[asa] Landauer, Information and Knowledge

This continues the thread on "information and knowledge." Landauer came up
in that thread. I happened to have been reading some of Landauer's work
before we started this discussion for a law paper I'm working on right now
relating to the legal regulation of information through intellectual
property law (thrilling, I know).

Rich suggested that Landauer's use of the term "information" is limited to
"syntactic" information and doesn't imply anything about metaphysics. I
don't think his use is that limited. Here is his opening salvo in
Landauer's "The Physical Nature of Information," Physics Letters, July 15,
1996:

*"Information is not a disembodied abstract entity; it is always tied to a
physical representation."*

He continues:

*"our assertion that information is pysical amounts to an asertion that
mathematics and computer science are a part of physics."*

Later, explicitly contrasting his view to (what he perceives to be)
Christian theology and earlier scientific views derived from theology, he
says:

*"Our scientific culture normally views the law of physics as predating the
actual physical universe. The law are considered to be like a control
program in a modern chemical plant; the plant is turned on after the program
is installed. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God (John I, 1), attests to this belief. Word is a translation
from the Greek Logos "thought of as constituting the controlling principle
of the universe." *

He concludes:

*"The view I have expounded here makes the laws of physics dependent upon
the apparatus and kinetics available in our universe, and that kinetics in
turn depends on the laws of physics. Thus, this is a want ad for a
self-consistent theory." *

Given the argument here in "The Physical Nature of Information," which
follows up on his "Information is Physical" (Physics Today May 1991), I
can't see how you can limit his views to "syntactic" information. He
clearly is proposing a metaphysical view that would encompass what Floridi
calls "semantic" information; and, it seems to me, his view is clearly a
materialist one, which he expressly distinguishes against the belief that,
as we in the ASA have put it, "in creating and preserving the universe God
has endowed it with contingent order and intelligibility, the basis of
scientific investigation."

I can see how you might say, "well, in the quantum computing lab we apply
these ideas in a limited, pragamtic way" -- which may be quite productive
and may not implicate metaphysics at all. But, I don't think you can
justifiably conflate that discipline's *use* of Landauer's ideas with the
intent of the broader ideas themselves. It seems to me that Landauer wears
his metaphysics on his sleeve, and I think other discplines, including
philosophy and law, recognize that.

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Received on Tue Apr 17 11:36:45 2007