Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information

This book has emerged from a meeting held during the week of May 29 to June 2, 1989, at St. John’s College in Santa Fe under the auspices of the Santa Fe Institute. The (approximately 40) official participants as well as equally numerous “groupies” were enticed to Santa Fe by the above “manifesto.” The book—like the “Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information” meeting explores not only the connections between quantum and classical physics, information and its transfer, computation, and their significance for the formulation of physical theories, but it also considers the origins and evolution of the information-processing entities, their complexity, and the manner in which they analyze their perceptions to form models of the Universe. As a result, the contributions can be divided into distinct sections only with some difficulty. Indeed, I regard this degree of overlapping as a measure of the success of the meeting. It signifies consensus about the important questions and on the anticipated answers: they presumably lie somewhere in the “border territory,” where information, physics, complexity, quantum, and computation all meet.

This book is an outcome of the workshop on complexity, entropy, and the physics of information held in santa Fe, New Mexico in 1989. It considers the origins and evolution of the information-processing entities and the manner in which they analyze their perceptions to form models of the Universe.