Abstract
Information is intrinsically about
a physical phenomenon that precipitates a globally synchronous
time internally, in sharp contrast to Newtonian physics in which
the globally synchronous time is simply declared to be absolute
from the outset as being a metaphysical entity. Both capacities
of generative activity and prescriptive specification are evident
in the physics of information addressing the construction of a
globally synchronous time from locally asynchronous ones on the
actual scene. Appraisal of a locally asynchronous time assigned
to each local material configuration is practiced by focusing
on the occurrence of signaling and communication on material grounds.
In this regard, the Cartesian physics prior to Newtonian successor
is perceptive enough to appreciate the significance of signaling
and communication in the local perspective. Proper understanding
of the issue of information can be accomplished only by ameliorating
Newtonian interventions too much of a metaphysical flavor. Information
requires and waits for resurrection of the Cartesian physics.
1 Introduction
Information is something we feel a difficulty or a psychological stress in addressing. The difficulty is in the choice of those fundamental predicates to decipher what information is all about. In this regard, three cursory remarks will be made in order.
First, information to talk about and information to live with or to experience are different (von Weizsäcker, 1971). To talk about information to experience is beyond our capacity (Matsuno, 1996). In essence, if it were possible to talk about information to experience, we could become smarter simply by talking while experiencing neither listening nor reading. That's funny. Information to experience penetrates everywhere even into ourselves. A naive Cartesian split between subject as a scientist and object called information does not apply. This is the first point to make.
Nonetheless, the urge to talk about information is irresistible. A rescue for our own sake comes from information frozen in a time capsule (Barbour, 1994; Saunders, 1993), that is a fossilized rock to a paleontologist or an old torn document to a historian. Information in the time capsule is out there as it is insofar as no one is allowed to fake it up. It is waiting for a competent paleontologist or historian to come to take a look at. Information frozen in the time capsule can be deciphered as a legitimate descriptive object even though not everybody can be a competent paleontologist or historian. Only the privileged few can do that. The split between the time capsule and its onlooker, that has nothing to do with the Cartesian split though similar in its outlook, provides a reliable scheme for describing frozen information. That is my second point. Of course, this is not what information is all about.
The third point is on living, not frozen, information in the making or in production as embodied in biological organisms in development or political struggles in a political arena. At this point, we notice that biological organisms as living fossils concern biologists instead of paleontologists. Likewise, live political struggles concern political scientists instead of historians. Still, today's living organisms will be frozen fossils to a tomorrow's paleontologist as much as today's political struggles will be a historical anecdote to a tomorrow's historian. Here, we can see a transference from living to frozen information.
If information science really deserves the discipline it represents, the task will be how to perceive the transference of information from living to being frozen. This will require quite an effort almost equivalent to bridging the disciplinary chasm between paleontology on the one hand and developmental biology on the other, or between history and political science. One condition for the present enterprise to deserve its effort will be to address how to establish a global synchronism among those events that constitute living information, because in order to make a consistent story out of any time capsules, distinguishing concurrent events from those sequential in time is primary.
Any autobiography by a former president of a state or by a general of military can be interesting, but may be frowned upon by serious students of history. Historian's uneasiness with making such an autobiography a discourse of the authentic history rests upon its likely but not necessarily disciplined demarcation in classifying and distinguishing concurrent events from sequential ones.
To make a long story short, what information science is asked to do in the name of its profession is, among others, to grope for a reliable and trustworthy condition for establishing a global synchronism among those various events participating in information in the making. Information permeates everywhere, from the time capsules to where action is and back, and from the micro to the cosmos and back (Conrad, 1996).
