Willy-nilly, Nature's entheogenic agents have provided compelling evidence for the following two most interesting of propositions: firstly that consciousness is a form of information substantiated within the brain's neuronal firing activity, and secondly that this kind of cerebral information has a tendency to organise and integrate itself. Evidence in support of the first proposition was provided through looking at the ways in which consciousness becomes altered through subtle alterations in the chemistry underlying neuronal firing. Chemically induced changes in global states of neuronal firing are equatable with changes in consciousness, and since global states of neuronal firing must be global states of information (what else could they be?) we can conclude that consciousness is a form of information.
Evidence to support the second proposition - that cerebral information has a tendency to organise itself - came from an examination of entheogenic phenomenology and even dreaming, both processes highlighting the way in which psychological information organises itself without a deliberate effort on our part to do so. Which is to say that we can find ourselves experiencing shamanic visions after ingesting entheogenic agents or likewise find ourselves experiencing elaborate dream scenarios whilst we sleep (perhaps mediated by endogenous DMT).
The former experience, the entheogenic visionary state, seems to represent a most extreme manifestation of informational organisation, so much so that a third proposition suggests itself, namely that an intelligent Other, distinct from the ego/self, lies behind the sacred thrust of psychedelic phenomenology. Such a dissociated Other can be considered to represent an organised source of intentional information which communicates with an individual whose neuronal system is infused with entheogenic alkaloids. We can thus concur with Huxley with his assertion that psychedelics allow a greater amount of what he called Mind at Large to flow into conscious perception. The Mind at Large is the Other, the Gaian Mind, which potentially interfaces with the human psyche, revealing itself in the shamanic experience and possibly during symbolic dreams. Information is the stuff of both the Other and the human mind. Conscious experience is information in process, as is the entheogenic experience. The greater the field of information being processed or integrated, the more conscious may we become (the word consciousness means 'knowing together').
In all three propositions, it is most definitely the term 'information' which fits the theoretical picture. This chapter attempts to formally elucidate this information-based scenario and to explore further the nature of information and its role in the Universe at large.
At first, it might seem somewhat off the point to delve into the nature of information and its role in shaping the Universe. After all, are we not entering territory far removed from tangible entheogenic plants and fungi? Are we not speculating far beyond the call of duty?
Actually, the ground of the informational territory which we will shortly be exploring is precisely what these shamanic agents illuminate. The issue at stake in all refined psychedelic debates is that of the nature of perceived reality, in particular, whether the seemingly expanded field of reality unveiled in the psychedelic state, with its undeniably spiritual trappings, has any kind of firm foundation. My conviction, like that of Huxley and McKenna, is that entheogens like psilocybin really do allow us to glimpse the 'bigger picture', and that the implications of such an experience should be followed as far as they might take us.
The association between psychedelic contemplation and the contemplation of reality are really one and the same thing. A genuinely mystical experience in which the presence of the Other is felt, cannot fail but change one's conception of the world, and, in particular, the significance one gives to life, particularly conscious human life, on this sensitive little planet of ours. It therefore comes as no surprise that entheogenic phenomenology can be a tad religious in nature. Because the entire field of reality is re-conceived and re-perceived in the psychedelic state, a kind of subjective paradigm shift occurs somewhat akin to paradigm shifts in science. These shifts in theoretical perspective involve thoroughly new conceptual frameworks with which to comprehend the fundamental nature of things. Similarly, traditional religious ideologies attempt to provide an overall scheme with which to understand reality. It is this holistic nature of religious thought which links it with psychedelic thought.
Entheogens then, are powerful tools with which to forge a new set of conceptions about the reality process and any competent fellow out to grasp the essence of Nature should consider employing them. Such newly acquired concepts and percepts can continue to be employed long after the consumed shamanic catalysts have been metabolised into inactive by-products. In a sense, it is as if new conceptual perspectives and new insights into Nature, once divined, install themselves permanently within the mind. Organic visionary ecstasy, once tasted, is not forgotten. Never. The difficulty, the overwhelming labour, is in trying to integrate the new view of reality with the old, to merge them so to speak, which is precisely what the rest of this book is about.
Huxley epitomised the paradigm-shifting effect of psychedelics in his interests and concerns during the last decade of his life. As we have seen, he was convinced that psychedelics allowed one access to the sacred side of Nature as encountered by mystics and religious visionaries, an aspect of reality real but hidden to the secular mind. Indeed, he even asked his wife to inject him with LSD shortly before he died, so assured was he that a psychedelic state of mind could prepare him to face the final stage of human life. This is rather dramatic testimony to the fact that psychedelic consciousness connects one to the deepest mysteries that reality confronts us with.
