On the Objective Reality of Information ^†

Abstract

This paper focuses on the objective reality of information. What is information? “Infor-mation is information, not matter or energy”. There has been no clear answer to this question since it was raised by Weiner. This paper attempts to find the answer to this question by examining how information comes into the view of scientists. This is a scientific hermeneutic process that begins with the interpretation of the empirical texts of biological genetic phenomena and the formal texts of machine communication, both based on the forms of cultural communication of human society, and, during the process, the belief in the objective reality about information is gradually established.

1. Introduction

Before we dive deep into what information is, the word information is used only in the sense of human culture and its transmission, so it is one kind of abstract description of “message” and “thought”. As the existence of the objective world, information begins after scientists learn about the special way of biological heredity and the communication modes of machines and animals. Although the concept of information has not been clear, its importance has increased for science and philosophy to the point that neither scientists nor philosophers can ignore its position in the objective world. The progress of Information and Artificial Intelligence Science since the 20th century, in a sense, has benefited from the proposal of the information concept and the formation of information entity; however, the question “information is information, not matter or energy” asked by Norbert Wiener is still open, whether in philosophical ontology or scientific realism, which will affect our thinking and practical work. So, to clarify further the concept of information is needed. I believe that only by examining how information comes into the view of scientists can the concept of information be clear and answer Wiener’s question.

Therefore, this paper first examines the use of information concepts by biological geneticists, exploring why they use information rather than those interacting forms in the traditional physical and chemical sense, where and how they acquire the concept of information, and what the so-called genetic information is. Then, this paper examines communication engineering about human beings and explores how the concept of information changes, from borrowing at the beginning to becoming the expression of the interaction of objective reality, and how the belief of information reality is gradually established. These two examination results both point to a relevant new scientific field: the complex world and the understanding of it. Biological genetic information, machine communication, and the transmission of human cultural information have a common feature in that the objects described are the relationship between different layers in complex matter systems, namely, information is a description of complexity.

Through the investigation, we have a new understanding of information, which is an interpretation based on the way that human culture is transmitted, representing the complex interaction of objective things and having an objective reality, but to which the understanding and utilization can only be the subject with cultural consciousness (a broad definition of a culture: culture is non-genetic information about environment that is stored, interpreted, utilized, and transmitted via the brain of an animal species [1]). In human culture, information is the product of subjective consciousness, whereas, in the objective world, information arises from the accidental events locked by history and is the product of the recombination of inevitable and accidental interaction. By way of scientific interpretation, scientists dissolve the complex hierarchical interaction relationship of a complex system into information forms and find a new objective world: an information world that exists with the material world.

2. Discovery of Information: Research from Biological Genetic Mechanisms

If the word “information” is only understood as the way of transmission and communication to messages and ideas among human subjects, no doubt, there is information since the beginning of a human culture. As is well known, in natural science research, the concept of information first started in biology, or, rather, in molecular biological genetics. Before the birth of molecular biology, biological science (different from biological natural history) set the relationship between the biological parts according to the traditional idea of physics. In addition to the physical concepts of interaction, some biologists have imagined unique “organic forces”, “affinity”, “vitality”, and even “willpower”, but there is no way to describe them scientifically. The relationship between biotic and abiotic can neither be distinguished nor be connected until the molecular genetic mechanisms of organisms are revealed and interpreted by information. The results show us that organisms are both material and information.

2.1. Information Interpretation of Biological Genetics

In 1953, James D. Watson and Francis Crick discovered DNA’s double-helix structure and a special relationship between the nucleotides forming DNA molecules and amino acids of protein molecules; this relationship cannot be explained by traditional physicochemical interactions. Scientists explain this particular interrelationship in “natural language” by using the characteristics of human cultural transmission, and it is interpreted as a similar text communication coding relationship (see Figure 1). A set of crypto books used by the whole organic world was then discovered; thus, the theory of biological genetic information was finally established.

The origin of the special coding form of biological genetic information is still a mystery today, but it is an indisputable fact that biological heredity (or the continuation of life) can be understood and recognized only through the term of interaction of information.

2.2. Information Interpretation of Biological Variation

Geneticists have observed that the phenotypic differences between the two generations cannot be explained through the interaction at the same layer, i.e., the idea of acquired inheritance is untenable, which leads to the theory of the separation of germplasm and constitution. The germplasm determines the basic characteristics of an organism in future development, equivalent to a set of instruction vectors, evidently, which is close to the “information” category rather than the “pre-formed” category. Like a book is the product of human culture, germplasm has the function of storing information and similar variation mechanisms. The concept of germplasm indicates that the information enters the vision of scientists, and the objective reality of the information is accepted.

2.3. Energy and Information: Evidences from the Biology of Radiation Mutagenesis

The exchange between DNA molecular bonds is the most fundamental change in genetic material, and the bond energy structure is an important component of the structure of the molecular energy field. Each bond in each biomolecule, whose energy state is different, has its own intrinsic vibrational frequency. Due to quantization, the interaction between the energy fields is highly selective, i.e., the bonds with a certain intrinsic vibrational frequency can only interact with the corresponding radiation energy field that almost has no influence on other bonds. Therefore, if this energy field is large enough, the resonance (activation speed) of the bond will greatly exceed the thermal speed of the molecule to release the stored energy, the energy state of the whole molecule will change and jump into another steady state, and then isomerism of the base molecules occurs, which leads to new sequencing of the DNA. Experiments show that far-infrared laser radiation can lead to the generation of consistent genetic variation within populations [2].

Figure 2 only shows the reaction of thymine in the process of laser radiation: T→T’. Similarly, it can be theoretically clarified that the isomerism of guanine, adenine, and cytosine between ammonia and sub-ammonia happens under the action of single-frequency quantum radiation with matched frequencies and energy intensities: G→G’; A→A’; C→C’.

