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Life, Information, Entropy, and Time: Vehicles for Semantic Inheritance.
1Department of Biochemistry, 419 Roger Adams Laboratory, 600 S. Mathews Avenue, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801;
Complexity
|November 4, 2008
Summary
Semantic content, or the meaning of a message, has no extra thermodynamic cost in information transmission. This concept unifies biological (genes) and cultural (memes) evolution under Universal Darwinism, impacting our understanding of life and consciousness.
Area of Science:
- Biophysics and Information Theory
- Evolutionary Biology
- Philosophy of Science
Background:
- Information transmission in the biosphere has thermodynamic costs associated with data storage and transmission.
- Semantic content, the meaning of a message, does not incur additional thermodynamic burden.
- Biological and human semantic inheritance pathways (genotype-phenotype and language) are subject to evolutionary pressures.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the thermodynamic implications of semantic content in biological and cultural information transfer.
- To unify the understanding of genetic and memetic evolution through the lens of semantic content.
- To address epistemological questions concerning consciousness, science, and reality by linking semantic content to physical mechanisms.
Main Methods:
- Postulation of three key principles regarding information transmission, semantic content, and interpretation.
- Analysis of semantic inheritance pathways in both biological (DNA) and human (language) systems.
- Examination of emergent properties of life, chronognosis, and civilization development through semantic processing.
Main Results:
- Semantic content is a common component in both genetic and memetic inheritance, enabling a reformulation of Universal Darwinism.
- Emergent properties of life, including complexity and adaptation, depend on semantic content processing and amplification.
- Human language and abstract thought have led to supra-phenotypic combinatorial amplification, driving civilization's evolution.
Conclusions:
- Recognizing semantic content as a non-thermodynamically burdensome, yet crucial, component provides a framework for understanding genes and memes.
- The study suggests that life's evolution and human consciousness represent an exploration of reality, underpinned by semantic processing.
- This framework offers a realistic philosophical approach to perennial questions in science, consciousness, and the nature of knowledge.
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