“The reader of this sentence will cease to
exist when he has finished reading.”
Metamagical Themas, Douglas Hofstadter
This book grew out of a meeting that brought together three scientists, who had different backgrounds, and who worked in different disciplines, but who all had this in common: their activities had to do with the living entity. Confronting each of them in their own way was the question: what is information?
Whether in ecosystems, human language, genetics or evolution of living organisms, one comes face to face with the idea that information forms the substance of the system(s) being studied, then reproduced, transmitted, coded and decoded, or manipulated in other ways. Such information may not be equally important to everyone, it may not be carried by the same channel, or perhaps even be of the same nature. Yet, one cannot afford to overlook the importance of the concept while continuing to speak of it without a proper understanding of what the much-used term means. The information that we exchange and talk about every day is coded in our language. Now, are other languages coded differently, say nature’s languages? Can we define them, analyze them and quantify them?
Quite possibly, part of what we are going to say here may appear obvious to some readers, but unacceptable to others. Considering the gap between these two reactions, however, it is reassuring that we come across both kinds of comment, perhaps in a sign that there is something non-consensual behind seemingly mundane ideas. Now, we are not quite done with this theme yet, and, in fact, this is going to open up further vistas of thinking. We hope that the publication of this essay will make possible an elaboration of the issue, and lead to fruitful discussions with those who find these questions interesting.
One difficulty that appears immediately pertinent has to do with the very nature of information. Is it material or is it not? The answer: while the channels used in transmitting it are material, information itself is not material.
Well, this is only the first of our difficulties. Our science does not readily accept non-material entities. Let us not forget that the absence of materiality was a major argument in the rejection of Newton’s theory: the force of gravity appeared quite esoteric, since the force is acting at a distance, without material support. In contrast, the solar turbulences mentioned by Descartes appeared to be much more real or tangible. Yet, while following the same Aristotelian line of thinking, up to the end of the 18th Century, it seemed reasonable to consider fire an element, to the point of giving it a name: phlogiston. A process received the status of matter through a distortion of reality. It was left to the times of Lavoisier to demonstrate the difference between a material entity and a chemical reaction, and thereby to bring to an end a misconception that had persisted for over 2,000 years.
Let us rid ourselves of this obsessive habit of seeing everything in terms of matter. Information, even though carried by material agents, is nevertheless different from them. Now, how can a non-material entity act on matter? While trying to resolve this apparent paradox, we need to remember that, while information is certainly non-material, it is active across channels of communication, themselves material.
Does not Léo Ferré, in his Il n’y a plus rien (“There’s Nothing Any More”), praise the non-material virtues of information?
“Peddle your ideas like drugs… You risk nothing at the borders. Nothing in your hands, nothing in your pockets, it’s all there in your head!
‘Anything to declare?’
‘Nothing!’
‘What is your name?’
‘Karl Marx.’
‘All right. Move on!’”
Indeed, Karl Marx probably produced nothing other than information. He bore no arms, raised no army. For all that, for this generation of ours, having lived in a world split into two blocs, through nuclear horror and the wars that raged from Vietnam to Nicaragua and Cuba and Afghanistan, and that reshaped (and continue to reshape) the geopolitical environment, how materially influential this information of Marx’s has been.
While we (the three scientists) were still getting to know one another, one of us expressed to Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond his desire to work on the concept of information. “Is that a concept?” he had asked. Indeed, information is not yet a concept. Could we build one out of it?
Cédric GAUCHEREL
Pierre-Henri GOUYON
Jean-Louis DESSALES
October 2018