Information is difficult to talk
about, to be sure. But, once we feel confident in reading out
a global synchronism from information, we may be entitled to talk
about information to live with. The global synchronism presumes
the process of transferring information to live with, that is,
in the making to information in the frozen record, though the
present as the moment of making is undefined, the future has no
other reality than present hope, and the past is no more than
present memory (Borges, 1981). Material underpinning of this transference
for global synchronism is an occurrence of signaling because information
to be communicated is carried by a signal of whatever material
origin. Synchronization between a signaler and a receiver could
be established only at the moment that the signal from the signaler
has arrived at the receiver. Signals are by themselves local both
in space of physical constellations and in time of processes (Kornwachs,
1996), since no signals can be shared globally right at the moment
that they are generated by whatever means. Information thus faces
the problem of how signals of a local character both in space
and in time could come to be synchronized and shared globally
in the end. This problem is of course not new. At the least, we
would have to go back to the 17th century Cartesian physics, in
which the role of signals and signaling was a major concern when
dynamics was addressed.
2 The Role of Signals in the Cartesian Physics
The Cartesian cut invented by Descartes secures both the Cartesian subject that can serve as a scientist and the object that is no more than being extensive (Primas, 1993; Atmanspacher, 1994). Material bodies conceived by the Cartesian subject thus lacks sentient capacity that remains intensive. Monopoly of sentience by the Cartesian subject comes to leave a formidable problem to the physics of compound motion of material bodies because of the lack of sentient capacity in the latter. Laws of motion of material bodies to Descartes were in fact laws of communication of motion of material bodies (Leydesdorff, 1994). The idea of communication was so primary and so fundamental to Cartesian physicists. Descartes was deluded into thinking of laws of communication of motion by collisions of bodies (Huygens, 1690), and at the same time Leibniz came up with an article having the title "New system of the nature and the communication of substances, and of the union between the soul and the body" (Leibniz, 1695).
At issue was how material bodies could communicate their motion while maintaining themselves as being insentient. What is focused here is an incommensurability between motion and communication of motion or, put differently, how material bodies could move right in the middle of communicating their movements just to determine themselves.
An essence of serious difficulty with the matter of communication is found in the problem of synchronization between two different clocks. Leibniz observed:
"One may think of two clocks which are completely synchronous. This can only happen in three ways: firstly, it may be based upon a mutual influence among them; secondly, that continuously somebody takes care; thirdly on the mutual precision of each of them." (Leibniz, 1696).
Although he was in favor of the third alternative based upon the idea of pre-established harmony, Leibniz did not address the issue of communication squarely except for pointing out the seriousness of the problem of communication.
The difficulty with the Cartesian physics which Leibniz diagnosed is in fact with the mixing or muddling of two different notions; one is global and the other is local. Compound motion of material bodies unquestionably refers to a global constellation of those bodies, whereas communication of motion takes a local behavior of communicating signals for granted. This form of a queer mixing of both the global and the local perspectives makes the Cartesian physics internally inconsistent due to dispensing with signaling in an already globally coordinated constellation on the one hand and necessitating signaling in coordinating local processes on the other.
Such internal inconsistency can
be both merit and demerit to the Cartesian physics. It is a merit
because the Cartesian physics legitimately recognizes and maintains
the informational capacity of signaling and communication proceeding
internally, while it is a demerit because it makes the physics
internally inconsistent (Matsuno, 1985, 1989; Rössler, 1987).
If one is concerned with internal consistency more than anything
else, however, the Cartesian physics would have to face the legitimacy
for the charge that it muddles both the local and global perspectives
in an undisciplined manner. In fact, it was Isaac Newton who provided
a prescription for relieving the Cartesian physics from suffering
such internal inconsistency.
3 Dismissal of Signaling in Newtonian Physics
As referring to Euclidean geometry as a supreme archetype of a discourse maintaining its internal consistency, Newton in fact intended a geometrization of mechanics. Since any proposition in Euclidean geometry is stated in an atemporal manner, Newton labored to figure out a set of atemporal propositions or, equivalently of propositions on simultaneous events, with the hindsight that any logic constructed on propositions on simultaneous events remains atemporal. This enterprise was actually accomplished by employing the idea of Newtonian absolute time. Newton wittingly defined absolute time as stating:
"I do not define time, space, place and motion, as being well known to all. Only I observe that the common people conceive those qualities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common.
I. Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration; relative, apparent, and common time, is some sensible, and external (whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by the means of the notion, which is commonly used instead of true time; such as an hour, a day, a month, a year." (Newton, 1687).
