Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 5.2 A Peircean triadic relation among complexity, emergence, and information suggested
based on Peircean metaphysics. According to Peirce, all phenomena (or appearances) have three
inseparably fused aspects termed Firstness (e.g., feeling, potentiality), Secondness (e.g., actuality,
interactions), and Thirdness (e.g., relation, representation). The symbol “1” stands for the identity
relation
Firstness
(Complexity)
Secondness
(Emergence)
Thirdness (Information)
Complexity
1
Evolution
Subjective information (formal information,
temperature-independent)
Emergence
Evolution
1
Objective information (physical information,
temperature-dependent)
Information
Subjective
information
Objective
information
1
3 matrix which is symmetric with respect to the diagonal
because the relation between any two elements of the table is commutative (e.g., the
relation between complexity and information is the same as the relation between
information and complexity). This leaves only three cells or relations in the interior
of the table (out of the total of 3
Table
5.2
is a 3
3
¼
9) left to be defined:
1.
Evolution
It is the relation between
complexity
and
emergence
. Evolution
refers to the
mechanism
by which certain properties of material entities are
manifested both synchronically and diachronically (Sect.
4.5
), which are novel
relative to the properties of the interacting entities. In this view, what emerges
may be thought to be not complexity but rather novelty, since complexity as the
Firstness of Peirce is
intrinsic to reality itself
.
2.
Subjective information
¼
The information that depends on the workings of the
human mind. For example, UV photons cannot carry any information to the
human eye but can do so to the UV-sensing eyes of certain nonhuman brains.
The historical information contained in the Bible is understood only by humans
but not by nonhuman species and is furthermore temperature-independent. That
is, raising the temperature of the Bible from room temperature by, say, 30
C
would not change the biblical information content whereas the entropy content of
the topic will increase (see the “Bible test” described in Footnote c in Table
4.3
).
3.
Objective information
¼
The information that exists independently of the
human mind. Examples include the information encoded in the universal
constants such as the speed of light and the electronic charge, the information
encoded in the microstates of matter which is temperature-dependent to varying
degrees.
¼
One of the reasons for the difficulty in defining the three terms appearing on the
margins of Table
5.2
may be traced to the fact that one of these terms, “information,”
occurs both on the
margins
and the
interior
of the table. What makes the situation
even more difficult is the appearance of the two different kinds of information in the
interior of the table -
Objective
and
Subjective
information. Thus, there are three
different kinds of informations appearing in Table
5.2
, reminiscent of the numerous
