The Nature of Information

The commission analysed the nature and significance of the concept of information across various disciplines such as linguistics, cognitive psychology, neurobiology, molecular biology, computer science, and physics. 

A principal aim of the initiative was to identify both the commonalities and differences in how the term was used, and to make these findings heuristically applicable to the various subfields. Furthermore, the investigation hoped to achieve an approximation of a coherent overall picture of the nature of information. A conscious decision was made to refrain from beginning the work with an attempt at a universal definition of the term.

The themes that were pursued included:

• Structures and complexity of natural and technical languages, including their associated processing systems
• Cognition as information processing
• Mechanisms of de novo generation of information.

The final report is available on the Academy’s document platform ‘res doctae’: The Nature of Information.