Biology - Molecular Theory of the Living Cell - page 114

Gnergy
[Firstness]
(Subtance)
{It}

Ontology

C/P

Energy Information Epistemology

[Secondenss] [Thirdness}
(Extension) (Thought)
{Measurement} {Bit}

Fig. 4.11 A diagrammatic representation of complementarism (and the Spinozan metaphysics in
parenthesis). Also displayed are Wheeler's “it” and “bit.” The philosophical perspectives under-
lying this figure are complementarism (C) (described in Sect. 2.3.4 ) and Peircean metaphysics (P)
(described in Sect. 6.2 )

metaphysics (marked by { ]) is

striking in Fig. 4.11 , leading to the following identifications of the nodes, which
is consistent with Fig. 4.10 :
If the speculation expressed in Fig. 4.10 is valid that there are three fundamental
aspects to reality, then there must also be three categories of information to
represent them, namely, the information about the REALITY AS IS, the informa-
tion about the REALITY AS MEASURED or REGISTERED, and the information
about the REALITY AS KNOWN to the community of Homo sapiens throughout
the human history, which may be denoted as the Firstness information, the
Secondness information, and the Thirdness information . If we denote these different
types of informations as “1-I,” “2-I,” and “3-I,” respectively, we can write informa-
tion, I, as a combination of three components:

... }) and Peirce's metaphysics (marked by [ ...

Þ ^ ð Þ ^ ð

I ¼ð 1 I 2 I 3 I Þ (4.40)

where the symbol ^ indicates a complementary relation. Equation 4.40 may be
referred to as the “triadic theory of information” (TTI), which in turn may be
regarded as the information-theoretic version of the triadic theory of reality
(TTR) described in Fig. 4.6 .
We can apply the complementarian logic (see Sect. 2.3.3 ) to Wheeler's “it from
bit,” leading to the following possible identities:

1 : A ¼ Measurement

2 : B ¼ Bit ; and

¼ :

3. C It (4.41)