What is so peculiar to Newtonian absolute time is its unconditional declaration that time is globally synchronous in absolute sense without recourse to anything external. That is metaphysical at best. The other side of the same coin of declaring absolute time is total dismissal of the process of signaling, which Newton abhorred so vehemently by charging it as being relative. Newtonian mechanics is about a set of propositions on simultaneous events riding on a uniform and homogeneous flow of absolute time. Conversely, absolute time is globally synchronous in guaranteeing the occurrence of those simultaneous events. There is neither signaling nor communication in the actualization of simultaneous events.
Global synchronization of time is accomplished simply by declaring Newtonian absolute time. Although the three propositions expressed in the form of three laws of motion in Newtonian mechanics are not specific enough to identify whether they are about simultaneous events, Newtonian absolute time stipulates all the propositions to be about simultaneous events.
Take, for instance, the third law of motion stated as:
"To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts." (Newton, 1687).
The qualification "always" appeared twice in the statement is about simultaneous events, instead of sequential ones, because of the additional qualification which is not explicit in the statement of the third law itself. That is Newtonian absolute time.
Dismissal of sequential events in formulating the very basis of physics would come to make signaling and communication irrelevant to the foundation of any dynamics. Newtonian recipe for rescuing the Cartesian physics is to make law of communication of motion to be relieved of communication and to let it have a form of law of motion again. Appraisal of Newtonian absolute time lets the issue of information irrelevant to physics in general and material dynamics in particular even though the idea of absolute time is simply metaphysical without recourse to any material underpinning.
Insistence on the significance of simultaneous events, while dismissing material implication of information dynamics, was even further strengthened with the discovery of special and general relativity. Einstein endorsed Newton's framework and went on to saying:
"All our propositions involving time are always propositions about simultaneous events." (Einstein, 1905).
As a matter of fact, special relativity is a scheme of guaranteeing global synchronization of time with use of the Lorentz transformation, while general relativity is intended to accomplish its global synchronization on the imposed condition of the covariant transformation. Upon these accomplishments, Einstein with his colleague Infeld insisted even:
"Without the belief that is possible to grasp the reality with our theoretical constructions, without the belief in the inner harmony of our world, there could be no science." (Einstein and Infeld, 1938).
The inner harmony of our world expressed in logic witnesses a wholehearted endorsement of propositions exclusively on simultaneous events from logician Quine, who said:
"I do not see how failing to appreciate the tenselessness of quantification over temporal entities, one could reasonably take modern logic very seriously." (Quine, 1953).
Newtonian physics combined with
logic perceiving consistency internal to any discourse thus dismisses
the issue of signaling and communication, or information dynamics
in short, from the realm of physics. The Cartesian physics was
rescued by forcing it to abandon its adherence to the issue of
communication among the participating material bodies. Dismissal
of the issue of information from the inner most core of Newtonian
physics is further strengthened in formulating special and general
relativity. This recognition invites us to face whether the matter
of information would be an epiphenomenon at best or it would be
Newtonian physics which would have to be given second thoughts
when it comes to information. At issue is whether the Cartesian
physics noting the significance of signaling and communication
could find serious followers.
4 Resurrection of the Issue of Information
Internal consistency latent in Newtonian physics is certainly invincible insofar as one maintains absoluteness of any discourse in material dynamics. However, the underpinning of the absoluteness is not quite absolute. In this regard, physicist-mathematician-philosopher Weyl noted:
"[T]his objective world is of necessity relative: it can be represented by definite things (numbers or other symbols) only after a system of coordinates [the rest-frame of an observer] has been arbitrarily carried into the world. ... Whoever desires the absolute must take the subjectivity and egocentricity into the bargain; whoever feels drawn toward the objective faces the problem of relativity." (Weyl, 1949).
