Information and the Internal Structure of the Universe: An Exploration into Information Physics

by Tom Stonier

Not so if the book has been translated into Arabic. Now the reader can discern no meaning in the letters. The text conveys almost no information to the reader, yet the linguistic informa­ tion contained by the book is virtually the same as in the English original. The reader, familiar with books will still recognise two things, First, that the book is a book. Second, that the squiggles on the page represent a pattern of abstractions which probably makes sense to someone who understands the mean­ ing of those squiggles. Therefore, the book as such, will still have some meaning for the English reader, even if the content of the text has none. Let us go to a more extreme case. Not a book, but a stone, or a rock with engravings in an ancient language no longer under­ stood by anyone alive. Does such a stone not contain human information even if it is not decipherable? Suppose at some point in the future, basic knowledge about linguistics and clever computer aids allow us to decipher it? Or suppose someone discovers the equivalent of a Rosetta stone which allows us to translate it into a known language, and then into English? Can one really say that the stone contained no information prior to translation? It is possible to argue that the stone, prior to deciphering contained only latent information.

166 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1990

Reviews

[Paul Black · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book has some interesting ideas, but hardly anything that would qualify as more than speculations. He does come up with some formulas to compute the amount of "information" in some cases. However, he never does anything with them. There are no predictions; it doesn't explain what is going on in an otherwise-mysterious (that is, having arbitrary constants or rules) process, nor does it bring together any heretofore apparently unrelated behaviors.

In the beginning, I thought of many related ideas. Pirsig's discussion of the quality of barbecue grills in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". "Information" vs. identify (after some time, when all the atoms that currently constitute my body have been replaced, am I still me? why?). The notion of memes. The thought experiment of transmitting the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a single bit (How? The decoding "book" at the other end is the Encyclopedia Britannica! When a bit is received, look at the "code book" to find out the meaning of the message. Of course, that scheme can only transmit one message ...)

He points out how different forms of energy, such as potential, kinetic, and chemical, can be converted into each other. He then posits that information can be "altered into another form", but never gives an example of this occurring.

Yes, there is information all over, often in the structure of things. But to claim the existence of a fundamental thing called "information", one must have a reason for it. There is no consistent definition of what "information" is. Sometimes it is patterns. In some cases, adding energy (to a system) increases the amount of information. In other cases, adding energy decreases information.

He talks about "disorder", but sometimes it is raw material or matter unorganized and sometimes it is a tendency to cause chaos. (p 56) "The more random ..." as in compressed and predictability removed, but it is still decodable. He refers to semantics, but his earlier discussion says there is still information even without semantics. He talks about regularity and order being information. As a counter argument I ask, what is the semantics of an ice cube? It is obviously ordered (more regular and predictable than liquid or gaseous water), but I don't think it has "information" in the same sense that a book in Finnish or a shard written in Linear A does.

Contrasted with a coherent beam of light, he says, that a beam of incoherent light lacks information (page 76). But that beam may be the image (picture) of a sentence, S2, which does have information!

There is no reference to that notion that entangled quantum states may be more simply viewed as groups of particles with fewer bits of information than particles!

In short, it is certainly possible that with much more study and work, he may find a useful physics of information. But I don't think this book presents anything worth my time.

[Alexander Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got this book on a whim of wanting to see some cross-disciplinary work from my field. Although the book begins with strong promise, very quickly Dr. Stonier shows us an example of exactly why entropy can be difficult for the casual student to grasp by getting it wrong himself. Although the book does have some redeeming points of consideration, his fundamental points of information and its relation to physics I'm afraid are misaligned.

A better beginning to this subject would be Claude Shannon, who has been more universally accepted in information theory. Most work in this field stems from his Mathematical Theory of Communication. However, for some reason, Stonier opposes his interpretation of entropy dispite the large work of liturature in Shannon's support. Stonier promises too much with little scientific or mathematical support.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book if you want to understand or have a vacabuary aboutan information driven universe. ASs the Chinese would say here's a food snack: Information and the internal structure of the universe examines the idea that information may be as much a part of the physical universe as matter and energy. or "You were there before your nose holes where" Howard Higman