Information, The Hidden Side of Life

Information, The Hidden Side of Life

by Cédric Gaucherel, Pierre-Henri Gouyon, Jean-Louis Dessalles
Released April 2019
Publisher(s): Wiley-ISTE
ISBN: 9781786304247

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Book description

This book explores the unity of life. It proposes that the concept of information is the inner essence of what we today call life.

The importance of information for our species is obvious. Human beings are highly dependent on information, constantly exchanging with conspecifics. In a less apparent way, we are the product of genetic and epigenetic information which determines our development in a given environment from a fertilized egg to the adult stage. Even less apparent is that information plays a determining role in ecosystems. This observation may include the prebiotic systems in which life emerged.

Our claim is that Nature processes information continuously. This means that even beyond living entities, we can see messages and decoding procedures. Nature can be said to send messages to its own future and then to decode them. Nature “talks” to itself! The systematic organization of messages suggests that, in some respects, we should even speak of the “languages” of Nature.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Preface
  3. Introduction
    1. I.1. We can change the medium without changing the information
    2. I.2. Where does information exist?
    3. I.3. What is information?
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. 1 Human and Animal Communication
    1. 1.1. Language, that amazing thing
    2. 1.2. The mechanics of language
    3. 1.3. What is syntax?
    4. 1.4. Meaning
    5. 1.5. Beyond meaning
    6. 1.6. Non-human languages
    7. 1.7. Types of language
    8. 1.8. Why give information?
    9. 1.9. The autonomy of information
    10. 1.10. Language and information
  6. 2 Genetic Information
    1. 2.1. A central concept in biology
    2. 2.2. Epigenetic information
    3. 2.3. The environment
    4. 2.4. Information: from replication to reproduction
    5. 2.5. Mutation and selection
    6. 2.6. The story of the message: phylogeny and coalescence
    7. 2.7. The point of view of the reading system
    8. 2.8. We cannot see the wood for the trees
    9. 2.9. The tree and the web … and some complexities there!
    10. 2.10. When information and individual can no longer be confused
    11. 2.11. Conflicts and levels of integration: avatars
    12. 2.12. Sociobiology, altruism and information
    13. 2.13. The “all genetics” versus epigenetics
    14. 2.14. What is Life?
  7. 3 Ecosystem and Information
    1. 3.1. An information-centered perspective of the ecosystem
    2. 3.2. Reservoirs of ecosystemic information
    3. 3.3. Biodiversity: an ecosystem made up of individuals
    4. 3.4. Phylogeny of communities: biology in the arena
    5. 3.5. The ecosystem: a physical system or a biological system?
    6. 3.6. An ecosystem made up of matter and energy
    7. 3.7. Failure of the physical approach
    8. 3.8. Physics has not said its last word
    9. 3.9. The great challenges of ecology
    10. 3.10. Flow and balance of ecosystemic information
    11. 3.11. Ecosystemic codes
    12. 3.12. The languages of the ecosystem
  8. 4 Can We Define Information?
    1. 4.1. Information as surprise
    2. 4.2. Information measured by complexity
    3. 4.3. Information as organized complexity
    4. 4.4. Information as compression
    5. 4.5. Coding and information reading
    6. 4.6. Memory
  9. 5 Evolution of Information
    1. 5.1. In the beginning was structure
    2. 5.2. The first languages were ecosystemic
    3. 5.3. The replicators and the conservators
    4. 5.4. Biological languages
    5. 5.5. Information selection
    6. 5.6. Messages and languages
    7. 5.7. The complexification of codes
    8. 5.8. Complexification of languages
    9. 5.9. The re-creation of life
    10. 5.10. And what about tomorrow?
  10. References
  11. Index
  12. End User License Agreement

Product information

  • Title: Information, The Hidden Side of Life
  • Author(s): Cédric Gaucherel, Pierre-Henri Gouyon, Jean-Louis Dessalles
  • Release date: April 2019
  • Publisher(s): Wiley-ISTE
  • ISBN: 9781786304247