" You keep saying that, but it is not the determination of the entire body of knowledge – only your corner of it."
A phase transformation is a general simplified way of encompasing any theory of the beginning. They're all included regardless of their particular details. In a nutshell, it means that at the first instant of conceptual time, space expanded, a symmetry was broken and the energy of the event could be described as dE = -dW. E is the energy that would later condense into particles(entropy enters the equation), and W(work) is an equal and opposite E of the gravitational field(space). The event can be visualized as a gas bubble forming in a boiling liquid.
"regressing all the way back to the beginning of space/time – the void."
I'm confused by your use of the term void. There is only a vacuum. What do you mean by void?
"There can be no vacuum in the absence of space and time."
The vacuum is everywhere, regardless of energy content or state. It was arranged to 4 space during and after inflation. During inflation the wavefront v was higher than c, so it was essentially a shock wave through a vacuum. Expansion at c occurred some ~100 time constants after that exponential inflation. Expansion would not occur at some fixed speed c, if the expanison was into nothing. Also, where would the energy to create new vacuum come from during expansion? Even though I'm a bit hazy on constructing vacuums out of branes, it still applies. The vacuum is a brane(s) with no strings on it. In general, the number of branes one contemplates is arbitrary.
" The elements include message, sender, encoding, channel, decoding, receiver and noise. There is no semiosis in the examples you give."
Semiosis refers to organisms, information theory does not. Information theory applies to any process. Take the case of the neutron and proton in nuclear stabilization.
message: meson/change identity
sender: the neutron
receiver: the proton
encoding/decoding: meson release/absorption
Hbefore = log2(2) (proton can either be itself, or neutron.)
Hafter = log2(1)
R = log2(2) - log2(1) = 1
The neutron transmits a meson and becomes a proton. The proton recieves the meson and becomes a neutron. The process repeats itself indefinitely. Noise enters the picture in large nuclei, where the comms approach the channel capacity. The channel capacity primarily depends on the neutron/proton ratio. Noise could also enter the pic in high energy environments.
I know what you mean by phase transformation but it does not encompass all theories of the beginning and cannot encompass any theory of the cause of physical causation itself or of space/time.
In the void there is no space and no time and therefore no vacuum, no energy, no matter, no physical laws, no physical constants, no events, no thing, no physics, no autonomy, etc. – which means no physical causation. That precludes any possibility of a phase transformation as a beginning of all that there is.
Once there is space/time then all other laws of physics (whatever they might be in a particular universe) can enter the picture – including phase transformation.
Space/time doesn’t pre-exist in our universe – it is created as the universe expands.
Semiosis is not restricted to organisms – it is “any action or influence involving the establishment or perception of relationships between signs.” Transmitters and receivers – whether computers or communications systems or molecular machines - perform semiosis.
In the case of Shannon’s theory, it is the operation on the message which produces a signal suitable for transmission over a channel.
In biological systems, the message is the genetic message in DNA including tRNA. The encoder/transmitter is the transcription into mRNA. The channel code is mRNA. The decoder/receiver is the translation of the message into protein. And the noise is genetic noise — mutations and viruses, noise in genetic code (tRNA) and prions. The original message, the DNA, exists apart from the signal and thus, survives death.