Information in nature, human behavior, and social life

Abstract

The notion of information seems to be growing into one of the central, unifying concepts of modern science, natural as well as social or behavioral. Conceived basically as the degree of order or organization of a system, any system, it originated in the discipline of thermodynamics in which, briefly, it turned out to underlie a system's capacity for converting energy, i.e., for doing 'work' of some kind. Now, the fact that humans, too, are physical systems, does not automatically imply that this notion of information or order should also be relevant to the explanation of human behavior or social life. Yet, this is precisely what the autonomous development of theory in this area reveals. In this contribution we explore, briefly and informally, the meaning and role of the notion in scientific theory, in the attitudes underlying individual behavior, and in the structure of social systems as a prime determinant of their power, cultural and economic development, and of the quality of life therein.