Similarly, in the context of traditional psychedelic shamanism as practised in South America, the mythological conception of reality held by the whole tribe stems from the effects of entheogenic plants upon the psyche of the shamanic voyager. And, as the acid gurus of the 60's testified, world views are very much at stake when it comes to the use of psychedelics. Chemically instigate a change in one's underlying concepts about reality, and culture transforms itself also.
In each of the above cases, reality is the issue at stake, along with the importance of the psychedelic experience in shaping it. Even without a psychedelic experience, Nature demands that we conceive her in some kind of organised way. Since we are woven into the very fabric of Universe, we cannot ignore its true nature for ever.
Perhaps, for the most part, we conceive the nature of reality unconsciously, for we all carry many tacit assumptions and tacit beliefs about the world (this book for example, carries a number of basic assumptions such as the assumption that a 'world out there' really does exist and that its nature really can be understood).
Like our consciousness, we take many things for granted and hardly ever reflect upon them (like the stable existence of beneficent energy-emitting suns for example). What makes entheogenic substances so remarkable is their uncanny ability to take one's precious store of reality concepts and then shake them about vigorously so as to reveal just how fragile and shallow-rooted such ingrained beliefs might be. If we imagine normal consciousness to be like a needle trundling along the groove of Nature's apparent 'surface', entheogens like psilocybin can jog the needle of consciousness into a rarer, and indeed, more 'groovy' surface groove. The true nature of reality then becomes a kind of 'unfinished business' which simply must be dealt with. This is the clarion call of the advocate for psilocybin. If we really wish to understand the reality process and the role of humanity within the natural world, then entheogens offer us a direct path to the Other, a sentient and intentional agency made of information whose presence and message awaits us.
One cannot stop reality, and this makes it's nature formidable regardless of what you believe. The sun warms us or burns us. The cold of Winter bites at our flesh and our homeostatic bodies automatically respond by shivering. The relentless rush of our billion cell biology propels us towards sex, always it seems, making us grope, cling, moan and shudder. This same biological march also puts us to sleep every night. We awaken, and again there it is - the reality process. We are inescapably bound up in it like grains of sand caught up in an everlasting vortex of wind. More to the point, eventually this perennial condition kills us.
As I remarked in the introduction to this book, whatever you may have read, the ultimate nature of the reality process remains open to question. This may always be the case. Science seems always to reveal more mystery as it delves into the heart of 'matter'. What is more, science is done first and foremost in order to gather data. How this data is interpreted is another matter. What is a complex mechanical system to one scientist might be blatant proof of an organising intelligence to another. And, as for the long sought after super-theory which will be able to explain the totality of Nature in terms of, say, umpteen dimensional superstrings, or in terms of some convoluted mathematical equation which only a few institutionalised professors can really understand, these are likely to omit an explanation for consciousness and the mysteries of mind. Indeed, such a 'final' theory, such a final equation scrawled upon a blackboard with one fell swoop of chalk, will probably serve only to confuse the average mind rather than enlighten it.
It seems apparent that if we open ourselves to the vast cosmic mystery of existence, then we could do a lot worse than pursue the implications of the psilocybin-driven numinous experience. To consume God's flesh is to launch oneself wholeheartedly into the mystery of being, the mystery of our short existence within this big system we call Nature. Our lives are defined by our conscious experience. We are led, prompted and coaxed according to how we are informed. The remarkable feature of entheogenic plants and fungi is that they can inform us in ways profound and sublime. To ignore their effects is to ignore new perspectives on reality.
As it is, the nature of the Universe in which we find ourselves is defined by the prevailing conceptual systems built into our culture. In our case, the predominately reductive and materialistic paradigm afforded by most of the science community shapes our views about reality. In the traditional scientific outlook which permeates our educational institutions, there is no real room for any kind of transcendental aspect to Nature. Nature is there, Nature is eminently intelligible, we can learn how it works and thats really all there is to it missus. Talk of Nature having a spiritual dimension or an intentional quality is anathema to most scientists. The advocate for neo-shamanism will doubtless have a stereotypical image of the hard-nosed reductive scientist. It will be a he, and he will be old, scary, and grim faced, always waving a dry finger of admonishment at any talk of a so-called sentient and intentional Other. If psychedelic visions cannot be empirically measured in the lab then forget it, he will say. And if one points to the few scientific experiments which have attempted to measure the numinous experience, he will doubtless pick holes in the methodology and ask for more proof. He would maintain that such experience is simply too subjective and too personal to base any objective claims about reality upon.
