Re: [asa] Information and knowledge

Have any of you read either of Hubedrt Yockey's books:

Information theory and molecular biology
http://www.amazon.com/Information-Theory-Molecular-Biology-Hubert/dp/0521350050/ref=sr_oe_1_1/104-8541183-0038340?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176512810&sr=1-1
and
Information Theory, Evolution, and The Origin of Life
http://www.amazon.com/Information-Theory-Evolution-Origin-Life/dp/0521802938/ref=sr_1_1/104-8541183-0038340?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176512810&sr=1-1

In these books Yockey purportedly shows the mathematical connections between information theory and genetic replication. I'd be interested in what Rich and Randy think of these books if they have read them.
 
Bill Hamilton
William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
248.652.4148 (home) 248.821.8156 (mobile)
"...If God is for us, who is against us?" Rom 8:31

----- Original Message ----
From: Rich Blinne <rich.blinne@gmail.com>
To: David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
Cc: Randy Isaac <randyisaac@comcast.net>; asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 7:18:40 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] Information and knowledge

On 4/13/07, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:

Where I agree with you is in the view that the strong ID program based on communications theory claims to prove too much. In the sense that communications theory cannot "prove" the existence of God, I agree there is a category mistake -- but it is between the category of empirical modeling of communications channels and the category of the metaphysics of being. ID tries to avoid this problem by arguing that the "designer" need not be God -- essentially, the "designer" can be any intelligent information source.

Communications theory not only does not get you to God it doesn't get you to meaning. I always marvel at how much is made of this outside my narrow field of electronics and communications. It's a screwdriver and everybody wants to make it into a hammer. I think the reason why is because it's mathematics and if you can throw a bunch numbers and formulas around people are impressed.

 Tied with the idea that information is ontologically separate from energy and matter, it seems to me that this results in a "designer / God" that is in essence "information." My biggest beef with this aspect of the strong ID program, then, is really a theological one: it seems to reduce God to a data stream that is ontologically part of the creation.

What makes this palatable to evangelicals is the "god" here is the orthodox one. But, let's change the metaphor a little and have the "god' be Gaia or Sophia for a second. In fact the latter possibility is more plausible because this data stream is immanent rather than transcendent. I agree that there is great danger here.

In more detail, Floridi summarizes different perspectives on "information" and how they might ultimately be unified (or not) as follows:

In the context of whether the syntactic and the semantic approaches to be information can be unified, Floridi notes:

Communication theory, as the mathematical theory of data transmission, provides the necessary conditions for any physical communication of information, but is otherwise of only marginal help.

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Received on Fri Apr 13 21:35:09 2007