Chris
Actually, we can *also* measure information by means of the probability of
the message in comparison to all possible messages. Thus, a law may be said
to have *high* information content because, on an a priori basis, the
probability of any particular law is nearly zero. The a priori probability
of the law of gravitation is very low. So, reducing so many different and
different types of observations to this law is extremely informative. And
yet, ironically, one of the purposes of formulating laws like the law of
gravitation is to reduce the information-load on the human mind, by enabling
us to have one relatively simple law instead of zillions of observations in
our minds.
Look at it this way: Imagine someone gives you a law that explains in a
simple and elegant way how to calculate a persons phone number from his
name. If it worked universally, you'd be surprised as all get out. But, if I
tell you that one object and another, distinct object are two objects, you'd
not be very surprised, because that's what you already expected (i.e., the
probability was very high, so the message was not surprising).
Thus, in one sense, a law of nature has small information content, but, in
another, it has high information content.
Further, if we express a law in the shortest algorithm, and compare it to an
equal-length string of random numbers, we find that the law and string of
numbers have the same information content; the law is no smaller in
information-content than the string of numbers of the same length.
Further still, we already know that simple laws and algorithmic processes
can generate extremely complex structures (e.g., the Mandlebrot set, for
example). If you look at a highly-detailed picture of the Mandlebrot set and
didn't know what the simple law was for generating it, you'd have to
represent it as a very large string of numbers. But, once you know, it
becomes a simple formula applied over and over for each pixel.
Evolution is a simple process, too, but it accumulates information and
complexity as it goes (even including making the process itself more
complex). Life is a little more complex, in principle, than evolution, which
is why we can have evolution before we have life (i.e., simple
self-replicating molecules can evolve, but we wouldn't say they are living
organisms). But, life as such, while more complex than basic evolution, is
still not very complex. The basic process is getting and "eating" (and
metabolizing) "food" that builds and maintains the organism's body (long
enough to reproduce the genes, the genes "hope"). This can be performed by
fairly simple mechanisms.