==So truly, I appreciate your frustration that science cannot, in principle, deliver all the answers of most vital concern to human beings.
I think Alex Williams gets right to the heart of the matter when he points out where materialist, reductionist science misses the boat:
“Shannon information theory deliberately ignores the meaning of the information and only deals with the statistics of the code. It is thus more than useless in biology (where meaning is central) because it diverts attention away from meaning.”
To my mind, trying to pretend science is not fundamentally about meaning is what gets the Evos in so much trouble when they try to explain what they call “natural” phenomena. God has created a Universe that communicates to us. It doesn’t matter whether you are a plumber or a cosmologist—all our interactions with the Universe depend on meaning (albeit different levels of meaning). For instance, if the light photons being sent from the sun have no meaning, then how is it that we can interpret the same? How is it that we can tell the difference between the light being sent to us by the sun and the light being sent by a planet or a light-bulb? In each case, the light source is sending us a message that must be interpreted. If the message being sent is meaningless, then calling one a planet and the other the sun is nothing more than an illusion created by the biochemistry of our own brains. Thus, science is all about detecting and interpreting meaningful messages that are the product of intelligent design.
It is true that the meaning of the message is completely irrelevant to Shannon's theory. The theory is applicable whether the message is DNA, Hamlet, video, a key depressed on your keyboard, a mouse click, data in your data base, an image to print - or whatever.
Universality is the elegance of mathematics. The presence of a variable in a formula (e.g. circumference to pi) testifies to its universality. Indeed, to me the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is like God's copyright notice on the cosmos.
The 'statistics' of the code - or the measure of a received message is a bit (which has evolved to mean binary, but it can also be a real number btw.) And it certainly is not the only thing Shannon's theory deals with.
The message itself, the encoding and decoding, the channel, the noise, the sender and receiver are elements of the model.
The model is about communications!
And it is hardly useless in biology. It has been effectively used in cancer and pharmaceutical research. And we can see the relevance to researchers in Wimmer's experiment - the successful communication of the message (polio RNA.) And we see it center stage in Szostak's abiogenesis experiments as well as he tries to prod communications in non-life.
Of course Alex William's interest - and ours on this thread - is in the meaning of the message! But we should not consider Shannon to be a diversion but rather the mathematical model for communicating the message which has meaning in the AP model.
In any dimensionality of space/time which contains only one dimension of time - there is no conceivable local unaware and non-intelligent origin for a message which anticipates that which has not yet occurred, e.g. the need for maintenance or repair.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize this "inversely causal" - or "temporally non-local" - information content suggests an intelligent cause. The lower level in the AP Model hierarchy has no awareness at all to anticipate anything - no intelligence as sender or receiver.
Let's not throw this baby out with the bathwater. After all, it’s the Shannon model of communications that underscores the receiver must be prepared to receive the message and that there must be a sender for every message. And in this case, the model itself suggests the send must either not be bound to an arrow of time (God) or else the sender must be intelligent enough to create a receiver, anticipate and inform (panspermia.)
Either way, it is not an undirected process.
To Christians, Alex Williams' model can be exhilarating. We know – Spiritually – that God spoke everything into being:
Oh, I so agree — "God has created a Universe that communicates to us." This is so because God created an intelligible universe, and us as intelligent beings capable of receiving the "communication."
Where you and I disagree is concerning the question of where "meaning" ultimately resides. Evidently, you want the world itself to be "meaningful."
And it is — to the rational mind. That is to say, "meaning" resides, not in the world directly, but in the human mind only.
To me, to say that meaning is "in" the world is tantamount to saying that God is "in" the world. The latter gets you some species of pantheism every time.
To my way of thinking, meaning always involves acts of judgment. The primary data of nature are not "judgments"; they are simply data. In this sense, we cannot say that the world is "meaningful." It takes a human observer to make statements about meaning.
Meanwhile, biological entities, which except for man are incapable (presumably) of the self-reflection necessary to the making of rational judgments, still have to go along and "process information" relevant to their own survival, thriving, and reproduction. They don't need "meaning"; they just need good, clear instructions.
And the Shannon model provides an excellent way of understanding successful communications at this level of biological necessity. And so I was very disappointed to see Alex Williams dismiss Shannon with a hand-wave....
Thank you so very much for writing, GGG!
For once, this scientist who is also a creationist agrees with you...