Abstract
Information studies pursuing a unified theory of information are now trapped in dilemmas because of the hard problems of information, which involve purpose, function, referen, value, etc. Pan-informationalism takes information for granted and considers it as a basic property of the cosmos or being priori to physical properties. It avoids rather than solves the problem. The mainstream of information studies takes the position of methodological reductionism that reducing information to a property that can be quantitatively measured. It is helpful but leaves something essential behind. Transdisciplinary approach takes information as a phenomenon has multiple levels and dimensions that cannot be reduced to but complementary to each other. Analogous to principle of complementarity in quantum mechanics, every level and dimension of information cannot be mathematically transformed to each other but are necessary for explaining information. The shifts between different levels and dimensions are not transformation in mathematic sense but perspective conversion like Gestalt switch. They constitute of ecology of information together. In this spirit, Brier’s cybersemiotics and Deacon’s theory nested hierarchy of information basing on emergent dynamics give us insightful framework to investigate information.
Highlights
As information is a central unifying concept in science playing a critical role in many disciplines, scholars have a propensity to go beyond Shannon’s classical information theory and to develop a unified theory of information (UTI)
There are three strategies to deal with the problem in general: pan-informationalism, methodological reductionism and transdisciplinary approach
An intuitive way to think of information is that, as information is not matter or energy and cannot be reduced to physical processes, it must be a basic property of the cosmos apart from physical properties
Summary
As information is a central unifying concept in science playing a critical role in many disciplines, scholars have a propensity to go beyond Shannon’s classical information theory and to develop a unified theory of information (UTI). Information is a complex phenomenon having multiple levels and dimensions, which cannot be reduced to but are complementary to each other. There are three strategies to develop UTI: pan-informationalism, methodological reductionism and transdisciplinary approach. Information as a complex phenomenon comes across physical, individual and inter subjective level of the world; it has three dimensions: physical, referential and normative. These levels and dimensions are one-to-one correspondence. A good way to study information should corporate these levels and dimensions into a coherent framework without taking information as the most primary or leaving something important out. Like different species cooperating with and being complementary to each other in a common ecological system, theories explaining different levels and dimensions in these two framework constitute an ecological system for information studies
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