Read In the Beginning Was Information for Free Online Page A

A1).
    The true nature of information will be discussed in detail in the following chapters, and statements will be made about information and the laws of nature. After a thorough analysis of the information concept, it will be shown that the fundamental theorems can be applied to all technological and biological systems and also to all communication systems, including such diverse forms as the gyrations of bees and the message of the Bible. There is only one prerequisite — namely, that the information must be in coded form.
    Since the concept of information is so complex that it cannot be defined in one statement (see Figure 12), we will proceed as follows: We will formulate various special theorems which will gradually reveal more information about the "nature" of information, until we eventually arrive at a precise definition (compare chapter 5). Any repetitions found in the contents of some theorems (redundance) is intentional, and the possibility of having various different formulations according to theorem N8 (paragraph 2.3), is also employed.
    3.2 Information: A Material or a Mental Quantity?
     
    We have indicated that Shannon’s definition of information encompasses only a very minor aspect of information. Several authors have repeatedly pointed out this defect, as the following quotations show:
Karl Steinbuch, a German information scientist [S11]: "The classical theory of information can be compared to the statement that one kilogram of gold has the same value as one kilogram of sand."
Warren Weaver, an American information scientist [S7]: "Two messages, one of which is heavily loaded with meaning and the other which is pure nonsense, can be exactly equivalent …as regards information."
Ernst von Weizsäcker [W3]: "The reason for the 'uselessness’ of Shannon’s theory in the different sciences is frankly that no science can limit itself to its syntactic level." [6]
The essential aspect of each and every piece of information is its mental content, and not the number of letters used. If one disregards the contents, then Jean Cocteau’s facetious remark is relevant: "The greatest literary work of art is basically nothing but a scrambled alphabet."
    At this stage we want to point out a fundamental fallacy that has already caused many misunderstandings and has led to seriously erroneous conclusions, namely the assumption that information is a material phenomenon. The philosophy of materialism is fundamentally predisposed to relegate information to the material domain, as is apparent from philosophical articles emanating from the former DDR (East Germany) [S8 for example]. Even so, the former East German scientist J. Peil [P2] writes: "Even the biology based on a materialistic philosophy, which discarded all vitalistic and metaphysical components, did not readily accept the reduction of biology to physics…. Information is neither a physical nor a chemical principle like energy and matter, even though the latter are required as carriers."
    Also, according to a frequently quoted statement by the American mathematician Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) information cannot be a physical entity [W5]: "Information is information, neither matter nor energy. Any materialism which disregards this, will not survive one day."
    Werner Strombach, a German information scientist of Dortmund [S12], emphasizes the nonmaterial nature of information by defining it as an "enfolding of order at the level of contemplative cognition."
    The German biologist G. Osche [O3] sketches the unsuitability of Shannon’s theory from a biological viewpoint, and also emphasizes the nonmaterial nature of information: "While matter and energy are the concerns of physics, the description of biological phenomena typically involves information in a functional capacity. In cybernetics, the general information concept quantitatively expresses the information content of a given set of symbols by employing the probability distribution of all possible permutations