This perception anticipates a departure from the orthodox track set by Newton in a very profound manner, and portends a more direct confrontation with what Newton expressed. One of such agenda is on the third law of mechanics on the counterbalance between action and reaction (Matsuno, 1985, 1989). Newtonian absolute time renders the counterbalance being of a simultaneous character, thus dismissing the actual communication between action and reaction. The present dismissal of the issue of communication in the actualization of the third law, however, meets a serious counterattack from the practitioners working on information as voiced by Fleissner and Hofkirchner:
"Every system acts and reacts in a network of systems, elements and networks. ... As soon as ... the reaction of the system is unequal to the action it undergoes, the system produces information." (Fleissner and Hofkirchner, 1996).
Implicit in the insistence on a possible breakdown of the counterbalance between action and reaction is a flat denial of a globally synchronous time that has been so central to Newtonian physics.
It is of course one thing to claim a globally synchronous time without recourse to any external reference, but quite another to justify time as being completely immune to and independent of external references. Although the hypothesis of absolute time relative to nothing is completely legitimate theoretically, this theoretical legitimacy alone does not prohibit us from raising the issue of its empirical legitimacy. Noting that time has been conceived in relation to dynamics in the first place, one perceives that time is exclusively relational in its implication. Time has been introduced in relation to changes in a moving body as much as the latter changes can be measured in terms of time. The mutual closedness between time and dynamics, though legitimate in its own light, does not however address how dynamics could proceed in time nor how time would behave in dynamics. In this regard, absolute time in Newtonian mechanics has paved the way for analyzing dynamics in terms of time without being entrapped by a futile self-circularity. Nonetheless, the cost for adopting a globally synchronous time in mechanics is to deprive time of the capacity of relating itself to others.
Relational time compared to absolute one is strictly local in the respect that the act of relating one thing to another cannot be global (Matsuno, 1993; Matsuno and Salthe, 1995). Relational activity presumes the act of specification and identification. For instance, relating the movement of a clock to the passage of time there requires identification of the specific displacement of the movement that the clock exhibits. And the origin of agential capacity of identification is sought solely within relational time itself. In other words, relational time materializes only in the agential capacity of identification that is strictly local.
Once one admits that time is about empirical events more than anything else, it would first be required to elucidate how such agential capacity latent in relational time could come up with a globally synchronous time in the record. Conversely, the globally synchronous time in the record is the necessary condition for that any empirically legitimate record may survive. Information in the frozen record to be read out presumes a globally synchronous time, otherwise distinction between simultaneous and sequential events could not be made possible.
In particular, time conceived in the breakdown of the counterbalance between action and reaction cannot be globally synchronous. Time is at most locally asynchronous on the scene where action and reaction are communicating with each other, because the synchronization between the two is in process and not yet completed. On the other hand, if the record of finished events is available in which recorded simultaneous events synchronized among themselves have clearly been distinguished from sequential ones, the notion of globally synchronous time could survive there. The third law on the counterbalance between action and reaction synchronized in the record would certainly be fulfilled as Newton originally perceived, because of the presence of globally synchronous time.
Note, however, that the globally synchronous time pertaining to the finished record is relative exclusively to the existence of the record and is by no means absolute. So long as a globally synchronous time of whatever character is available, whether absolute or relative, the third law does hold. This comes to imply that the communication between action and reaction proceeds in a locally asynchronous time, whereas the consequence of the communication is frozen in the record, in the latter of which the counterbalance between action and reaction is established in a synchronized manner. The third law now suggests that the communication between action and reaction has locally asynchronous times precipitate a globally synchronous time that can be identified in the record.
Action not yet synchronized with its reaction serves as a signal going to generate the reaction, and the generated reaction in turn serves as an action toward its outside and accordingly as a signal. This is because activity of a local character lacking its simultaneous coordination over a global scale functions as a signal toward its surroundings. Any reaction turns to be an action in a locally asynchronous time, and the absence of any material means for a global synchronism makes time necessarily locally asynchronous. As far as signals viewed from the local perspective is concerned, they never attain a complete self-consistency in the form of the global synchronization among themselves (Conrad, 1996). There always remains those signals that are going to generate the counteractions toward themselves again in the form of signals (Marijuan, 1996). Signals are always in disequilibrium when perceived from the local perspective (Matsuno, 1985, 1989), and in the process of perpetual disequilibration (Gunji, 1995).
