Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze the properties of information in general and to define biological information in particular.

Highlights

  • A young man traveling around the country became short of money and sent the shortest possible telegram to his father explaining his situation and asking for help: “Father! Send some money! Your son”

  • His father was old with poor eyesight and asked his neighbor, a farmer, to read the message

  • Humans as external artificial recipients occupy a unique position: they recognize non-random data flow as information only if it makes sense to them, that is to say, if it has some human meaning in addition to the meaning recognized by the primary destination of the message

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Summary

Introduction

A young man traveling around the country became short of money and sent the shortest possible telegram to his father explaining his situation and asking for help: “Father! Send some money! Your son”. Message is the materialized form of the information It has an origin, the sender, and a destination, the recipient. Information is bi-directional because the sender and recipient must have similar or identical properties; they must speak the same language to be able to formulate (send) or identify (receive) the information. As intelligent subjects—often only external observers of non-random data exchange—can locate senders and recipients Such external observation requires the construction of artificial receptors that can recognize information flow. Humans as external artificial recipients occupy a unique position: they recognize non-random data flow as information only if it makes sense to them, that is to say, if it has some human meaning in addition to the meaning recognized by the primary (intentional) destination of the message. He understood my point and we continued our discussion with increased respect for one another

Measuring Information Entropy
Information Gathering
Growth of Biological Data and Information
Human Ways of Thinking and Communicating
Signals as a Special kind of Information
10. Unique and Distinguishing Properties of Biological Information
Findings
Conclusions
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