2019
Volume 19, Number 1/2, pp. 22-40
A review of the physical roles of information in nature
Stephen J. Palmer
Stantec, Dominion House, Warrington, UK
This study provides a review of the state of the art with regard to the fundamental roles that physical information plays in nature, from a quantum microstate level to classical macrostates, and thence reviews the role environmentally functional information plays in biological Darwinian evolution. This paper demonstrates how physical systems analysis based on thermodynamics is able to address fundamental questions in physics, chemistry and biology, because it has a universal applicability in terms of how work, energy and information interact in physical systems and how feedback from these elements leads to mathematically complex systems and emergence, from systems that fundamentally behave probabilistically. This approach provides some new answers to some deep questions in physics, chemistry and biology, which are discussed.
Keywords: Darwinism, energy and material dispersion, entropy, information, thermodynamics