Tag: Information Theory

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43. Information and Agency: Reconnecting Systems with Physics Uncategorized

Information and Agency: Reconnecting Systems with Physics

This article is a summary of the full paper which can be downloaded in pdf format here: https://rational-understanding.com/sst/

We often speak of “information” as though it floats freely in cyberspace or the human mind, detached from anything physical. Yet every bit of information, from the letters on this page to the thoughts in your head, is carried by matter or energy. This simple observation lies at the heart of cognitive physicalism, the view that cognition, communication, and social coordination are all thermodynamic processes.

Information Is Order

In physical terms, information is negative entropy; order among components of a system. When the atoms of a crystal, the base pairs of DNA, or the neurons of a brain are arranged in regular patterns, they hold information by reducing randomness. This definition, first clarified by Léon Brillouin and Erwin Schrödinger, gives information the same physical dimensions as entropy:

Energy provides the capacity for work (); information provides the form that directs that work. Together they make organisation possible.

How Physics Becomes Mind

In purely physical systems, energy and entropy simply flow. With life, informational structures emerge that regulate those flows. A cell maintains order by channelling chemical energy through genetic and enzymatic constraints. With evolution, feedback control grows more elaborate: nervous systems model the world, predict outcomes, and choose among options. Agency, the ability to act purposefully, appears when informational form controls energetic process.

At higher levels, the same principle produces cognition, language, and society. Neural firing, conversation, and economic exchange are all manifestations of energy flows organised by information.

Why Equations Matter

When information theory borrowed from thermodynamics, it kept Boltzmann’s equation but quietly normalised away the constant Doing so made information appear dimensionless; handy for communication engineers, but misleading for science. As Rolf Landauer later reminded us, information is physical: erasing a single bit requires energy and generates heat. Ignoring this fact masks the cost of learning, computing, and communicating; costs that become crucial when we extend systems thinking to living and social domains.

The Structure of Agency

Agency can be described in three physical layers:

LevelDescriptionDimensions
Agentic information structurepattern that directs energy
Agentic potentialinformation-structured energy capacity
Actualised agencydirected energy flow through time

Energy provides the means, information the form, and their coupling the act. Whether in a cell, a mind, or a society, the same dimensional hierarchy holds.

The Sun and the Spectrum of Agency

All terrestrial agency begins with the Sun. Photons striking chlorophyll are converted into chemical potential, which sustains metabolism, cognition, and eventually culture. Every thought, conversation, or social reform is therefore a distant echo of solar radiation; a transformation of sunlight into structured work.

The Cost of Thought and Change

Learning, decision, and communication are thermodynamic operations. Brain imaging shows energy consumption rising during problem-solving; each new memory reduces neural entropy while producing waste heat. The same principle scales up: cultural and institutional change require energy to reorganise shared information. Schools, media, and political movements are energetic engines for lowering societal entropy. When their energy supply falters, coherence and collective agency decline.

Why This Matters for Systems Science

Re-embedding information and agency in physics brings fresh clarity to systems thinking. It explains why order must be sustained by flows, why “effort” feels costly, and why every form of coordination, from metabolism to governance, depends on continual energy input. It also offers a bridge between natural and social sciences: the same thermodynamic grammar governs both.

As Ilya Prigogine showed, local order can grow even while global entropy rises. Life, mind, and society are all such dissipative structures, islands of organisation maintained by throughputs of energy and information. Understanding this continuity reminds us that progress itself carries an energetic price.

From Theory to Application

Recognising the physical nature of information could reshape how we approach education, technology, and governance. Policies and systems that ignore their energetic base risk collapse; those that respect it can harness energy more efficiently to sustain informational order.

Energy is the means, information the form, and agency the dance between them. Seen thermodynamically, every act of understanding is a small victory over entropy; a local flowering of order in the great energetic flow from the Sun.

References:
Brillouin (1956); Landauer (1961); Schrödinger (1944); Prigogine (1977); Lloyd (2006); Morowitz (1970).

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05. A Summary of Social Systems Theory

A Summary of Social Systems Theory

In this short series of articles, I will summarise the basic principles of Social Systems Theory. Full details are given in previous or subsequent articles.

