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

Stonier, Tom; Stonier, T

ISBN 10: 3540198784 / ISBN 13: 9783540198789

Editore: Springer, 1997

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Titolo: Information and the Internal Structure of ...

Casa editrice: Springer

Data di pubblicazione: 1997

Legatura: paperback

Condizione: New

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto:

The first of a planned trilogy, this book examines the proposition that "Information" is as much a part of the physical universe as energy and matter. The acceptance of such a proposition has profound implications for the physical sciences; it also lays the foundations for a general theory of information. This book is directed firstly at researchers in information theory and scientists in other disciplines. However, its relatively non-mathematical nature and accessible writing style place it at the "scientific" end of the spectrum of popular science books. A general theory of information will emerge in the second volume; the third will examine the mechanism and evolution of human and machine intelligence.

Contenuti:

Prologue.- The Author’s Dilemma.- 1 Information: Abstraction or Reality?.- Can Information Exist Outside the Human Brain?.- Can Information be Processed Outside the Human Brain?.- Forms of Human Information and its Communication.- Biological Information Systems.- Inorganic Information Systems.- Non-human Information Processing.- Some Epistemological Considerations.- 2 Information Physics: An Introduction.- The Reality of Information.- The Heart of the Concept.- Information: The Hidden Dimension.- 3 Information and Entropy: The Mathematical Relationship.- Information and Organisation.- The Second Law of Thermodynamics.- The Boltzmann/Schrödinger Equation.- Information as an Inverse Exponential Function of Entropy.- The Constant c.- 4 Measuring the Information Changes of Altered Physical States.- Measuring the Information Content of a Crystal.- Proteins as Information Systems.- The Denaturation of Trypsin.- Concluding Remarks.- 5 Information and Entropy: Further Implications.- Information and Entropy as Viewed by the Communications Engineers.- Positive Entropy.- Negative Entropy.- Information Magnitudes.- The Evolution of the Universe.- 6 Some Further Considerations About the Interrelationship Between Information and Energy.- Pure Energy: Heat, the Antithesis of Information.- The Information Content of Energy.- Motion, Distance and Time.- Information and Potential Energy.- The Interconversion of Energy and Information.- Information Machines.- Structural vs Kinetic Information.- Transformations Between Kinetic and Structural Information.- 7 Information and Work.- The Relationship Between Work and Information.- Energy Transducers.- Work in Biological Systems.- Reassessing the Work Equations.- Measuring the Information Content of Electrical Work.- 8 Summary and Concluding Remarks.- The Basic Propositions.- Historical Perspective.- Why Has Information Been Overlooked?.- The Need for Models and Theories.- The Relevance of Information Physics for a General Theory of Information.- Some Concluding Thoughts.- Appendixes.- A. Speculations on Electromagnetic Radiation and Particles of Information.- B. Further Speculations: Implications for Atomic Structure.- C. A Smaller Universe.- D. Other Universes?.