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Information: Its Interpretation, Its Inheritance, and Its Sharing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Eva Jablonka
Eva Jablonka*
Affiliation:
The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel; jablonka@post.tau.ac.il.
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Abstract

The semantic concept of information is one of the most important, and one of the most problematical concepts in biology. I suggest a broad definition of biological information: a source becomes an informational input when an interpreting receiver can react to the form of the source (and variations in this form) in a functional manner. The definition accommodates information stemming from environmental cues as well as from evolved signals, and calls for a comparison between information-transmission in different types of inheritance systems—the genetic, the epigenetic, the behavioral, and the cultural-symbolic. This comparative perspective highlights the different ways in which information is acquired and transmitted, and the role that such information plays in heredity and evolution. Focusing on the special properties of the transfer of information, which are very different from those associated with the transfer of materials or energy, also helps to uncover interesting evolutionary effects and suggests better explanations for some aspects of the evolution of communication.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 69 , Issue 4 , December 2002 , pp. 578 - 605
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Acknowledgment: Many many thanks to Marion Lamb, Michael Lachmann, James Griesemer, Susan Oyama, Ayelet Shavit, and Eytan Avital for their constructive and critical comments. I am also grateful to Peter Godfrey-Smith and an anonymous referee for their thoughtful reviews of the previous version of this paper.

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