Re: Dawkins and increase in information
Moorad Alexanian (alexanian@UNCWIL.EDU)
Tue, 06 Oct 1998 14:49:12 -0500 (EST)
At 02:34 PM 10/2/98 -0700, sschaff@SLAC.Stanford.EDU wrote:
>Moorad Alexanian wrote:
>
>> It seems to me that the introduction of the term "information" by biologist
>> is to enable them to tap into areas of science where that term has a very
>> clear meaning and usefulness. The attempt is to explain complexity by means
>> of such terms. It seems that unless one believes that all the potential
>> future development of the universe and all that it contains were set up from
>> the very beginning, then one would have to explain how the new source(s) of
>> info that leads to more complex entities subsequently come into being. It
>> seems to me that borrowing terms from other areas os studies and just using
>> them in one's musings does not lead to any sort of genuine explanations and,
>> least of all, to any form of scientific theory with predictive power.
>
>I'm quite confused. In most cases that I have seen, including the one
>just discussed on this list, the term "information" has not been
>introduced by biologists, but by opponents of evolution. And those
>opponents invariably seem to use the term in ways that have little or
>nothing to do with its use in other areas of science. So I don't
>understand why the biologists are being taken to task for failing to
>construct a predictive theory using the inappropriate terms being
>offered by their opponents.
>
>To address your specific question, in standard information theory (if
>I understand it correctly) sources of information require little
>explanation; any source of noise is a source of information. "Sources
>of info that leads to more complex entities" is not a topic for
>information theory, but for biology, and there the identification is
>also straightforward: the source is imperfect reproduction. The
>predictive theory that explains how that happens is evolution. I just
>do not understand why these are thought by anti-evolutionists to be
>important scientific questions.
>
>Steve Schaffner
>sschaff@slac.stanford.edu
Dear Steve,
I should like to quote from the message of Brian Harper (10/1/98):
[deleted]
Let's review the nature of Dawkin's answer on the
transcript. First he provides a more precise definition
of what information means in terms of complexity. Not
as precise as we might like but perfectly acceptable for
the situation. He then divides complexity into two types,
an inherent complexity of the structure itself and a
complexity associated with how the structure is adapted
to its environment, adaptive complexity. In view of this
he then says that organisms can be considered to possess
information about their environment. This in itself is, I
think, a valuable insight which indicates that Dawkins
has given some thought to the notion of "information" as
it relates to evolution. Anyway, Dawkins goes on to say
that the gradual process of evolution by natural selection
can slowly build the adaptive complexity (information)
of organisms.
[deleted]
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
The Ohio State University
My comments were addressed to what Dawkins said. I suppose I should have
said "zoologist" rather than biologist. Satisfied.
Moorad