After laser action, the DNA molecules will undergo code conversion during replication. Under a normal state, the base pairing rule of double-helical DNA molecules is the match of thymine (T) with adenine (A) and cytosine (C) with guanine (G). However, if A becomes A’, A’, and T cannot pair, when the double chain is split to replicate, A’ pairs with C (double hydrogen bond connection), thus causing the conversion of AT → GC. Similarly, if G → G’, it causes GC → AT conversion; if T → T’, it causes AT → GC conversion; and, if C → C’, it causes GC → AT conversion.

Scientists have noticed that the genetic effects of radiation biological mutagenesis come not from direct physical interactions but from information interactions caused by physical interactions. Evidently, the same radiation energy has different effects on the germplasm and constitution of an organism, and heredity and variation can only be explained by information interactions.

From the study of biological genetics of radiation mutagenesis, scientists found that there is a specific connection between information and energy in nature, energy can be used as the carrier of information, the change in energy state leads to the change in information, and energy is also a kind of information existence!

3. Discovery of Information: Research from Machine Communication

Information as an objective thing enters the view of scientists; it is also from the field of communication engineering. Before, human culture communication mainly relies on the direct correlation between the senses: visual, hearing, touch, smell, etc., and information is considered the thing of people’s subjective feeling consciousness. But, into the stage of use tools (machine) to transmit signals, information only began to be realized in that it could leave people’s consciousness and be independent in its existence. Wiener even believes that people, animals, and machines have the same communication mechanisms and that there is something called information at work, although it cannot be clearly defined.

Scientists found that it was easier to understand and apply machine communication when considering a machine’s signals as an independent existence, just like matter and energy. To take the simplest example, a key machine consists of two parts: one part measuring the shape of the original key, with gears and connecting rods directly manipulating another part for the processing of the new key. What exactly happened between the two parts of the machine in this process? Of course, we can describe the whole process through mechanics, but this description makes no sense. In this process of matching the key, actually what the first part transmits to the second part are the signals that represent the geometry of the original key, or some invariance.

It brought an important revelation to scientists that the interactions between machines can also be described through information concepts similar to human cultural exchanges, and, more importantly, scientists began to think deeply about whether information interactions are also common in nature.

4. The Essence of Information Is a Geometric Mapping

Plato said that the essence of the world is geometric. Today, we understand that the geometry that he says includes time and space; otherwise, the world is held still. The cultural communication of mankind is based on the geometric nature of the world, on the premise that humans can understand the nature of geometry and use the knowledge of geometry through consciousness. But, Plato did not tell us what the relationship between the nature of the geometry of the world and the physical world of our experience is like. Undoubtedly, the discussion above on the objective reality of information touches on this profound philosophical ontology problem, which cannot be solved by the mere fact that physics must follow the laws of geometry. It is needed to find a path from the physical interaction to the geometric interaction, or a correlation between the two. From the biological genetics and machine communication, scientists realize that there is an interaction in the objective world similar to the exchange of human cultural information, although it is not manifested without human interpretation. However, the path from physical properties to geometric properties has not been found. The objective existence of information is always an unsolved case.

The complexity science breaks through the traditional thinking mode of physics, takes the interaction state of different layers as the basis of system integrity, and defines the complexity as the interrelationship of different and crossed layers. In this way, the geometric essence of the world is highlighted. Figure 3 shows the relationship of the matter hierarchy to the geometric mapping. The accidental interactions and the inevitable interactions are linked and assembled together, and the changes in one layer with the corresponding changes in another layer are locked into a fixed pattern. Based on that, the existence of information in the objective world is reasonably explained:

The multiple interactions occurring successively or simultaneously between the different layers of complex matter systems are intertwined, internalizing time (order) into space (distribution), and, at the same time, space (distribution) into time (order). The interaction between different layers inside and outside of complexity systems presents a geometric mapping relationship with many forms and directions and being in complex states, which become specific “relational entities” when they are constrained by the system’s hierarchy. This geometric mapping relationship is the information relationship that is interpreted out by humans, and this relational entity is the information or information entity that we try to clarify, which is identified as the real existence of the objective world.

5. The World Keeps Unfolding under the Influence of Information

Therefore, we see a world that constantly expands through information channels. Based on the geometric nature of the world, information is not conserved, unlike the case of matter and energy; any information can be copied, increased, amplified, disappeared, and can change the way of existing in carrier conversion. The geometric nature of information makes the hierarchy of systems possible to produce more and more or even infinite changes, endless new combinations, and endless new properties. The non-conservation of information is confirmed in the investigation of biological genetic, machine communication, and human cultural exchanges.

Any material system may become an information body. When it is not recognized, it only exists as an object and does not show the characteristics of information that are hidden in the hierarchy of matter systems. When the system is identified, the geometric mapping relationship that was previously acquired becomes code, and the system becomes an information carrier, such as a seed, a virus, a sequence of nucleotide molecules, or even an inorganic material composed of heterogeneous components. The so-called system identified is a metaphor. In fact, an interaction occurs, leading to the geometric mapping relationship between the internal and external layers of the system to establish a fixed pattern, namely, the so-called “Encoded”. Only the mapping relationship that becomes the form of fixed encoding is the real information.

Now, let us briefly describe the existence and development of the world. Things in the world have no vertical repetitions and no cycles, only unfolding a new thing after a new thing. Under the interaction of three closely related elements, namely, information, matter, and energy, the world unfolds according to geometric essence and never stops. Geometric mapping is constantly changing, the information of the world is constantly updated, and new material forms are constantly produced. There is no predictable probability of new things appearing because they come from the constant creation. Information plays the role of creator in the process of the world created.