Information, The Hidden Side of Life

Introduction

Dear reader, do you know that an extraordinary happening is taking place at this very moment? Your eyes are taking in a linear message in a to-and-fro movement, line by line. The characters that make up the message are imprinting themselves on your retina, because of the sophisticated optical system that you possess. The retinal cells convert the stimuli into an impulse that then enters the brain. That organ then interprets the signal, and …, well, the information that the text had embodied has now entered your mind! Now, dear reader, would you please turn the page?

Thank you. Now, did you notice that something incredible just happened? A piece of information, non-material, was carried by a means, which itself was material (we will say more about this a little later), as described above, and produced a result which was physical. You moved your finger, and turned the page! The physical was put through a change by the action of a piece of non-physical information. That is the sort of thing we are used to. Indeed, our body is a kind of machine that converts information into action. Certain types of information, such as the recipes you find in cookery books, are clearly meant for use with material things.

This work will attempt to consider whatever could be treated as information from the point of view of science. Our times appear to be very much under the influence of that entity. One might ask if this information-age society of ours is seriously looking into what ...