Still, as I hope I have demonstrated, entheogenic phenomenology flies in the face of such a denial that Nature has a spiritual side; or at least the shamanic experience offers what I believe to be the most compelling reason to grant Nature an intent of some kind. This appears to be a neat and valid side-step with which to bypass the moribund spectre of the reductive materialist. Indeed, the real possibility that the reality process has a fantastically benign and purposefully smart aspect becomes readily apparent through entheogens. Such a possibility will become ever more clear as this and the following chapters develop.
In short, entheogens represent catalytic agents of change in the domain of perceived reality, and this is why we shall now pursue the implications raised by the information-based propositions stated at the outset of this chapter. We are now armed and ready to re-view the nature of reality in the light of the psilocybin experience. This will prove to be astounding so hold tight.
What does it really mean to say that consciousness is a form of information? We seem to have merely replaced the intangibility of consciousness with another abstract entity. The question thus arises as to what exactly information is. But, even if we do succeed in adequately defining information, will we not then be in danger of trapping ourselves into one of those infinite regresses of terminology? Well I certainly hope not. What we really want is a conceptual picture of information, not just another term. What I wish to develop is a clearer understanding of what information is, and, in particular, whether it can be used to describe the world of so-called 'matter' as well as that of mind. If so, then reality will have revealed itself to be made of different forms of information, almost as if...well, we shall see.
Information is notoriously difficult to get a handle on. The 'slippery eel' that was consciousness has now become the 'slipperiest eel' that is information. Apart from my (hopefully) reasonable assertion that consciousness is a form of information, it would also appear that much else besides consists of information. It seems to be everywhere, all over the shop in fact, yet defies a simple all-encompassing formulation. I am reminded here of the cult 60's British TV series The Prisoner in which protagonist Patrick McGoohan, 'number 6', asks his mysterious captors what they want of him. "We want.... information... IN... FOR... MATION!" he is repeatedly told. Perhaps he should have asked them to carefully define it. Anyhow, whatever it was, they never got it. Lets hope we fare better.
Someone once compared the modern status of information to that of iron in the Iron Age. The fashioning of iron lay at the heart of Iron Age material culture, yet no-one knew of its atomic structure, that its useful nature lay in its atomic configuration relative to other matter. Similarly, we live in an Information Age, yet, if pressed, we find it difficult to get at the nature of information, at what exactly it is that links all forms of information, whether this information be in the form of consciousness, a bar-code, a designer label, a weather front, or the current positions of the planets.
There are, in fact, specific ways to measure specific types of information. These were developed in the 40's and 50's by communication engineers who were concerned with the efficient transmission of information along media like telephone lines. But before we look at the way in which they have conceived of it, lets first examine the common-sense view of what information means to us in its ordinary non-technical sense. Since we use the term all the time, especially in our present culture, this must signify that we do know something intrinsic about its nature.
Take the following three deliberately evocative examples in which information is involved. They are not as trivial as they might at first appear, rather they enable us to focus more clearly on the nature of information.
Example number one; at the end of the esteemed gangster movie Miller's Crossing, the main character shoots a fellow gangster but makes it look as though he was shot by someone else. He does this by putting the gun involved in the hands of yet another gangster who lies shot and dead (it was a violent film...) so that it looks like the two gangsters had shot each other dead at the same time. It could happen. Now, when he plants his gun, our miscreant fails to wipe off his fingerprints. Thats because they had not fully advanced the art of forensic fingerprinting in the late 1920's when then the film is set. The man simply places his gun in the other's hand. We know of course, that had a modern forensic expert been around at the time then they would only have had to test the gun for prints for the real villain to have become apparent. And what is the significance of the said fingerprints? No-one would doubt me if I said that the fingerprints contained information.
Example number two; a nervous student armed only with a fountain pen and a small bottle of ink enters an examination hall and sits an exam. After completing the exam the relieved student leaves carrying his pen and his ink bottle which is now empty. The ink he has left back in the examination hall is carefully distributed over the various sheets of the exam paper, and the distributional pattern of ink will, ultimately, decide whether he passes or fails the exam. Clearly, the pattern of ink set forth by the student contains a wealth of information.
