Re: Ontolog Forum • Bruce Schuman

When I was first learning information theory, one of my favorite tag lines was:

Redundancy is the Essence of Information

It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek but none-the-less apt.

Although I had happened on hints of Peirce’s information theory in the microfilm edition of his Nachlass, only when the Chronological Edition of his Writings started coming out did I begin to grasp the full scope of what he was setting forth in his early Lectures on the Logic of Science.

And when I eventually lit on Peirce’s otherwise enigmatic “superfluous comprehension” I could hardly help but flash back to my earlier kenning of redundancy and sense the two phrases must be pointing to the same critical property of information.  However things may turn out, I think this connection gives us a clue worth following up.

Resources

• This Blog • Survey of Pragmatic Semiotic Information
• My Notes • Information = Comprehension × Extension
• C.S. Peirce • Upon Logical Comprehension and Extension

cc: Cybernetics • Ontolog Forum • Structural Modeling • Systems Science