Ecology: Biology of Interaction. 5.25. (supplement) Exchange of Matter, Energy, and Information
For matter and energy, conservation laws apply: neither appears from nothing nor disappears, but both only transform from one form to another. Information behaves differently and can appear, disappear, and be transmitted without being lost by the sender.
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5.24. Life forms of organisms
D. Shabanov, M. Kravchenko. Ecology: The Biology of Interaction Section 5. Autecology and Fundamentals of Environmental Science
5.26. (addendum) Factors Affecting Organism Development
5.25. (supplement) Exchange of matter, energy, and information I call meanings the answers to questions. That which does not answer any question is devoid of any meaning. Mikhail Bakhtin Information is information, not matter and not energy. Norbert Wiener We said that every organism exchanges matter, energy, and information with the environment. How do the components of this triad differ? Matter is defined as matter that has rest mass. Energy (from the Greek energeia – action, activity) has no rest mass and is a general measure of the amount of motion, the cause of changes in matter. Matter and energy, as two fundamental forms of matter, are the basis of the world we observe. The concept of "information" (from Latin informatio – clarification, exposition) was initially used to denote knowledge transmitted from person to person. In the 20th century, this concept began to denote any knowledge and data transmitted through any material or energy carriers. For matter and energy, the laws of conservation apply. Due to these laws, matter and energy do not arise or disappear, but only transform from one form to another. Einstein's equation reflects the fundamental relationship between matter and energy. The laws of conservation do not apply to information. Information can arise and disappear. Strangely enough, information can be transmitted to another without losing it yourself (this is quite easy to do, for example, with a computer file, and completely impossible, say, with food or electricity...). However, the effect of the laws of conservation for matter and energy is different. Matter can infinitely transform from one form to another. You exhaled. The air you exhale contains water molecules in the form of vapor. Some of these molecules were formed during metabolism from atoms of hydrogen and oxygen that were part of the organic substances your body broke down. These molecules can fall with the vapor onto plants. Some of the water molecules absorbed by plants will be broken down by them and become part of new organic substances. Hydrogen and oxygen atoms, like other elements important for organisms, can travel along these or similar routes for thousands (or hundreds of millions...) of years. Thus, the circulation of matter is entirely possible, unlike the circulation of energy. And energy flows through each organism and through the biosphere as a whole, and its unlimited circulation is impossible. To understand this, one must recall the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics is the law of conservation of energy. For the discussion of this issue, it is most convenient to express it in the following form: the efficiency (coefficient of useful action) of any energy transformation cannot exceed 100%. Therefore, in energy transformations, one cannot obtain more energy than was spent. In this regard, energy behaves the same way as matter. The second law of thermodynamics is more paradoxical. According to it, the efficiency of energy transformation cannot even be 100%: part of the energy will be converted into a form in which it cannot be used for useful work. As a result, with each energy transformation in living systems, part of it is converted into heat, spent on increasing the disorder of the environment. In other words, you can't win by "playing" with nature. Moreover, you can't even tie with it! Another significant difference between matter, energy, and information is related to the possibility of measuring their quantity. The amount of matter can be measured absolutely, regardless of the method of measurement. Its quantity, estimated, for example, by its mass and by the energy required to set it in motion, will be the same. The amount of energy can only be measured in comparison to some other level of energy. Only Einstein's equation mentioned provides a complete assessment of the energy contained in a certain amount of matter. And for information, it is generally impossible to assess its quantity independently of its receiver, the addressee of this information. How much information is on a CD? The user of a CD drive can download from the disk the amount of information that is recorded on it according to a specific standard (e.g., 700 MB). For a person who can read, the amount of information read is determined by the drawings and inscriptions on the non-working side. For a disk seller, the main information is on the price tag. A technologist will first pay attention to the manufacturing features of this item, reconstructing the details of the technological process from the external signs important to him. But the most important thing is not even these differences. We do not know what this information is for different recipients, how significant it is for them. For someone for whom the information on the CD is not needed or boring, recorded in an unfamiliar language or in an unknown format, there is seemingly no information there (or it consists in the fact that space on the disk is occupied). For someone else, it is vitally important and will help draw significant conclusions. And without a connection with the recipient, information "in itself" cannot exist! You looked out the window and saw a person there. How much information did you receive? You can count the number of photons that entered your eyes. You can measure the number of nerve impulses produced by the cells of your retina. You can estimate the probability that at this moment, in this place, this person will be in your field of vision, and consider the quantity of information to be the value inversely proportional to the probability of this event (the more unexpected the event, the more information you received by learning about it). But to assess the information you actually received, you need to know who this person is to you (mother; a stranger; a friend you thought was missing; a postman who might bring a telegram...) and what follows from seeing her.
5.24. Life forms of organisms
D. Shabanov, M. Kravchenko. Ecology: The Biology of Interaction Section 5. Autecology and Fundamentals of Environmental Science
5.26. (addendum) Factors Affecting Organism Development