Example number three; you crack open a boiled egg for breakfast. As you dip your toast into the yolk, you begin to reflect upon the nature of this tasty source of protein. In particular, you realise that had this egg not been removed from beneath the warm body of the hen which produced it, then it would have eventually developed into a full-grown chicken with wings, a visual system, an innate repertoire of behaviour, a digestive system and so on. In other words you become aware of the astonishing fact that somewhere within the soft yellow substance of an egg there resides an inconceivably large amount of information.
The first point to make about these three examples is that the information inferred is in a potential, or latent state. Which is to say that the unseen fingerprints remain as potential information until perceived, the distribution of ink across the exam paper remains potential information until the paper is read by an examiner, and an egg, before it's untimely removal from beneath a hen, is also rich in potential information.
The second point is that this potential information can become active provided that it comes under the effects of an appropriate environment or appropriate context. As you will recall from chapter 5, I mentioned contextual environments in connection with their effect of providing meaning to individual neuronal patterns. We can now use this concept of context in a more general sense in order to understand how information can be made to actively flow or unfold from a potential state. As we shall see, context is an incredibly important word.
In the fingerprint case, a forensic expert armed with the tools of his trade can come to draw out the information embodied in the prints. He causes the information inherent in the fingerprint patterns to flow out into the larger environment, such that the information causes things to happen. The information has gone from a latent, passive state into an active state by virtue of the contextual effect of the investigative forensic expert. Such an appropriate contextual environment allows the meaning inherent in the prints to become manifest. To highlight the scope for causal effect that such a transitional flow of information can have, we should bear in mind that information in fingerprint traces can penetrate a court room and induce a conviction. Information is a powerful thing, able to spread itself out into the greater environment.
With the distributed ink example, its analysis by an exam marker causes the potential information to flow out and be actively informative so that it comes to shape the grade awarded to the student. In the context of the psyche of an examiner, the information inherent in the precisely patterned distribution of ink is significant enough to indicate the intellectual capacity and communicational intent of the student.
As for the egg, its informational content similarly undergoes a transition from a potential state to an active state when an appropriate environment draws the information out. In this case, a specific temperature acts as the befitting contextual environment (as far as I know), serving to elicit a flow of information from the sequential DNA patterns in the yolk (within the nucleus to be precise). Deny the egg the appropriate temperature context (take it away from warmth) and the information remains potential and inactive; hence a chicken fails to be brought forth.
Besides the distinction between potential information and actively flowing information, there is also a distinction to be made between subjective information and objective information. In the case of the fingerprints and the ink distribution, the information is activated by us. The apropos context is the subjective attention of human observers who come to channel the information. Which means that the information is purely subjective in nature, depending upon human observation to activate it. In fact, this subjective nature of information holds for the majority of the things we usually conceive of as information in our culture; things like TV and radio broadcasts, books, memos, newspapers, etc. To the fly crawling over the TV screen or the pages of a book, the visual or written information remains potential and dormant (unless of course it happens to be a cunningly designed electronic CIA bug), whereas in the context of the observing human psyche the information actively flows out of these media and comes to be causally influential. It should be stressed however that this subjective nature of the information does not lessen it in any way; it is still very much a real part of the Universe. Relatively speaking, all and any kind of information is real.
The case is somewhat different with the egg, for human observers are not necessary to elicit the (genetic) information they carry. The information in an egg is usually 'read out' by the natural environment, and we can refer to an egg's information as being objective in the sense that the objective natural environment is involved as the appropriate context eliciting the process of information flow. The same goes for seeds and spores. They are informational entities that release their stored information when the natural environment is in a specific state. If the seeds or spores fall on 'stony' ground (the wrong context) then their information remains unread, dormant perhaps for years. Indeed, a rather dramatic and apt example of this process occurred in the case of a freeze-dried Neolithic hunter found in the Alps some years ago. When his non-designer straw footwear was thawed out, some fungal spores in the ancient straw began to come to life and grow. Scientists were astonished, since it was the first time that such a turn of events had been observed. Cryogenically suspended by Nature for 5000 years, the pattern of information in the DNA of the fungal spores went suddenly from a passive to an active state due to the warm environmental context of the science lab. The information in the spores thereby began to actively flow, this process manifesting itself in the elaborate growth of the fungus.
