmic Evolution and Thermodynamic Irreversibility,” Pure and Applied Chemistry, v.22, p.464
Mitchell, Melanie, 2009. Complexity, a Guided Tour, Oxford University Press
Parker, Geoffrey, 1986. The World, An Illustrated History, New York, Harper & Row Publishers
Pollock, Steven, 2003. Particle Physics for the Non-Physicist: A Tour of the Microcosmos Guidebook, The Great Courses, Chantilly, VA
Schumacher, Benjamin, 2015. The Science of Information, From Language to Black Holes, Lecture Transcripts, p562, Chantilly, VA: The Great Courses
Schrodinger, Erwin, 1967. What is Life?, Cambridge, U.K., Cambridge University Press
Seif, Charles, 2007. Decoding the Universe, How the New Science of Information is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from our Brains to Black Holes, London, England, Penguin Books
Shannon, C.E. 1948, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” The Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27, pp 379-423, 623-656, American Telephone & Telegraph Co.
Shannon, C.E. 1993, Collected Papers, ed. By N.J.A. Sloane and A.D. Wyner, New York, IEEE Press
Spier, Fred, 2015. Big History and the Future of Humanity, Chichester, West Sussex, UK, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Stone, James V., 2015, Information Theory, A Tutorial Introduction, Lexington, KY, Sebtel Press
Wheeler, John A., 1990. "Information, physics, quantum: The search for links". In Zurek, Wojciech Hubert. Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information. Redwood City, California: Addison-Wesley