Renati Paolo, Madl Pierre
World Water Community, NL-3029 Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Prototyping Unit, Edge-Institute, ER-System Mechatronics, A-5440 Golling, Austria.
Int J Mol Sci. 2025 Jul 29;26(15):7319. doi: 10.3390/ijms26157319.
In this position paper, we argue that the conventional understanding of 'information' (as generally conceived in science, in a digital fashion) is overly simplistic and not consistently applicable to living systems, which are open systems that cannot be reduced to any kind of 'portion' (building block) ascribed to the category of quantity. Instead, it is a matter of relationships and qualities in an indivisible analogical (and ontological) relationship between any presumed 'software' and 'hardware' (information/matter, psyche/soma). Furthermore, in biological systems, contrary to Shannon's definition, which is well-suited to telecommunications and informatics, any kind of 'information' is the opposite of internal entropy, as it depends directly on order: it is associated with distinction and differentiation, rather than flattening and homogenisation. Moreover, the high degree of structural compartmentalisation of living matter prevents its energetics from being thermodynamically described by using a macroscopic, bulk state function. This requires the Second Principle of Thermodynamics to be redefined in order to make it applicable to living systems. For these reasons, any static, bit-related concept of 'information' is inadequate, as it fails to consider the system's evolution, it being, in essence, the organized coupling to its own environment. From the perspective of quantum field theory (QFT), where many vacuum levels, symmetry breaking, dissipation, coherence and phase transitions can be described, a consistent picture emerges that portrays any living system as a relational process that exists as a flux of context-dependent meanings. This epistemological shift is also associated with a transition away from the 'particle view' (first quantisation) characteristic of quantum mechanics (QM) towards the 'field view' possible only in QFT (second quantisation). This crucial transition must take place in life sciences, particularly regarding the methodological approaches. Foremost because biological systems cannot be conceived as 'objects', but rather as non-confinable processes and relationships.
在本立场文件中，我们认为，对“信息”的传统理解（如科学中通常以数字方式所设想的那样）过于简单化，并不适用于生命系统，生命系统是开放系统，不能简化为任何属于数量范畴的“部分”（构建块）。相反，这是任何假定的“软件”与“硬件”（信息/物质、心理/躯体）之间不可分割的类比（和本体论）关系中的关系和性质问题。此外，在生物系统中，与适用于电信和信息学的香农定义相反，任何形式的“信息”都是内部熵的反面，因为它直接依赖于秩序：它与区分和分化相关联，而不是与扁平化和同质化相关联。此外，生物物质的高度结构分隔性使得无法用宏观的、整体状态函数来热力学描述其能量学。这就需要重新定义热力学第二定律，使其适用于生命系统。出于这些原因，任何与比特相关的静态“信息”概念都是不充分的，因为它没有考虑系统的进化，而系统本质上是与其自身环境的有组织耦合。从量子场论（QFT）的角度来看，其中可以描述许多真空能级、对称性破缺、耗散、相干性和相变，出现了一幅连贯的图景，将任何生命系统描绘为一个关系过程，它作为依赖于上下文的意义流而存在。这种认识论的转变也与从量子力学（QM）特有的“粒子观点”（一次量子化）向仅在QFT中才可能的“场观点”（二次量子化）的转变相关联。这一关键转变必须在生命科学中发生，特别是在方法论方面。最重要的是因为生物系统不能被视为“对象”，而应被视为不可限制进行的过程和关系。
