2.1. The Author’s Personal Insights
The author has long been paying attention to the relationship and differences be-tween the objective and subjective worlds: on the one hand, the human brain is composed of matter, and the thinking process of the human brain is a process of energy transmission and transformation. On the other hand, the thinking process of the human brain is also a process of information transformation and intelligent activity. Matter and energy are real, visible, and tangible. Information and intelligence are virtual, invisible, and intangible. The coexistence of reality and emptiness, like a shadow, evolves together.
Later on, I engages in research on computer science and artificial intelligence, expanding my perspective from the human brain to the entire universe, from the relationship between the objective world and the subjective world to the relationship between the material world and the information world. The integration between large and small perspectives deeply reveals the true essence of some objective laws. At the 4th International Information science Basic Seminar (FIS 2010, Beijing), the new concept of “the universe is composed of two worlds and four elements” was formally put forward in the paper “Thoughts on the construction of the theoretical system of Information science” [
1].
Among them, some of the author’s thoughts on intelligence science first appeared in “Intelligence Theory—Science on Information Processing Laws in the Human Brain and Other Systems”, published in the third issue of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence in 1982. The main content of this article was presented at the First Academic Symposium on Artificial Intelligence in China (Beijing, 1980). The second symposium (Hefei, 1981) and the second national symposium on science (Hefei, 1980) presented oral reports on the relationship between instrumental change and the Scientific Revolution. Intelligence arises in the process of repeated communication and interaction between the cognitive subject and the object being concerned. Intelligence (including machine learning) can only be realized by high-order Turing machines. Various relationships between humans and machines must be positioned based on their respective strengths and weaknesses. It is necessary to accurately understand the measurement and amplification problems of generalized intelligence in three different meanings (intellectual ability, intelligent energy, intelligent power–intelligent energy per unit time). These most basic directional thoughts were later incorporated into the author’s editor in chief’s “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” [
2]. The new concept of information science proposed now is the sum of the author’s lifelong insights, especially the crystallization of the “idle clouds, wild cranes” style of thinking after retirement.
2.2. The Historical Sediment of Humanity [1,2,3,4,5]
Therefore, all the logical properties of universal IMP operations can be used to describe the complete cluster of conditional probability universal logic operations.
In the modern history of science, human understanding of the objective world has roughly gone through the following processes:
(1) Modern science has developed on the basis of studying material science. Its basic idea is to believe that the objective world is material, and material is an objective reality that does not rely on consciousness but can be reflected by human consciousness.
(2) Dialectical materialism believes that matter is primary, consciousness is secondary, existence determines consciousness, and consciousness can react on matter.
(3) Material science believes that matter has two fundamental attributes: existence and agency. The earliest discovered and utilized by humans was the existence of matter (material properties), on which mechanical tools and material science emerged. It was not until modern times that the agency of matter (energy properties) was discovered and utilized, and on this basis, energy tools and energy science emerged. Although information attributes have long been discovered and utilized by humans, they have always been confined to the subjective spiritual and conscious world and do not belong to the objective world. The objectively existing information and information processes in nature have been neglected for a long time, while intelligence is considered a privilege that only humans can possess.
(4) Through the practice of developing information and intelligent tools such as computers in the past century, it has been discovered that the thinking process and intelligent activities of the human brain can be realized using information processors and artificial intelligence machines. Information and its material carriers, information processing processes, and intelligent activity processes coexist and are independent of each other, representing two different aspects of the same thing. By utilizing these laws obtained from artificial systems to re-observe the network activities of animal spirits, life activities, and even various developmental and evolutionary processes in nature, it is found that they all meet this law. Any substance contains information, and the movement of any substance is accompanied by an information processing process. These discoveries have led humans to re-recognize and reposition information, information processing, and intelligence, liberating them from the subjective spiritual and conscious levels and becoming an information world independent of the material world in the objective world.
(5) The information world also has existence (information attributes) and agency (intelligent attributes), and humans have used these attributes to create many information and intelligent tools, resulting in the emergence of various disciplines studying information and intelligence.
(6) The premise of our parallel discussion of material science and information science is that the universe should be divided into two, the material world and the information world, which are interdependent and inseparable. In every world, there are two different fundamental attributes: existence and agency. Thus, the four fundamental elements of the objective world were formed: matter, energy, information, and intelligence, which are equally interdependent and inseparable.