But, in both subjective and objective information, what is it that comes to flow? What is actually happening when the fingerprints are analysed, when the ink is read, and when eggs and spores begin to grow? It is obvious that some actively flowing process occurs wherein potential information becomes active information, but what exactly does this moving and dynamic process involve? This, in fact, is the crux of informational processes, and I should warn the reader that what follows is perhaps the toughest going in this book. But bear with it since the subsequent implications are many and rewarding. Trust me.
Above all, when information flows, there appears to be movement and change, in particular, a change in the state of at least one of the systems involved. In analysing fingerprints, the information they contain initially effects the overall state of the forensic expert's psyche (the psyche being a system). Through analysing the prints, the psyche of the forensic expert is provided with knowledge, a term often associated with information. Indeed, the concept of knowledge is bound up with the theory of information developed by communication engineers, for information is conceived by them as representing a reduction in uncertainty. The richer the transfer of information, the less uncertain about something is the recipient of the information - hence more knowledge is gained. If I ask you to think of some famous person and I try to guess who you thought of through the 20 questions game, then if my first question is whether the person is male and you answer 'yes', then that single bit of information has halved my uncertainty. For the communications engineer, information is correlated with knowledge and a reduction in uncertainty regarding a choice of possibilities. Actively flowing information therefore comes to reduce the number in an ensemble of possibilities. It reduces uncertain possibilities and gives rise to the actual. The net result is a definite change, or resolution of possibilities, in the receiving system involved in the information flow. An uncertain 'open pattern' becomes a certain 'closed pattern' as it were. In the fingerprint case the receiving system is the psyche of the forensic analyst which changes its state or at least part of its pattern according to how it is informed.
Regarding the examiner case, before he or she comes to mark the paper, there is complete uncertainty about the ability of the student. As the exam paper is read, the information flow gradually causes a reduction in uncertainty until an eventual mark is settled upon. So, akin the previous example, we can see that the information contained in the patterned distribution of ink gradually changes the information state within the mind or psyche of the examiner. It is this sort of process which would appear to lie at the heart of subjective information transfer. A system of information on one level or in one domain connects to another system of information such that the state of the receiving system becomes altered. Or, to put it another way, one pattern of information is able to effect changes in another pattern of information. The human psyche is precisely a type of informational system, or informational pattern, able to change its state according to information coming from those other systems in which it is sensorially embedded.
It is apparent then that subjective information, when accessed through reading, hearing, smelling, sight, or touch, comes to change the form of the receiving informational system substantiated in the receiver's brain. If we imagine the brain's neuronal wiring system to be like clay, then as patterns of information impinge upon this clay, the patterns comes to alter the form or shape of the clay, and thus there has been a flow of information. The impact of the flowing bits of information leads to a gradual change in the form, or formal state, of the clay. The actual system which functions like clay is the neuronal system, or, to be more specific, the way in which billions of neurons are connected to one another. Indeed, learning, and by definition information access, is thought to be mediated through changes in neuronal connections. It is the overall network of connections which reflects the global form or 'shape' of the neuronal system.
The dictionary definition of information helps us here to, for it tells us that information comes from the Latin word informare, which means 'to give form to'. When information informs us, it alters the form, or pattern, of the informational system that is our mind. The mind is therefore an information-based system constantly re-forming itself (changing its pattern) through the accessing of information deriving from other kinds of information-based media, just as if it were clay being shaped by its environment.
For us, there is only information. Our minds are uniquely enduring patterns spun from it. Information from other patterns, or systems, is continually being absorbed, integrated, and given out again. In this process, the form of the mind changes through changes in the ways in which neurons are formally connected to one another. Consciousness emerges as a type of global information whose form is constantly undergoing change due to the integration and accessing of other types of information through the senses.
If, instead of clay, we imagine the mind to be analogous to the white chess pieces on a chess board with the black pieces representing the external world, then as the black pieces move ( the world changes around us) the information content of the white pieces will change in relation to the black pieces. Consciousness can therefore be viewed as a neuron-mediated form of information in process. As the overall state of the brain changes so too does consciousness change, and it once more appears that consciousness is a particular form/pattern of information embodied within the firing activity of the neuronal brain.
The case of the egg is different. When environmental conditions are conducive, the objective information in the DNA becomes active and is expressed through biochemical activity. DNA is seemingly 'tuned' to operate when a specific environmental context surrounds it, just as our minds are tuned to our native language and familiar objects. The precise molecular details of DNA need not concern us here, rather we need only grasp the general principle of how information actively flows out from DNA.
