*5.1. Communication Theory—Information Science—Meaningful Information*

The concept of information as an 'immaterial' substance, involving meaning in some way, has been available since antiquity (cf. Capurro [77]). It is fascinating to note that the nature of information, often viewed today as 'just' a philosophical question, in fact requires the best available concepts of physical science of the origin and fundamental structure of the universe to be correctly addressed. The modern origin of a theory of information is often ascribed to the work of Shannon on theories of communication, in which information is related to the removal of redundancy in a formal manner. This approach was specifically intended *not* to address or define meaning, but it nevertheless gave rise to many other formal theories of which the most modern and comprehensive is that of the mathematician Mark Burgin [78].

In the 1950's however, the discussion of information was almost fatally polarized by the statement of other mathematicians, Norbert Wiener and his follower John Wheeler, to the e ffect that information was not matter or energy. This statement gives the sense that there is something truly 'di fferent' about information, but scarcely gives an indication of what it might be. Such theories are not wrong but they are incomplete in that the scientific and logical origin of the dialectical, that is, in our terms real physical interactions described is not specified. Faced with the multitude of theories of information of all kinds, Brenner gave his 'personal synthesis' [79] of a several competing theories, from which a few key benchmarks for philosophy can nonetheless be taken as discussed further in this Section.

Given their origin in communication science and its significant dependence on technology, it is not surprising that theories of information emphasize formal concepts and standard logics. From the human, *natural* philosophical standpoint—we do not separate these—communication as the transfer of information is a human activity, and its nature and changes must follow the rules and logic of the latter.