Signal acting upon a signal that survives in a locally asynchronous time now allows in itself a certain extent of indefiniteness in the sense that how such causative signals could be generated is not pre-determined. There is lawful indeterminacy about signals to be generated. But, those signals transferred to the record assume their lawful determinacy because those once recorded in a globally synchronous manner remain there persistently as they are. There arises an agency connecting lawful indeterminacy to lawful determinacy. That is information (Matsuno, 1984). Information in the making is generatively active in keeping the capacity of lawful indeterminacy intact, while prescriptively specific at the same time in precipitating lawful determinacy in the form of information in the frozen record.
Appraisal of signaling and communication survives in a locally asynchronous time. The Cartesian physics appreciating the role of signals remains legitimate in a locally asynchronous time. Unless it is muddled with dynamics pertaining only to the finished frozen record in which simultaneous events are set synchronized globally, the Cartesian physics maintains its intrinsic capacity for coping with information in the making, since it chooses signaling and communication as most basic predicates for describing dynamics.
Newtonian physics, on the other hand, functions strictly in a globally synchronous time lacking the informational capacity of connecting lawful indeterminacy to lawful determinacy. Although Newtonian laws of motion, including even those of general relativity, are expressed locally both in space and in time, the presence of the scheme for global synchronization of time would make the global representation of the dynamics merely a matter of integration. Integration, however, has its own problem and difficulty. At issue is whether temporal integration of the local laws of motion on simultaneous events in a globally synchronous time could actually yield a consistent outcome over an indefinitely long period of globally synchronous time.
For instance, Gödelian closed time-like curves as a solution of Einstein's equations of general relativity raise a serious problem of internal consistency with the integrated solution (Gödel, 1949). This recognition of the likelihood of global consistency in the integration invites the observation that the only solution to the laws of physics acting locally in the real universe are those which can be globally self-consistent (Friedman et al, 1990).
Another difficulty with integrating the motion obeying the local laws in a globally synchronous time is its sensitivity to initial conditions. Since identification of initial conditions is independent of the operation of the local laws of motion, any pathological sensitivity to initial conditions would fail in appreciating the local laws themselves through their temporal integration even if they are legitimate in their own light (Matsuno, 1989).
In contrast, the Cartesian physics
gains its consistency solely in the frozen record that have already
been integrated through realization of the actual experience,
while constantly passing its internal inconsistency forward onto
the subsequent stage in the form of signals anticipating further
signals to follow. That is intrinsically informational.
5 Concluding Remarks
Newtonian physics is non-informational internally by limiting its task only to integrating the motion obeying the deterministic laws of motion in a globally synchronous time. Even quantum mechanics is no exception in accepting the deterministic local laws of motion. What is unique to Newtonian physics is a theoretical conviction that one can reach a global consistency as starting from local consistencies alone through integration of the latter expressed in terms of globally synchronous time. However, the integration to be practiced within the framework of Newtonian physics is not quite an integration from truly local configurations. The globally synchronous time that is theoretically imposed is already a form of integration letting all the local configurations share a synchronized time without explicating how they could share it. If one takes dynamics to be a form of constructing the global notion of time from material configurations being local both in space and in time, Newtonian physics would be methodologically incompetent in facing the task. Instead, the issue of constructing a globally synchronous time from local material configurations urges us to look for the material carrier of such local configurations. That is a signal of material origin.
The Cartesian physics, on the other hand, is explicit in directly facing the issue of those material configurations being local both in space and in time by way of appreciating the role of signaling and communication. Compared to Newtonian scheme of assigning a synchronous time to the global material configuration simply by declaration, the Cartesian physics takes pains in approaching the globally synchronous time while starting from assigning an asynchronous time to each local material configuration.
Unless one dismisses the persistent problem of how to approach the globally synchronous time from the locally asynchronous one as following the Newtonian metaphysical recipe, the Cartesian physics can be found to address itself toward the issue of information. Information is not something to be put on the time-honored Newtonian physics. Rather, information is intrinsically physical in addressing dynamic time from the local perspective. Appraisal of the issue of information requires a proper resurrection of the Cartesian physics.
References