In our discussions of the egg, DNA represents 'matter in a significant state' such that given a certain environment complex organic activity will unfold. From a single fertilised egg cell an entire organism will develop because the information in the egg cell's DNA becomes activated. The DNA causes particular amino acids to form which then cause various proteins to form and hence various organs. Morphogenesis, the growth in form of an organism, is thus the reading out of DNA information, the expression of the meaning inherent in DNA (incidentally, if an egg is eaten, then another form of its information is accessed, in this case its 'nutritional information' which is absorbed by the consumer).
DNA information is read out via biochemical processes, and the resulting change in the formal state of the system itself then acts as a contextual environment allowing the growth, or information read-out, to progress. We can view the immediate chemical environment of the DNA as being both on the receiving end of the information transfer and able to feed back upon, and influence, the information being accessed from the DNA. The form of the DNA, its specific information-rich pattern, comes to govern the form of the developing cells within which the DNA is embedded. In turn, the form of the cells i.e. their relative distribution, will determine the formal development of the organs within which the cells are embedded as well as determining further DNA translation. In this way, the DNA information comes to flow outwards and be expressed on a macroscopic scale.
There is a strong suggestion here that informational systems (i.e. meaningful patterns of form embodied within different media) are embedded within one another as in a nested hierarchical continuum, and that they are continually influencing one another's form. This is rather dramatically illustrated in the fact that the reading out of DNA will eventually lead to an organism moving about in the world at large. If some mutated DNA has fortunately produced some new advantageous behaviour, then this will eventually feed back upon the mutated DNA and favour its evolutionary fate. In our case, the form of the human genome is a direct consequence of the form of the environment in which our ancestors evolved. Informational systems like DNA, cells, organs, organisms, minds and environments, are like the nested layers of an onion, each embedded within one another, each able to in-form (put form into) its 'neighbour'. All are interrelated states/systems/patterns of information.
Since DNA is clearly a form of information, we can dispense with calling it 'matter in a significant state'. DNA is information in the same way that words are information. Both contain meaning, potential or otherwise, which can be read. DNA is thus an organic informational language which is expressed through biological growth and biological activity. I would go further and suggest that this language-like informational process is not merely a metaphor for spoken and written language, but that DNA really is linguistic in nature with its own grammar and semantics, albeit of an organic kind. If the DNA is disorganised in any way then this corresponds to faulty grammar, and the development of the organism will proceed in a defective way. Consider the disease sickle cell anaemia in which red blood cells are misshapen (they are shaped like a sickle). It is caused by just one faulty microscopic link in the DNA, yet this single error is enough to produce the disease. The faulty DNA link can be viewed as a grammar-like error which interferes with the meaningful expression of the DNA.
The language-like processes so far suggested lead us to another concept, that of a dialogue. If we conceive a dialogue as the communicatory process in which information is transmitted, then subjective information like the written or spoken word flows according to a dialogue between the source of information and the recipient. Imagine someone talking down a telephone line with no-one on the receiver. No dialogue, and hence no communication of information takes place because there is no-one to provide a receptive context - no-one is there to be in-formed. However, if someone does take the receiver then the information from the sender comes to be absorbed by the recipient i.e. there is a definite information flow between psyches. The form of the neuronal 'clay' of the receiver is altered by the patterns of information being conveyed across the telephone line. The subsequent dialogue might be a one-sided affair in which the receiver merely listens, or it might be two-sided in which case both parties are involved in the information flow. In either case the dialogue facilitates a flow of information which will lead to a qualitative change in the informational state, or formal state, of the receiver's mind.
If we now consider biological systems once more, a similar kind of informational dialogue takes place, this time between the organism (with its DNA) and the natural environment. Think of any plant in the advanced stages of growth. At the very tip of the plant, the leading edge of the growth process so to speak, there will be newly emerging cells. This unfolding growth will take place within the context of the natural conditions it comes into contact with, such as luminosity, temperature, humidity, gravitational force and so on. A whole host of such influential factors both within and outside of the plant will play a relational role in shaping the form of the growing tissue. I suggest that such a relational process is a natural dialogue (as opposed to a dialogue in conventional spoken language) whereby information embodied in the plant comes to be read out by the immediate environment.
The resulting plant forms, in this view, are no less than natural on-going organic utterances or expressions shaped in response to the surrounding environment/context. The key point is that the interaction of the plant with the environment can be described in terms of a dialogue-like, language-like, process of information flow. There are no rigid boundaries at all, rather it is the case that there exists a hierarchy of information in which forms and structures constantly emerge and influence one another. Information is everywhere, residing in systems as diverse as biology and the human psyche. All systems can be viewed as patterns, or architectures, of information embedded or embodied within one another. Further, when one pattern influences the form of another, the process appears to be remarkably language-like.
