Related papers: Living is information processing: from molecules t…
All natural things process and transform information. They receive environmental information as input, and transform it into appropriate output responses. Much of science is dedicated to building models of such systems -- algorithmic…
Computation, if treated as a set of physical processes that act on information represented by states of matter, encompasses biological systems, digital systems, and other constructs, and may be a fundamental measure of living systems. The…
Metabolism displays striking and robust regularities in the forms of modularity and hierarchy, whose composition may be compactly described. This renders metabolic architecture comprehensible as a system, and suggests the order in which…
Despite the wide usage of information as a concept in science, we have yet to develop a clear & concise scientific definition. This paper is aimed at laying the foundations for a new theory concerning the mechanics of information alongside…
Advances in science are being sought in newly available opportunities to collect massive quantities of data about complex systems. While key advances are being made in detailed mapping of systems, how to relate this data to solving many of…
Aging is a fundamental aspect of living systems that undergo a progressive deterioration of physiological function with age and an increase of vulnerability to disease and death. Living systems, known as complex systems, require complexity…
The applicability of computational models to the biological world is an active topic of debate. We argue that a useful path forward results from abandoning hard boundaries between categories and adopting an observer-dependent, pragmatic…
Integrated information theory (IIT) starts from consciousness itself and identifies a set of properties (axioms) that are true of every conceivable experience. The axioms are translated into a set of postulates about the substrate of…
In our previous arXiv papers (more systematically the informational conception is presented in the paper "The Information as Absolute", 2010) it was rigorously shown that Matter in our Universe - and Universe as a whole - are some…
The sequence of nucleotide bases occurring in an organism's DNA is often regarded as a codescript for its construction. However, information in a DNA sequence can only be regarded as a codescript relative to an operational biochemical…
With the completion of human genome mapping, the focus of scientists seeking to explain the biological complexity of living systems is shifting from analyzing the individual components (such as a particular gene or biochemical reaction) to…
This article introduces the physics of information in the context of molecular biology and genomics. Entropy and information, the two central concepts of Shannon's theory of information and communication, are often confused with each other…
This work examines the interconnections between logic, epistemology, and sciences within the Naturalist tradition. It presents a scheme that connects logic, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and cognition, emphasizing…
Composition is a powerful principle for systems biology, focused on the interfaces, interconnections, and orchestration of distributed processes to enable integrative multiscale simulations. Whereas traditional models focus on the structure…
It is generally accepted that human vision is an extremely powerful information processing system that facilitates our interaction with the surrounding world. However, despite extended and extensive research efforts, which encompass many…
This series presents an approach to mathematical biology which makes precise the function of biological molecules. Because biological systems compute, the theory is a general purpose computer language. I build a language for efficiently…
This overview of integrated information theory (IIT) emphasizes IIT's "consciousness-first" approach to what exists. Consciousness demonstrates to each of us that something exists--experience--and reveals its essential properties--the…
Life on earth is distinguished by long-lived correlations in time. The patterns of material organization that characterize living organisms today are contingent on events that occurred billions of years ago. This contingency is a necessary…
This white paper lays out a vision of research and development in the field of artificial intelligence for the next decade (and beyond). Its denouement is a cyber-physical ecosystem of natural and synthetic sense-making, in which humans are…
In this Chapter, we ask questions (1) What is the right way to measure the quality of information processing in a biological system? and (2) What can real-life organisms do in order to improve their performance in information-processing…