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… Continue reading Why everything is complex
Tag: complexity
Julian Barbour: timeless complexity and the records of the universe
The British physicist Julian Barbour is one of those admirable people who, having gained his PhD, realised that concentration on research and scholarship is incompatible with working in the modern university, and has had a very successful career as an independent researcher in the foundations of physics. Most notably, starting from the observation that we… Continue reading Julian Barbour: timeless complexity and the records of the universe
Still waiting for Carnot: information and complexity
Back in 2015, Lyn Robinson and I published an article in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology [1], which gave an analysis of the relation between information and complexity, showing that ideas of complexity, organization, and 'interesting order', were intertwined with concepts of information, and of entropy. In particular, we noted… Continue reading Still waiting for Carnot: information and complexity
The Occasional Informationist 