But what of inorganic matter? Can we stretch the language-like informational paradigm to cover such entities as physical elements and the like? We should not forget that atoms underlie the various informational systems we have been discussing. If we take the most basic element hydrogen, I see no reason why we should not consider it to be akin, in computer terminology, to a localised 'byte' of information, divisible into even smaller 'bits' (each byte in a computer's memory consists of a string of eight elementary digital on-or-off bits). What makes an element of hydrogen different from, say, an element of iron is its atomic configuration. The structural form of hydrogen (its pattern) is such that it bears important systematic relations to other elements. Here again, we arrive at an informational and language-like conception of hydrogen. It is an atomic expression, a 'word' in the language of physics. Put hydrogen in the context of other elements like oxygen, and its relational properties cause the formation or expression of molecules like water. Or, put an atom of hydrogen in the context of a star, and another aspect of its information becomes apparent, in this case its ability to undergo nuclear fusion. A star thus evokes one kind of information embodied within hydrogen, a fact of no small import for the existence of life on Earth.
An atom of hydrogen can therefore be understood as a localisation of basic information, an element within the most primal language of the Universe. With this view, the basic 'matter' of the Universe starts to dissolve, and instead we again see only information. All elements from argon to gold to zinc are here inferred to be units of information whose informational substance differs according to the relational role played by those elements in a language of such elements. This is the informational language of physics, as opposed to the informational languages of, say, biochemistry, genetics or psychology.
As a measure of the sheer expressive capacity of the language system of elements, one has only to think of all the countless ways in which basic elements like hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, phosphorous, magnesium, and nitrogen can combine themselves, yielding such varied forms/expressions as DNA, methane, ammonia, psilocybin, sugar, chlorophyll, amino acids, proteins and so on. Which implies that the language of physics underlies the language of chemistry which further underlies the language of biology. Once more, one can divine that all these languages of Nature are part of an interconnected continuum wrought of information and within which the various kinds of information are everywhere flowing.
When we come to the various particles of which atoms are themselves made (protons, neutrons etc), we are confronting still more basic units of information, akin to on-off computer bits or the individual letters which make up words. The following relevant quotation on the nature of elementary particles comes from the physicist and philosopher Fritjof Capra, who, through his examination of quantum physics, has also come to conclude that the classical Newtonian view of material particles as being elementary 'material stuff' is no longer tenable:
"The high-energy scattering experiments of the past decades have shown us the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the particle world in the most striking way. Matter has appeared in these experiments as completely mutable. All particles can be transmuted into other particles; they can be created from energy and can vanish into energy. In this world, classical concepts like 'elementary particle', 'material substance' or 'isolated object', have lost their meaning; the whole universe appears as a dynamic web of inseparable energy patterns...The properties of a particle can only be understood in terms of its activity - of its interaction with the surrounding environment - and that the particle, therefore, cannot be seen as an isolated entity, but has to be understood as an integrated part of the whole."
Similarly:
"In the new world view {of quantum physics}, the Universe is seen as a dynamic web of interrelated events. None of the properties of any part of this web is fundamental; they all follow from the properties of the other parts, and the overall consistency of their mutual interrelations determines the structure of the entire web."
Such a Universe of interrelations is entirely compatible with the language-like informational model of reality being developed here. As stated, a language system like the English language consists of discrete informational elements (words) which derive their information, their meaning, from the specific functional role that they play within a system of such elements. If we take a word like 'bon', we see that it plays the same functional role within the French language as does the word 'good' in the English language. The word 'good' obtains its meaning, and thus its informational content, according to its numerous functional relations to all other words and other strings of words. The word 'good' is the point where a set of informational relations converge, and since all languages contain similar informational relations, they can be translated into one another.
Words can therefore to be understood as being formal units of information which, when joined, create further forms/patterns of information. This also holds true for units of information like particles and atoms. They derive their meaning from their relations with other particles and atoms and, like words, they can form together to create an endless amount of new informational patterns or expressions.
