Information Levels and Barriers

Abstract

Information is an abstract entity that we recognize in the form of a message conveyed in a medium. Messages are read (decoded) to extract meanings (information content) and are compared with copies of the same messages to detect and correct errors. These functions require that a message contain both its primary information and a barrier (secondary information) that preserves the context within which the primary information is read for meaning and for errors. There must be discontinuity between different messages. Just as the themes that can be developed within the context of a single play (e.g. Macbeth) are limited, so that new themes require new plays (e.g. The Tempest), evolutionary themes that can be developed within the context of a biological species are limited, so that further evolutionary progress requires a barrier-breaching change that establishes a new species. Just as error-correction of the text of Macbeth requires another text of Macbeth from an independent source, so error-correction of a genome text is best carried out with a genome text from an unrelated member of the same species. Sex is primarily a within-species error-correcting device requiring that species be discontinuous and reproductively isolated from each other. Members of allied species that fail to recognize their context and breach the reproductive barrier may produce offspring, but these are sterile (hybrid sterility). Similarly, humans who fail to recognize the context of cognitive discourse may be schizophenic.

All messages and parts of messages are like phrases or segments of equations which a mathematician puts in brackets. Outside the brackets there may always be a qualifier or multiplier which will alter the whole tenor of the phrase.

Gregory Bateson (1960) [1]