RE: [asa] Landauer, Information and Knowledge

I published a letter in the March 2007 issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, where I give the following example:

"Consider a book, which is purely physical even if it contains ciphered, rational information. A rational human being, which is physical/nonphysical entity, together with the book, gives rise to more than just the sum of its parts. By deciphering the information, the human acquires knowledge, which is purely nonphysical."

 
 
 
 
Moorad

________________________________

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of David Opderbeck
Sent: Tue 4/17/2007 11:36 AM
To: asa
Subject: [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 12:40:42 2007