Recall also that functionalism holds that any conscious state derives its nature from the role it plays in a language of such states. The same principle applies to the languages of chemistry, biochemistry, and genetics. In each of these language-like systems, the elements involved bear definite relations to one another, the relations determining the nature and meaning of each element. Although each particular language-like system will operate on a different scale and use a different kind of logic ('chemo-logic', 'bio-logic', 'geno-logic' etc), all inter-penetrate one another, and all foster the continual flow of information.
The Universe can now be conceived as a kind of on-going dynamic dialogue in which relational patterns of information are forever in the process of informing one another. As this universal tide of information constantly flows, merges, weaves and feeds back upon itself (the Universe seemingly 'converses' with itself), novel patterns of information are being continually stimulated into existence. Particles, atoms, elements, molecules, cells, micro-organisms, plants, animals, humans, minds, ideas, etc; all are forms of information continually in process. Any 'thing' or object is where a vast set of relations converge, and, ultimately, this set of relations will encompass all else. Nothing is isolated; everything is relationally connected to everything else. Patterns within patterns within patterns. Whether potential or active, information is everywhere; Nature is made of it, fundamentally so.
Regarding this informational approach to understanding Nature, George Johnson introduces the self-same paradigm emanating from the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico in his book Fire in the Mind . The scientists at Santa Fe study complexity (in all of its incarnations) and are convinced that information be a fundamental property of Nature. Johnson reports on a typical conference held by Santa Fe scientists:
"In building a tower of abstraction, one must start with a foundation, those things that are taken as given: mass, energy, space, time. Everything else can then be defined in terms of these fundamentals. But gradually over the last century,,,,,{some scientists have}.....come to believe that another basic ingredient {is} necessary to make sense of the Universe: information....
"Most of us are used to thinking of information as secondary, not fundamental, something that is made from matter and energy......But to many of those at the Santa Fe conference, the world just didn't make sense unless information was admitted into the pantheon, on an equal footing with mass and energy. A few went so far as to argue that information may be the most fundamental of all; that mass and energy could somehow be derived from information."
As the reader can appreciate, there are a number of key words which help elucidate the new informational paradigm. Words such as context, system, web, relational and pattern. All these words infer interconnectivity, that all forms of information impinge upon one another such that no one thing can be fully understood in isolation. Capra, in his book The Web of Life, has written:
"As we shift our attention from macroscopic objects to atoms and subatomic particles, Nature does not show us any isolated building-blocks, but rather appears as a complex web of relationships between the various parts of a unified whole. As Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum theory put it, "The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole." "
We need only complement Heisenberg's assertion by adding the term information. In which case the world, or system of the Universe, appears as a complex tissue of informational events in which various forms of information combine and determine the overall patterns extant within the system.
Consider another vivid example highlighting the contextual web of information uniting all and sundry within Nature, namely the formation of a snowflake in the atmosphere. Its particular arising is dependent upon a contextual web of informing relations (temperature, air pressure etc) which ultimately extend out into the entire Universe. Since each snowflake will bear a unique set of contextual relations to the rest of the world, then each snowflake develops a unique form. Similarly, every structure, object or 'thing' is an informational entity which achieves its being or meaning according to its language-like role within the context of the Universe - language-like because, as with words, objects play a well defined role within a language-like system.
Consciousness as a particular form of information can now be discerned with striking clarity. Any particular conscious state, as it flows, is determined by all the informing relations converging in the neuronal system at that moment. These relations will be the unconscious systems of the mind along with the environment which surrounds the individual. This contextual network of informing relations determine what the neuronal activity means. The brain/mind system exists in relation to the immediate surroundings, society, culture, the planet, and the rest of the Universe, and it is this network of relations converging in the brain which determines the state of consciousness. Furthermore, to consume psilocybin is to allow a new set of informational relations to converge within the neuronal brain. Thus, one may suddenly 'mean' more in relation to the rest of the reality process. Regarding consciousness, this is perhaps the most that can gleaned from our informational model at this point.
So far, I have deliberately avoided putting the term process before the term information. Instead, I have repeatedly spoken of a flow of information in process. Everything - the entire substance of Nature - consists of information, and everywhere this information is in process - flowing, merging, and informing in a language-like way. If we switch the terms 'information' and 'process' around, we unavoidably face yet another extraordinary idea, that in some sense the Universe must be a kind of computer, for a computer is a system that processes information. That the Universe is a kind of computer or, more accurately, a computation is a notion currently voiced by a number of prominent scientists, and, from the point of view of this book, is worth exploring since it might bolster the concept of a Universe of language-like information. Just when you thought it was safe to take a well-earned breather, we encounter yet more profundity.