A recent article in Quanta magazine reminds us of the on-going interest in a rather startling proposal regarding the status of information, its relation to complexity, in the physical and biological realms. This proposes that complexity increases over time, inexorably and inevitably, in the physical universe as well as in living systems. It was, and remains, highly controversial, since it seems to flout the well-established second law of thermodynamics, according to which any system, including the universe, tends over time to disorder. It is also controversial because of its introduction of concepts of evolution and selection into the development of physical, non-living, entities.
This “law of increasing functional information” was originally set out in a 2023 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by an interdisciplinary team of scientists, from disciplines including astrobiology, mineralogy, space science, and philosophy, the proposal is based on the use of the concept of functional information, associated with the complexity of a system, applied to any and all entities in the universe. This measure can be shown to have increased in minerals, which have ‘evolved’ towards greater complexity over the earth’s history, as well as in living things through biological evolution. The “law” states that there is a drive towards increased functional information in the universe, through a process of evolution of complex systems in general, not just living systems.
The Quanta article quotes astrobiologist Michael Wong as saying that “information itself might be a vital parameter of the cosmos, similar to mass, charge and energy”; the latest formulation of the idea that information is a fundamental physical entity.
There is some similarity with assembly theory, which also proposes a law of increasing complexity associated with information content; in that theory, the equivalent of functional information for any object is an ‘assembly index’, measuring the minimum number of steps required to make the object from its constituent parts.
As well as concerns about the validity of applying ideas of evolution, selection, and function on such an all-encompassing scale, there is a practical issue in applying the functional information concept in this way. Functional information for any entity is contextual, depending on its environment, and what it is perceived to be “trying to do”; for example, the functional information for a molecule in a particular biochemical transformation will be entirely different from that for the same molecule in another transformation. There is therefore no possibility for this “law” being quantitative in any general sense; it a conceptual and semi-quantitative tool for understanding increasing complexity.
Nonetheless, as the Quanta article points out, this new “law” is one of a number of current theoretical and conceptual approaches to relating information with complexity, evolution (both biological and cosmic), function and purpose, and the direction of time, showing an increasing interest in these ideas. More grist for the gap-bridging mill.
The Occasional Informationist 