[Alamo-Girl]

Irrelevant.

People dealt with gravity and motion long before Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica and Einstein's Relativity - and people were communicating long before Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communications.

When we use terms such as gravity and motion the terms retain the meanings assigned by Newton and Einstein's seminal theories. Likewise, I assert that the term information should retain the meaning from Shannon's seminal theory which gave rise to "Information Theory" as a branch of Mathematics.

By the way, Shannon's definition much more closely aligns to the original late 14th century meaning of the word which was the "act of informing." Modern common usage reduces it to the message itself rather than the successful communication of the message.

[Kevmo]

Irrelevant.
***Relevant. dearest sister in Christ!

People dealt with gravity and motion and information long before those theorists came along, just as you acknowledge.

Maybe the terms “retain the meanings assigned” by those AFTERWARDS and maybe they don’t. To IMPOSE such definitions afterwards upon colloquial expressionism is a battle more for the grammarian rather than the classic linguist. I take a linguistic approach rather than a a grammarian approach.

There is no doubt that Newton’s observations generated such a fantastic reconsideration of terms such as gravity and acceleration that history was changed. But Shannon did not change the history associated with sending “information” over a point-to-point communication network, such as ethernet or the telegraph.

[betty boop]

...Shannon's definition much more closely aligns to the original late 14th century meaning of the word which was the "act of informing." Modern common usage reduces it to the message itself rather than the successful communication of the message.

Outstanding observation, dearest sister in Christ!

Thank you so much for this excellent essay/post!