The fundamental component of society or holon

The term holon was coined by Arthur Koestler in his 1967 book, The Ghost in The Machine. It refers to any entity that can be recognised as a whole in itself and which constitutes part of a larger whole. In social systems theory the fundamental component or holon of society is the organisation, that is, any group of people who work together with a common purpose. Organisations can be of any type and can range in size and extent from an individual, through clubs, businesses, sectors, political parties, governments, nations, and groups of nations, to the global community.

Family relationships between organisations

All organisations form a nested hierarchy. The structural relationships between them are similar to those in a family and the same names can be used. Thus, for example, child organisations are components of a parent one, and parent organisations are components of a grandparent one. Two organisations that are components of the same parent are known as sibling organisations. This nested hierarchy continues upwards until an isolated organisation or the global community is reached.

Every organisation comprises a number of component or child organisations, and this nested hierarchy continues downwards until individual people are reached.

Recursion

Recursion means that similar rules and principles can explain the behaviour of organisations irrespective of their size. Thus, for example, a department in a government agency has a leader, and so too does the entire agency.

The control component

All organisations have a control component, e.g., leadership or management, to co-ordinate their activities. Due to recursion, control components have their own control components until we arrive at the individual person. This creates a leadership or management hierarchy comprising individuals. It is natural to select leaders using a bottom-up process, i.e., followers choose a leader thought to be best qualified to co-ordinate their activities. However, managers are also frequently chosen by a top-down process whereby senior managers select junior ones thought to be best suited to the role.

Needs, satisfiers, and contra-satisfiers

All organisations have needs similar to those of individuals. These needs are prioritised using the same categories for individuals identified by Abraham Maslow and Clayton Alderfer, i.e., ERG or existence, followed by relatedness, in particular family relatedness, followed by growth. These priorities are consistent with the multilevel selection theory of evolution. This holds that we place greatest weight on personal survival and reproduction, followed by that of the community upon which we depend, followed by people more remote.

Satisfiers are those external things that increase the level of satisfaction of our needs, for example, food for hunger, or resources for manufacturing. Both individuals and larger organisations endeavour to gain satisfiers as efficiently as possible. Contra-satisfiers, on the other hand, are those external things that reduce the level of satisfaction of our needs and which we endeavour to avoid.

The applicability of systems science, function, and causality to organisations

All organisations are systems and comprise inputs, processes, and outputs. The fundamental principles of systems science apply to them, therefore.

Causality also applies to organisations. The combination of an input and the process is equivalent to a cause. The combination of the process and an output is equivalent to an effect. An organisation’s processes and outputs are also referred to as its function. Because causality applies to organisations we can, for example, say that a number of necessary causes or inputs are together sufficient for an effect in which the organisation carries out its function of producing outputs.

Matter, energy, or information is transferred from every organisation’s inputs to its outputs. This takes place within the region of space-time defined by the organisation’s process. Thus, the latter provides the overlap in space-time needed for a cause to be related to an effect.

All organisations comprise a group of people who work together with a common purpose. This purpose is also the organisation’s function, and the ability to carry out its function is an organisational need.

The applicability of motivation theory to organisations

All interactions between individuals, organisations, and parts of them comprise an exchange of satisfiers or contra-satisfiers for each other’s needs. These satisfiers and contra-satisfiers also take the form of matter, energy, or information. A satisfier or contra-satisfier received is an input, and one provided is an output. Thus, motivation theory also plays a key role in social systems theory.

The applicability of information theory to organisations

Information passes between organisations and flows within any organisation’s processes. Thus, information theory plays an essential role in social systems theory. Fundamentally, information is organised or structured matter or energy that we recognise due to its recurrence. It can exist “at source”, i.e., as the original structure perceived in the physical universe. It can also be translated into various symbolic forms capable of being transmitted, stored, or remembered. Importantly, information at source is, by definition, always true. However, information acquired in other ways, for example, from another organisation, can be false.

Direct interaction can only take place if two organisations are aware of one another, and for this to be the case, information must pass between them. However, organisations can be aware of one another but not interact. These criteria simplify the web of interactions in a social system.

Culture & interaction style

The ways in which individuals and organisations interact are determined by their culture and interaction style. These topics will be covered in a forthcoming article.